Lights of the Living Dead

by madbarron

co-authored: @advarsky, @aboogoost, @modulo-tunes

Overall★★★★★★★★★★4.10

Fun★★★★★★★★★★4.06

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★4.04

Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.32

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.63

Audio★★★★★★★★★★4.08

Humor★★★★★★★★★★4.30

Mood★★★★★★★★★★4.30

It's rush hour in Monster City!

Step into the role of a traffic safety administrator in Monster City. The undead have places to be, and you need to keep them safe by expert manipulation of the city's traffic signals.

How it Works

Every traffic signal is bound to a different key on your keyboard. Tap to go from Red to Green. Hold on Green to show a Yellow, and release to go to Red.

🟢 Green: Cars will go. Are you with me so far?

🟡 Yellow: Cars will come to a safe stop if they can. Some monsters don't think the rules apply to them and will drive straight through a yellow. Bad monster!

🔴 Red: Cars will slam on their brakes, even if they can't make it. They might end up in the middle of an intersection, waiting for a green light.

Get as many cars and pedestrians safely to their destination as you can in the time allotted. Or don't!

Hold SPACE at any time to see the key bindings again.

Accessibility

Due to the time restriction, we had to make some assumptions and could not work around the following restrictions for the Jam version of the game. Sorry! We hope to address these in a post-jam version.

🇺🇸 Access to an English (US) QWERTY-layout keyboard is required. The game might not function properly on other layouts.

👀 An important requirement of the game is the ability to tell the difference between red and green.

Credits

- Andrew Vyalkov a.k.a.Advarsky—Art
- Noah Dietterich—Music, Sfx
- Brandon Quinn—Programming
- Ryan Hansen—Programming, Level Design

Genres: simulation

Tools: Unity

Comments29

Kamizenki21 Apr 2026, 05:33

This game is really fun to play. The way we can control the traffic lights gives us a sense of power. But some streets are a bit short, making it difficult to time things better, so I often let the driver overdrive lol. Overall, I love the concept and the art style of the game; they blend together well. Well done!! Keep it up.

mattlevonian21 Apr 2026, 05:38

Great game with fantastic level of polish. I felt like the lack of a clear end condition (either failure or success) or a penalization for having cars pile up made the gameplay feel a bit hollow. The full keyboard utilization was really fun, loved the framing of playing as an eldritch tentacle monster, etc. Just needs some sort of reward/penalty for doing well/doing poorly.

GoogleFrog21 Apr 2026, 05:49

That was really nice to play and the art really sets the mood. I had to get my head around the QWOPness at first, but then it was satisfying to send streams of traffic flowing across the screen. The only issue I ran into was a soft lock state where crashes pile up off-screen and stop a lane from fiddling. That and my sleep-deprived confusion that the cars were crashing at all (I've spent three days debugging crash-avoidance behaviour), but that is on me.

Baturinsky21 Apr 2026, 17:20

Looks amazing. Cars crashing is spectacular. But it's impossible to remember so many buttons. Mouse interface would be great.

FLOWERFIELD Games21 Apr 2026, 17:30

When I launched the game for the first time, I was like, "Omg, what a great sadistic Machiavellian idea!" It reminded me of Need for Speed 3 where you have to cause the worst car pile-up possible. For now, it feels like it's too easy to just turn all light green and watch them crash. Am I right?
Great art direction overall, well done!

Madbarronauthor21 Apr 2026, 18:19

@mattlevonian great feedback, I think having targets to hit would make it a lot more fun and we never even talked about it.

@flowerfield-games nobody ever said the goal was to cause mayhem...should we be worried about you? :laughing:

carterjbx21 Apr 2026, 22:00

Such a well made game! the crashing is perfect. I felt like there were too many buttons to remember, but otherwise it's great!

Tkap122 Apr 2026, 15:36

Looks and sounds great, but way too much micro-managing for my taste.

Accelerate081425 Apr 2026, 03:50

Up until now this is my favorite game of this jam, incredible work in this short time frame.

Zamizmi25 Apr 2026, 06:08

Woah, i really like the vibe of the game and the starting story is hilarious!
that being said the game does depend on really tentacly-good players to get the controls to work. Not sure how to approach this with keyboard, but I have an idea for a controller.

With controller you select the lights you want to toggle with "circular selector" and you highlight the lights activated and just R1 to toggle them. Might work with mouse as well; hover the light you want to change and just click, with no keyboard.

