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Super Dead Mall (LOWREZJAM ENTRY)

A paranormal themed retro platformer set in a dead mall! For 2017 LOWREZJAM · By skydevilpalm

How long to dev?

A topic by bitlather created Aug 17, 2017 Views: 403 Replies: 4
Viewing posts 1 to 2

This looks absolutely incredible. How long did you spend on the dev and design?

Developer

Thank you! We started working on it with a little over a week left to submit a game to the jam.  I didn't get to polish up the level design as much as I wanted, spent most of the time making the art and refining the platforming. 

"Dead Mall" is an interesting theme. Do you have any idea where you got it from, and how long had you been mulling over this idea?

Developer

Well it's a bit of a phenomenon in the middle and east side of the U.S that's been going on over the past 15 years or so, a lot of the shopping malls that were once thriving in the past are now abandoned or close to being closed down. There's a really good youtube series about it called "The Dead Mall series" by Dan Bell. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNz4Un92pGNxQ9vNgmnCx7dwchPJGJ3IQ That was the main source of inspiration for the theme. 

As far as the time for the idea, we came up with it exclusively for the jam, after we heard about it so about 2 weeks.

Awesome. My wife has a theory on the lifecycle of malls - the short, boring version is one goes up, does well, eight years later another two go up, the original one falls. It seemed extra noticeable when we lived in Wisconsin.

The mall of my childhood seemed to buck the trend and has been going strong since 1981 - until recently. One of the large department stores was replaced with a farming store, where you can buy feed, seeds, blue jeans, and even, unfortunately, chickens. The parking lot outside of it is about 50% shiny trucks that have probably never hauled anything dirty. There's rumor that it will expand and buy the entire mall, and I think it killed off an old, local farm supply store chain.

If you're curious, you can see pictures under "Death of a Mall" here: http://bitlather.com/blog/article/88/sprint-17-when-everything-changed

My favorite sign inside is "We now offer live bait in the gun barn!"

Anyway, I think the theme of "Super Dead Mall" has the potential to be much bigger. I remember being a kid and wanting to build a version of "Zombies ate my Neighbors" in a mall. They did have some mall levels, and Dead Rising hit it as well. There's potential for more than just zombies, though. Haunted refreshments is a great direction to start in.