Dead Light, Green Light

by comicsans

co-authored: @embedder72, @wodensfang, @kapitstick, @onedozenbagels

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.02

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.91

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.35

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.78

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.95

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.23

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.40

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.23

The zombie apocalypse is here, and years of Drone Pilot Correspondence School is finally paying off! You may be safe in your mom's basement, but there's plenty of others that aren't so lucky. Grab some Cheetos, crack your knuckles, and let's pilot, baby!

Use your drone to:
* Recon safe paths.
* Activate traffic signals to guide survivors (light green).
* Pilot in close to lead people directly.
* Save as many as you can! (Get them to the hospital)

The Game ##

* This is a browser game. No download needed!
* https://ld59.comicsans.games/
* We have a new musician, and the audio is great! Click the mute icon in the top left to unlock.
* +/- to increase/decrease volume, and M to toggle mute.

Controls

* Mouse right-click or *hold* to move.
* Press 1, 2, 3 or mouse wheel to change altitude.
* Mouse left-click on a signal to turn it green for a short while.

Credits

* Code: Brian McBarron, Kevin Pitstick, Robert Bergman, Tony Aquino
* 3D Assets: Hannah Bergman
* Music and Sound Effects: Holden Akers-Toler
* Design: Everyone!
* You: Thanks for playing!

Comments29

Kit Gorn21 Apr 2026, 06:25

Anyway, I played it. It didn't evoke any particular emotions. Everything was too average.

ComicSansauthor21 Apr 2026, 15:17

Thanks for taking the time to comment, @kit-gorn. Your feedback is really vague. Can you point out something that should have been better?

Kit Gorn21 Apr 2026, 21:02

@comicsans It's hard to say. The game is basically finished. The graphics, the music, everything is up to par. But it's a bit too generic. I'd like something more personal. Not just saving green dots from red ones. Let's say there was our mom at the mall. Or our dad going to pick up his sister from school.

Now it doesn't evoke any emotion. I don't care about the green dots. I'm not afraid of losing.

Honestly, I lost track of this message among all the others. If you hadn't left a comment under my game, I would have missed it. How rude of me that would have been.

ComicSansauthor21 Apr 2026, 23:31

@kit-gorn That's great feedback, thanks. We ran out of time as we were starting to add hats to certain survivors and give them unique behaviors. The only one that made it in was the firefighters. Even if we had added the others I didn't think we would have hit that emotional note, though. We were hoping to end up with a sandbox of interesting things to discover and interact with throughout the city.

MostLikely22 Apr 2026, 01:19

Cool game! The motion felt very satisfying, so the mechanics were definitely my favorite part, plus the art style was cool! I did have some issues with scaling on my monitor, but I found that if I just held my mouse click down and the moved around, it was able to work okay. Good work!

zpdlf00322 Apr 2026, 08:31

It was a good game that was simple and easy to enjoy. The consistency of the graphics was particularly outstanding.

Fadex22 Apr 2026, 15:32

Coool game, nice atmosphere. I liked it mechanically with all the different povs. I played with a touchpad and it was a bit clumsy.

Alex de la Cour22 Apr 2026, 16:17

Good stuff! It took me a through tries to figure out what I was actually supposed to be doing but once it clicked I had a fun time trying to plot a course around the zombies and getting all my little green dots to safety (I couldn't help but let some of them die unfortunately!)

NBumgardner22 Apr 2026, 20:02

The people heading toward the signal was interesting, they reminded me of fireflies with all of the lights.

I was not able to find the hospital or hear the audio, but refreshing the page did fix the blurriness as reported earlier.

ComicSansauthor22 Apr 2026, 22:16

Thanks for the kind words, @mostlikely! Just so we can improve our engine, can you let us know what resolution your monitor is, and how it ended up looking?

ComicSansauthor22 Apr 2026, 22:18

Thanks for playing our game, @zpdlf003 @fadex @alex-de-la-cour!

ComicSansauthor22 Apr 2026, 22:25

Ha, I like the firefly concept, @nbumgardner! We're always looking for solutions to bugs (no pun intended :grin:). If you feel like helping us out, try running it again and clicking on this icon, which should be at the top of the page.

