Doomsday Care

The HTML5 build you can play above is the post-jam version where we added missing animations as well as a visible timer, with evolution taking 120 seconds instead of 200. These animations were all made during the jam but we couldn't integrate them in time. You can find the jam and post-jam versions in the downloads below.

Doomsday Care is virtual pet monster game for the Game Boy Advance, made entirely in three days. It’s Tamagotchi with monsters in lieu of eggs!

  

Play as a necromancer hell-bent on destroying civilization, hoping to conjure the most bloodcurdling horror from the underworld to achieve your goal. When the spell turns out to only manifest juvenile monsters, it’s up to you to take care of the youngling and make it into the murderous titan of your dreams.

How to play

• You can play the game from your browser, as seen above. We designed it to be played in the background while you do other things, which the HTML5 emulator doesn't really let you do, so it's a good idea to download the ROM and play it on a modern emulatorsuch as mGBA. The latest version of the game is much quicker to finish though, so it's less of an issue now!
• On your browser, use the arrow keys to move, X to confirm and Z/W (whatever is left to your X) to cancel. On the GBA, use the A and B buttons as usual.

Rules

• Try to keep your creature’s Bloodlust, Wrath and Swagger stats above zero! They will go down over time – the longer your bar, the faster it goes down. A stat of zero means death!
• To raise your stats, use the 💢 Actions at your disposal! They may have side effects on monsters, so keep an eye on how they affect your stats.
• After two minutes, your monster will evolve to the next stage of revolting-ness - look at the timer! The most filled bar will determine which form you will get next, and how your bars grow. The timer above tells you when your creature will evolve.
• The creature will evolve a few times before being ready for total destruction, so stick to the end!
  

If you happen to have a GBA flashcart to play it, that’s even better. Only one of us did, so testing was difficult ;)

This has been quite a challenge as none of us have ever made a GBA game before and it’s a far cry from modern game development. We had our hands full with visuals and code so the game doesn’t have any audio for now. It’s a small but hopefully terrifying cute experience!

This game uses Butano by Gustavo Valiente.
Butano is released under the zlib license (license info).

The Web version is running in a modified version of GBA.ninja by Simon Paris.
Based on VBA-M by Forgotten and the VBA/VBA-M development teams.
Huge thanks to Rik from Goodboy Galaxy for setting this up!