Holding On
A downloadable game for Windows and Linux
A short, atmospheric, narrative-focused tower defense game about getting over a one-sided breakup. Made for Ludum Dare 50.
You've been dumped. With each day that passes, you're contacted by friends and family as you continue hanging on to something you've already lost.
Chatting with your friends on the phone is followed by a wave of enemies -- the thoughts and activities that would have you forget about your ex. Choose between placing defenses and letting go of the relationship that's now behind you.
Each wave, you may drag and drop a tower onto an empty space to begin building it, onto an unfinished tower to complete it, or onto a completed tower to upgrade it. Unfinished towers don't fire at enemies. You can also hover over a tower with your cursor, focusing on it to increase its firing rate.
Each time you lose a life, you may place additional towers, but the difficulty increases; the themes and topics represented in your thoughts and chats increase with them.
The game features atmospheric aesthetics, touching topics, and relaxing gameplay for a pleasant playthrough. Ultimately though, the goal is only to let go.
The game contains themes of grieving and relationships.
CHANGE LOG
The original jam version without bug fixes can be found as holding_on_win_original.zip.
April 5, 2022
- Adjusted project settings to fix a screen scaling issue in some environments.
- Changed the project window title to the correct one.
- Fixed an issue with an incorrect dialogue box appearing during gameplay.
- Linked an HTML version of the game in the download & install instructions
Download
Install instructions
If you are using an Apple computer or are unable to download, you can try the HTML version here: https://studioavanto.itch.io/holding-on-html-version
Comments
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Aww this was lovely! <3 You can choose to keep building defenses against those who might help... or let go of the sadness and win. It took me longer than it should have to realize the thoughts you're fighting are helpful thoughts. Yeah I know I was told that but I got into the "must defeat the moving targets!!" mindset which I think was perhaps the intention, and the real enemy is your brain for fighting away those kind ideas and choosing sadness. The ending screen was really nice and showed how much the character grew not by deleting the number in defeated rage but simply changing the name in acceptance. Great job, guys!!
Such an amazing game, especially considering all the difficulties the team had during the three day window. It has a beautiful message which literally brought me to tears.