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Garbage collector's minion
Garbage collector's minion
By mibi88
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 694 | 2.98 | 28 | |
| Fun | 694 | 2.73 | 28 | |
| Innovation | 172 | 3.63 | 28 | |
| Theme | 552 | 3.38 | 28 | |
| Graphics | 695 | 2.48 | 28 | |
| Humor | 592 | 2.43 | 25 | |
| Mood | 759 | 2.44 | 28 | |
Comments
I managed to get to the end. At first I thought that the final levels were troll levels, never intended to be cleared, given how little time is given for actions. But it seems that the requests given and their amount are completely random, and so I beat the final level by getting a good roll in which the level only asked for 1 total request which was to allocate space, and so I beat the game. It's a simple and fun game, especially for low-level programming enjoyers. Approved!
I tried running on Linux, but I'm hitting a dependency missing error: Pasted image.png
Perhaps the web build will be good enough for me to try again :slight_smile:
mibi88
2025-10-08 12:40
> But it seems that the requests given and their amount are completely random
They aren't completely, but it's really hard to try to fix.
Thanks for your comment.
I just added a Windows build.
I can't write more, I have very little time.
> I tried running on Linux, but I’m hitting a dependency missing error
Yes you need to install SDL_image.
mibi88
2025-10-08 16:26
> > But it seems that the requests given and their amount are completely random
> They aren’t completely, but it’s really hard to try to fix.
My code to find the tasks is really messy, I should've taken another approach. I had less time than the other times I participated to the Ludum Dare, and I tried to make it less random in the last minute, but the whole logic of it is bad.
I'm happy that you enjoyed playing it!
There seems to be a problem, I am waiting for your new version!
mibi88
2025-10-11 12:21
@yibirabbit007, what kind of problem?
mibi88
2025-10-11 20:42
@johnstarich, I just finished the web port. It can be played at https://mibi88.itch.io/garbage-collectors-minion.
Got the end, yey. Garbage collector was one of the first thing came to my mind but I didn't know what to do with it. So I am glad to see someone else choose the theme and make a good simple game.
Nice, clean design! This was fun!
@mibi88 Thanks for the web build! It made getting started way simpler, faster, and safer.
I did get hung up on the 3-region level, where the lag shot past my ability to click fast enough. I think with a little balancing and sound effects this could be really great.
Good concept, control scheme, and gameplay loop!
mibi88
2025-10-12 14:25
Thanks for all your constructive feedback.
> Got the end, yey. Garbage collector was one of the first thing came to my mind but I didn’t know what to do with it. So I am glad to see someone else choose the theme and make a good simple game.
Funny coincidence.
> I did get hung up on the 3-region level, where the lag shot past my ability to click fast enough. I think with a little balancing and sound effects this could be really great.
Yes, I know it is quite unbalanced, especially with the number of actions that need to be done and the speed. The latter is hard to make balanced as I got too used to the speed of it :joy: .
I think I'm too dumb for this game. :grimacing: :joy: I managed to get through a few levels, but I didn't actually understand what I was doing. lol
Watching you build the code for this was crazy impressive though. :raised_hands: And I loved how snappy and streamlined it all felt.
keyjale
2025-10-14 22:35
The concept is very nice and has potential, but in the current version tasks seem to be missing variety. In the final levels I thought you're supposed to allocate in different regions, but I've still been tasked to allocate in only the first one. Also, I thought you're not supposed to overwrite already allocated memory with resizes, but looks like that wasn't punished.
mibi88
2025-10-15 10:09
@keyjale,
> In the final levels I thought you’re supposed to allocate in different regions
No you aren't tasked to allocate in the first region, you can choose what's the best. When reallocating it only tells you where it currently is.
> Also, I thought you’re not supposed to overwrite already allocated memory with resizes, but looks like that wasn’t punished.
You are punished: it increases the chance that you may loose (it's random), i.e. it increases the chance of a "crash". Failing allocations also increase the chance of a "crash".
keyjale
2025-10-15 10:20
Ah, I see now, thanks for clarification! Missed those details in my playthrough.
ausstein
2025-10-20 15:57
Some more user feedback would have been nice. Like some indication as to why I died or how the crash chance is increasing. it was quite unintuitive.
