Use the Shovel

by ilari

Use the Shovel


Cover Image

No AI was used.


This is my Ludum Dare 60 Compo entry, "Use the Shovel".

The theme was "Old Tech".

I had grandiose plans (as always) but, alas, I had to leave most out.
I wanted to make something bizarre, moody, and intriguing, with a short story.
Some of the vision I was able to realize, albeit only in small form.
There is potential, I think.

Aside from one or two things, the theme's not there (as of first RC).
I may try to use the remaining couple of hours to add the main planned thematic component in, but not yet sure.
For now, I'll just release the current version and opt-out from "theme" category.

I wish I had time to add some sound effects and perhaps even ambient music.
Those would certainly add a lot to the mood.
No time for that now.

I used quite a lot of the precious little time I had on custom level editor,
in hopes that I'd be able to create bespoke maps for the game.
I didn't utilize the editor enough to justify the time it took
(the first LD I attended I also created an editor, and that time it proved very useful).
Oh well, perhaps later I'll continue with the game and expand ideas I had
and then the editor should be valuable.

I used some of my existing prototyping framework for this entry.
It doesn't use keyboard scancodes for the input, which may be bad for some keyboard layouts.
If you have trouble with keys bindings, sorry for that!

I might make another release that uses scancodes.
Also, mouse sensitivity is not currently adjustable, might add that too (command line argument?).
And controller support would be great...

Keys


* Move: WASD / Arrows
* Look: Mouse
* Interact: E / Space
* Quit: Escape (first press ungrabs mouse (left click regrabs), second Esc press quits)

Command Line Arguments (Win binaries only)


The game supports some command line arguments, all optional:

```
game.exe width=<int> height=<int> maximized=<0|1> fullscreen=<0|1> display=<int>
```

* `fullscreen`: whether to start in fullscreen or windowed mode (1 = fullscreen, 0 = windowed)
* `display`: on which display to run the game in (0 = first window reported by SDL, 1 = the second, and so on)

These work when `fullscreen = 0`:
* `width` window width (when fullscreen=0)
* `height` window height (when fullscreen=0)
* `maximized` whether to start the window maximized or not

Example:

By default, the game starts in fullscreen mode.
If that's no good for some reason, you can launch the game like so:

```
game.exe fullscreen=0
```

Credits


Game code, art, font by me.

Used third-party tech:
* SDL3
* OpenGL 2.1
* stb_image.h
* MinGW (for Windows binaries)
* Emscripten (for web version)

Changelog


Version 1.0.0
* Initial release

Comments10

WALK18 Oct 2026, 21:42
The art style and text effect is sweet and the idea of feeding coal to a fire is an interesting take on old tech! Couldve used some sounds but otherwise I liked it
Gevernus19 Oct 2026, 12:49
the red and black corridor looks great. heads-up on a bug though: in chrome on mac, right after i pressed E to listen to the announcement, the emscripten bar showed "Exception thrown, see JavaScript console" and the game stopped responding
thejackimonster
thejackimonster19 Oct 2026, 23:16
Interesting art style. I really like the movement of the individual letters when text is displayed. I think with a slightly mysterious music in the background and the fire crackling, I can definitely see a vision for the mood. I enjoyed playing it.
Robin Allen
Robin Allen20 Oct 2026, 02:35
Yes, sound would have been great! Still, nice idea and good effort. I liked how the fire's light radius expanded when I added the coal, nice touch. You opted out of theme but I thought shovelling coal onto fires to heat a bath was a perfectly good take on "old tech". Also, respect for SDL/GL.
rekk1d
rekk1d20 Oct 2026, 04:55
Love the visual style, the red and black corridor looks great! Like you said in the description, some sounds and a bit of ambient music would make it really shine
Ilariauthor20 Oct 2026, 19:27
@gevernus ah, that's no good. Thanks for reporting!
henk
henk20 Oct 2026, 20:49
I'm so used to staring at Unity/Godot loading screens at this point that I almost got jump-scared by how fast the game started. The hard cutoff on the fog felt a bit weird and could have maybe used some dithering if you didn't want to sacrifice the 1-bit style. The texture pixel size was also noticeably inconsistent in some places which I think detracted a little from the aesthetic.
Nnnnneeeedddd20 Oct 2026, 21:38
I love the art style, and the hard cutoff lights.

Also, you can totally escape the map if you try hard enough.

10/10

EDIT: +1 star for emscripten build
Sevansevan
Sevansevan20 Oct 2026, 21:52
Did you do it from scratch, as in "no engines" ? That's impressive.
It reminded me of a time of nice dungeon crawlers, etc.
You actually kinda nailed the theme with the old tech henchman :)

!> I wasn't sure the out of bound was part of the game and I didn't want to delve into it, but since I found no way to go above 96%, I went... That was a really nice touch and a nice contrast to the very old school rest of the game! congratulations.
harujam
harujam21 Oct 2026, 17:34
I got addicted to tossing coal into fire, maybe I was locomotive driver in my previous life..

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