If that doesn't fix the audio, try hitting the "=" (+) key several times. If that still doesn't work, and you're willing to share your OS and browser type, that would help!
Thanks for playing our game!

If you feel like taking another shot at the gameplay, the hospital is the tallest building in the top right corner. :hospital:

WouterK1223 Apr 2026, 17:27

Hell yeah finally a game where you can fly a droneee, I like it :D

Antoine Bodin23 Apr 2026, 17:52

good work with this game, I had trouble understanding the mechanics and controls at first. Still had fun and tried a few time so thank you for that !

RedPhoenix241223 Apr 2026, 18:40

Cool take on the theme! However, the drone was flying around more or less out of control for me. Or maybe I just didn't understand the controls. That could be it, too. :D

Sphone Official23 Apr 2026, 18:40

Was there a way to get the survivors to follow your own drone? I kept having to make them go into circles before there were no zombies in the way, neat idea but the way you navigate to survivors could be a bit better

Garaptic23 Apr 2026, 22:16

It's a good little game, I enjoyed it. The music is very atmospheric and sets the tone well. I also enjoyed personally leading survivors closer to the signal stations, so they could see them. The only thing was that I didn't immediately notice the right building to lead the survivors to, which is why everyone died the first time...
But overall, great job! :]

SU YUHANG24 Apr 2026, 13:41

The concept is interesting; maybe the drone could do more to make it more fun.

ComicSansauthor24 Apr 2026, 20:05

@sphone-official Thanks for playing! When you at altitude "1" (the lowest), the survivors follow your drone if it's very close. Otherwise, the only way to influence them is to activate the light signals. The signals themselves also have a range which isn't communicated. Both of the ranges really need some sort of visual feedback.

ComicSansauthor24 Apr 2026, 20:06

@redphoenix2412 Sorry for the confusion! The main way to move the drone is to right click on a spot on the map, and it will fly there. If you hold the right mouse button, it will continue updating the destination. We probably need a visual indicator for where it's heading. Thanks for the feedback and trying our game!

ComicSansauthor24 Apr 2026, 20:10

@su-yuhang The original plan was to have multiple buildings throughout the city with "specialist" survivors that you could rescue to unlock new behaviors. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and the only specialist are the firefighters in the southeast quadrant. I like your idea of having more things for the drone to do. Maybe delivering equipment? Fighting zombies? Let me know if you have ideas you would like to see! Thanks for playing our game and providing feedback!

ComicSansauthor24 Apr 2026, 20:16

@wouterk12 Thanks for encouragement! I spent like 6 hours trying to make the drone pathfind and self-navigate among the buildings with a realistic acceleration model. In that version, more of the buildings were intended to be taller, so weaving through them would have been more important (and looked cool!). Also, we could have pivoted the camera to more of a chase view while it was doing that sort of slalom. :skier: Unfortunately I couldn't get the math quite right and realized I needed to move on. :cry:

ComicSansauthor24 Apr 2026, 20:18

@antoine-bodin @garaptic Thanks for trying our game, and for taking the time to offer feedback! We really appreciate it. :heart:

Shernik25 Apr 2026, 12:03

An interesting game concept, it was a little difficult to figure out and I didn't quite understand why traffic lights are needed if you can turn green on the quadcopter itself.

ComicSansauthor25 Apr 2026, 14:14

@shernik Thanks for the feedback! The idea is that the short-range influence and limited visibility of the drone is more tactical, while the traffic signal guidance is more strategic. It'd be difficult to save everyone without using a mix of both. You're absolutely right that the modes could use more differentiation, and that certain situations could more clearly call for one or the other.

Wallted28 Apr 2026, 20:14

I was pretty much done, doing random things, when it clicked - this game has the same layout every time. This means I can totally minmax this. The twist that there are firefighters. This is totally fully tactical game and I love it. It in the best way reminded me of Emergency 2 - your game feels like a level straight from that game :D Especially the firefighters, which purpose I learned along the way

I got them all, right? (the image is kinda not working, but you got to trust me I got 34 of them saved :D)

ComicSansauthor28 Apr 2026, 22:23

@wallted Yes, you got them all! :medal: Thanks for your awesome feedback. :pray: We're thrilled that you enjoyed our game enough to beat it!