But I liked the overall concept of the game. Good Job!
mibi88
2025-10-20 16:01
The crash chance is shown in a progress bar on the right.
> Like some indication as to why I died or how the crash chance is increasing.
Yes I should have added a message telling one why they failed.
quite a innovative game you got here!
Was fun allocating some blocks :D
Love the concept. Really shows how much the garbage collector needs to do under the hood. It woulda been nicer if the mistakes were a bit more punishing and the timer a bit slower because in the end I just kept allocating blocks as close as possible to reduce the distance I need to click.
Anyway great game! It makes so much sense that this game is written in C too haha!
It took me a few minutes to understand what to do on the first level. And I like how the difficulty ramps up from there, I felt like I was learning. But quickly I stopped understanding and kept failing. It's a neat idea and given more time could be a fun puzzle game. Great job!
ueighti
2025-10-20 20:06
Unfortunately, I couldn’t play it. I tried the web version on Itch.io, but the screens are different from the tutorial, so I couldn’t follow the steps.
Edit: I managed to play it, but it was me. I don't understand the game. :sweat:
mibi88
2025-10-20 22:24
@letmebeme, @volcanoeyes, @tinykidtoo,
Thanks for all your feedback!
@ueighti,
The "HELP" menu only shows images that describe the different tasks etc. It doesn't show steps: it just explains what the different things on screen do and isn't interactive.
> I tried the web version on Itch.io, but the screens are different from the tutorial, so I couldn’t follow the steps.
Could you send a screenshot?
kash
2025-10-20 23:29
It might just be me, but I would've liked for the game to hold my hand and really explain the mechanics a little bit longer. I was confused how I ended up winning past the 5th round. I enjoy learning on my own by failing and trying again, but this felt a bit too complicated to just figure out by playing. Overall though it seems like a really unique concept and I am very excited where it can go if you decide to take it further.
As someone who has programmed in C and had to do manual memory management with allocating, deallocating, reallocating, etc. This still made my brain hurt :stuck_out_tongue:
Was fun, would have loved any type of sound effects though to add to the experience!
helen
2025-10-21 08:08
Nice little game :)
mibi88
2025-10-21 11:19
@kashn @rubixnoob13, @helen,
Thanks for all your feedback!
> I was confused how I ended up winning past the 5th round. I enjoy learning on my own by failing and trying again, but this felt a bit too complicated to just figure out by playing.
Yes, the end is quite unbalanced, I should have made it a little bit more progressive.
> Was fun, would have loved any type of sound effects though to add to the experience!
True, they would have made it even more polished, but I was a bit short on time so I preferred improving the UI by e.g., animating the text showing the tasks, as I discovered that before, when letting others play my game that it sometimes really wasn't obvious that there was a new task, when e.g., the game asks you twice in a row to allocate 1 block. I also used this time to fix some bugs, there were surprisingly many. It can be seen in my timelapse.
Very creative I can see how you got there! It took me a while to figure out what was going on in the game, and I’m not sure I fully understood it since the web version was a bit buggy for me as well. Overall, it was worth the effort to finish it. Congratulations!
mibi88
2025-10-23 16:47
@megalukes,
Thanks for your feedback!
> the web version was a bit buggy for me
What kind of bug was there? Was the clicking not working (it's an issue I had previously with the full screen button on itch.io preventing clicking on the canvas)?
EDIT:
Oh, I just noticed that the UI is a bit cramped when not playing in full screen so I made it bigger by default when not being in full screen.
mamboman
2025-10-24 14:38
very nerdy and very fun to play! It took me a while to understand what to do. I think the instruction made me think it's more complicated, than it actually was :D Overall well done!
mibi88
2025-10-24 21:25
@mamboman,
I'm happy that you enjoyed playing it!
> It took me a while to understand what to do.
That got mentioned very often, I'll need to see how that can be done better to not have a similar problem next time.