Antivirus

The game was designed for the 1024x768 resolution, I recommend using that. Yes, it's low-res, I originally wanted this to be a web game.

Tutorial (would have been included in the game, but I ran out of time): Use the arrow keys to move the player character. Press the Z key to attack and the X key to heal. There are three types of files in the game. Normal files are white, infected files are orange, and malware files are red. Leave normal files alone, heal infected files, and kill malware files. Earning a sufficient amount of points moves you to the next stage. If you beat stage ten, you win the game (I would have added a screen that congratulates the player, but again, I ran out of time). You earn points when a normal file makes it into the folder to the left of the screen, when you heal an infected file, and when you kill a malware file. You lose points when infected or malware files make it into the folder (infected files that are healed are known to the game as normal files and not infected). You lose the game if your score drops below zero, if your character dies, or if you kill a normal file.

(End of tutorial)

On 23 August 2023, I challenged myself to make a game in a week. It took many hours (across multiple days of course) of desigining, drawing, synthesizing audio, and programming, as well as a whole THREE game engine changes, but it finally paid off on 29 August 2023, at which point I had finished the game and was able to submit it.

Of course, due to the short timeframe, many sacrifices had to be made in the design of the game. But I hope that even with the game's simple and straightforward design, it's still fun to play. I think I might add updates to the game now that it's done, in order to enhance the player experience. If any updates are added, the original (One Week) version will be a separate download.

Please enjoy this section that details the game's development:

Days 1 and 2:

On the first two days, I focused on designing the game and making assets. After some careful thought, I came up with an idea of playing as a PC's antivirus program. So that was the basis of the player character. And I figured she could wield the Binary Blade, called the "data sword" earlier in development. You can see the concept art of the player character that was used for the title screen.

Please excuse my poor handwriting. I also acknowledged the proportions weren't quite right. Did you notice the SYS 32 label? This is of course a reference to the C:\Windows\System32 folder.

Also done during the first two days was making music. I wanted a sci-fi feel for the title theme, so I relied mostly on the polysynth. For the in-game music, I wanted to combine sci-fi with action, so I used the polysynth as well as the overdriven guitar. I created samples and assembled them into soundtracks in Audacity.

Days 3, 4, and 5

In the next three days, I got started on the programming. I originally wanted this to be a web game, so I started with JavaScript. But after a while, I decided it would be more beneficial to use an engine. So I scrapped the code there and started over in Godot. Godot definitely is simple to use, and makes things easier than not using a game engine... but it doesn't really align very well with how I think, which meant I often felt like I was fighting the engine. I knew I didn't have time to do that, so I switched to Unity. Development went very smoothly in Unity, and I can definitely see why it's the most popular game engine. Since C# was my first programming language, it was a breeze. I was using Unity 5, because it was what I'm used to.

Days 6 and 7:

Development was nearing the end, and just in time. Despite how good Unity is, there are some issues I ran into. And here's the reason why I ended up making a PC game instead of a web game. When I exported it for WebGL (browser, essentially), I found that an error was being generated because the JavaScript code created by the engine during exporting (because C# doesn't run in browsers, so Unity has to create JavaScript code, which does run) was calling an audio function that didn't exist. Upgrading the project to a newer version of Unity broke it, so I simply went back to Unity 5 (I had backed up the project before upgrading, good thing too). Since exporting for the web was out of the question at this point, I decided to export it as a standalone executable. After some finishing touches, the game was ready, and I finally submitted it to itch.io.

Final Words:

If you read all this, then thank you. I hope you have fun playing this game.

Enjoy!

~dual-core

P.S. Dietrich I hope you got yourself a PC so you can play this :)