Save Grindavik

Grindavik is a fishing town in the southern coast of Iceland, 42km from Reykjavik.

Volcanic activity in the area started in 2021 with some sporadic eruptions. In the evening of December 18th 2023, lava started spewing from fissures in the ground north of Grindavik. On January 14th 2024, a second fissure erupted near town with most of its lava steered away by newly constructed protective barriers. A few hours later, a smaller third fissure opened less than 100 metres from town and inside the protection barriers. Since then, lava keeps flowing. In the midst of escalating activity, a state of emergency was declared and the town evacuated.

You play the role of an excavator operator part of the firefighting crew. Dig trenches to divert the lava flow away from the town of Grindavik.

Controls:

• Arrow keys/WASD: Move your excavator
• Action/Z/Space/0: Lift/lower your excavator's bucket and confirm actions
• Cancel/X/./Delete: Wait a turn
• Start/C/Enter/Esc: Start, pause/unpause

Disclaimer:

This game is a work of fiction inspired by real-life events. I understand that the events depicted in this game may evoke memories of real-world tragedies. I apologize if any aspect of the game causes discomfort or offense. This is a game created for entertainment purposes. I encourage players to engage with it responsibly and to maintain awareness of the line between fiction and reality. At the time of this submission the volcano is active again. If you want to get involved, consider donating to the Icelandic Red Cross. Thank you for your understanding.

About the game effects:

I used the Godot engine. The project renders to a 256x224 canvas which is 4x in the embedded HTML export. In order to replicate the restrictions for the jam I am using a number of tilemaps to simulate the background layers. The animation in the title screen and the background layers is achieved rotating the color palette.

Sprites are used for the foreground animations, all using a single tileset with the same palette.

The text shadow effect is achieved by drawing the same text box as a sprite 3 times with different offsets.

Credits:

• Sound Design - Benito Cilauro
• Additional sounds from jsfxr
• The world map tiles are derived from Puny world by SHADE (CC0): https://merchant-shade.itch.io/16x16-puny-world
• The fire animation is derived from a free asset by Brullov: https://brullov.itch.io/fire-animation
• Part of the game is based on a previous idea of mine that I started developing for the Micro Jam 13. The mechanics have been reworked, all the code has been rewritten and I've drawn or redrawn new sprites all within the timeframe of the lospec-2 jam.

Future work:

Some of these are ideas I had and started working toward but ran out of time during the jam. I hope there is some interest in the game and I can fine-tune it further.

• Better visuals to indicate where the lava is flowing to.
• Sokoban-style boulder pushing mechanics to create temporary barriers.
• Digging trenches to divert water into the lava flow to stop it.
• Music.
• More and bigger levels.

Add any suggestions in the comments below :)