I love how the game looks; it reminds me of GTA2 from ages ago; the lights and pedestrians take me back to GTA 1 and 2, especially 2.

Well done!

sinemual26 Apr 2026, 05:52

Great comic and cover! The graphics and music are great, but the controls are something else. I get the idea that we’re an octopus, which explains the unusual keys, but I’m not sure if it’s worth it =) They could have made an easy mode with mouse clicks or something like that. Major props for the physics—not everyone would have gone for that!

gurkenlabs26 Apr 2026, 22:05

I was joyfully reminded of the most devastating carambolages back in the GTA II days, well done with the car physics and the overall mechanics! Your concept is very unique and I enjoyed the hectic nature of having to manage everything at once. Especially in the last level, I had a lot of "oopsie" moments where tons of monsters got mown down by traffic because I had fogotten a signal. Great job, guys!

Yanato27 Apr 2026, 23:36

Very good game! Interesting, what selling in body shop xD

VenomousMouse28 Apr 2026, 12:13

Superb visuals and nicely done mechanic. Very cool.

Wouter5228 Apr 2026, 19:17

oh woauw those graphics are gorgeous! Game also ran very well, the control scheme was very well thought through. Although, I sucked at it haha, the chaos was very well done too. I was surprised that the chaos would disappear after a few seconds, which is a very nice touch. I will come back later to try and play until the end

Advarsky28 Apr 2026, 22:24

Thanks everyone!
@yanato It's supposed to be a brothel or a strip-club :D

Aleksey Salion1 May 2026, 06:27

I love it!

ectucker13 May 2026, 21:36

Love the aesthetics on this one; the city looks great with the lights and all the monsters walking around!

I did find it a bit odd that cars would stop when a light _behind_ them turned red - feels like they should stop caring once they're past the light.

aboogoost4 May 2026, 09:27

@ectucker1 Cars won't stop if a light behind them turns red but if they are approaching a green/yellow light and it turns red when they are no longer in a position to stop in time they will slam on their brakes, even if this means they end up in the intersection, and they will only continue when that light is green once again. Use the yellow light to give cars time to stop and you'll avoid this problem.

Allax4 May 2026, 09:32

This is the first game at this jam that I've given a 5 out of 5 rating across all categories. It's truly the best!

Allax4 May 2026, 09:32

This is the first game at this jam that I've given a 5 out of 5 rating across all categories. It's truly the best!

R4ndomThunder4 May 2026, 21:24

Love the intro and the overall idea. Controls were a bit weird in the beginning but they became affordable after a bit.
As someone else said the thing that cars stops after the red light is a bit weird and can cause issues when they stop in the intersections.

Overall, i loved it. Good job!

LDJam user 4272255 May 2026, 02:44

Great game with amazing graphics and music. One of my favourites! There are so many buttons but they all make sense and adds to the difficulty of managing everything which is very fun. It is very easy to accidentally let 2 lanes go at the same time, which causes crashes and ensues chaos as I panic trying to fix it. Also great Easter egg if you are feeling like trying to do the opposite of your job!

zhangzhimu5 May 2026, 07:53

By using the concept of intersections to represent the signals, it is felt that both the scene and the artistry are very well-executed.

Wallted6 May 2026, 14:02

Hahah, the mechanic is brilliant. I had to stretch my brain so much for such amount of bindings, but this was actually funny to play. :D In the second level I managed to sacrifice just some pedestrians, but in the third I caused a full blown smash-up and forgot all the keys. The length is properly suited for the jam game and provides gradual challenge, the art is excellent, with humor and heart put into it. Congrats on the great work!

Lenny Rudeberg7 May 2026, 03:29

This was good fun, love the artwork and design for this game. The first level was a little confusing for me as I wasn't sure what the challenge was but the difficulty ramps up quite well after that making much more engaging. GG!

Mamboman7 May 2026, 16:45

Great game! Very fun to play, graphics and audio are spot on!

oramun7 May 2026, 21:35

Love the concept of this game. Even with the space key i could not remember which buttons changed which lights and so ended up in complete carnage. The art and style of this game were amazing.

metaljim7 May 2026, 21:39

Excellent graphics, mood, and atmosphere. Very hard, but addictive, and when you get it right it does feel very satisfying. Or you can just mow people down, either way, a fun game that looks great.

Other games by @madbarron

★3.71

★3.56

★4.05