War With No Arms is a small game I developed in one weekend for the Monthly TIGSource Thunderdome Jam #2 with the theme: Everything is ruined forever.

Story: (yeah, I may have exaggerated a bit on this one for such a small game, but I just got too many ideas I wanted to include)

In the late 21st century, medical progress allowed an unprecedented amount and variety of body enhancements. The obsessive desire for a perfect appearance, longer life, the urge for inhuman sports achievements and the delirious drug abuse caused an unqenchable thirst for organs and body parts.
This was around the time the Moon was colonized after being provided with an atmosphere. It was the creation of an artificial storage of natural spare parts for a society becoming more and more artificial, cosmetic and controlled, living harmoniously far away from the diseased reality.

Every day masses of limbs were cut off, organs removed and sent to Earth. The disabled were left to reproduce and care about the production. Until they decided to start a revolution. A war with no arms.
What they didn't know, was that meanwhile the deepest depths of the Oceans had been conquered, a new invisible location where transportation costs could be heavily diminished. The Moon was no longer needed. The bases devastated. The people slaughtered. It was a final sale. The disabled lost a war they couldn't win and everything was ruined forever.

A man who lost everything except his torso and head, had one last wish. Being released from his pain. Reaching an automatic guillotine and seperate the last two remaining parts of his body. He didn't care any longer about ethical problems of committing suicide, because to kill yourself, you first need to be alive. His life was over long ago.
He just wished he could get some assistance. But the only one who was there to help him, were meteors and debris crashing onto the surface. Everytime they hit the ground, he could use the impact to make a little jump and move himself a little bit closer to his salvation.


So in short you have to press the 'z' key (or 'y' on qwertz keyboard) in about the moment a meteor hits the ground to move forward. If you keep using the impacts you'll move faster and faster. If you miss one or try to move at the wrong moment you'll slow down again. The game is over when you reach the guillotine. There's no possibility to win, to lose or get a highscore. The goal is nothing but reaching the 'game over' screen.

And yes, it's also a one-button-game. After all, you don't have much possibilities to act with nothing but a torso and a head left.
And just in the case you'll wonder about it: there's no big feedback when using an impact. There are just sounds played when you miss a meteor or move at the wrong moment. I thought that the best reward for a good player was if he can experience the atmosphere without annoying sounds, so they just appear when you do a mistake. Except the regular boom of the automatic guillotine.


War With No Arms Download 2 MB Windows (.zip)
Commentary to the game Also included in the download folder (.pdf)