Anxiety! In the Club

So you find yourself in a bit of trouble, huh?

A friend has brought you here and now they've disappeared and well, they're, surely they're over there, somewhere, but you - can't, you can't you can't you can't -

You need to get out of here. Now.

Anxiety! In the Club is a game about, well, anxiety and being stuck in places you'd rather not be. The idea started off as kind of a vent project on how my own anxiety feels and then got developed into this short game when I saw that the Amaze Me Game Jam was happening - so I figured why not, let's make a game in less than a week in an engine I'm completely unfamiliar with (this was my first time working in GameMaker Studio!)

While there's both a browser and a desktop version available, the game is best experienced on desktop, with sound enabled!

Content warnings: depictions of panic attacks and anxiety, (minor) flashing lights, screenshake, sounds of heavy breathing, crowds and laughter

Known issues:

• player character gets stuck on the moving platforms if they're jumping and the platform goes through them (gets unstuck once the platform moves past them)
• player character gets stuck on random objects (rare, but happens; requires a restart when it happens)
• player character's speed remains slow even when the player enters the blue areas - happened to one of the playtesters, no idea what causes it (possibly related to framerate on lower-end devices)
• browser version: interruption while playing may make it impossible for the game to recognize input (requires reloading the page when it happens)

Controls:

• A, D, arrow keys - walking
• Space - jumping, skipping cutscenes, pressing menu buttons
• Enter - pressing menu buttons

Credits:

Design, art, writing, programming - Anthony O (twitter)

Music - VOiD1 Gaming (itch.io)