In The Pit Demo

In the Pit Demo

In The Pit is an "audio-only" stealth action game, in which you play a nasty creature living at the bottom of a pit, hunting down people who fall in. The "audio-only" part means that there are absolutely no graphics at all. For example, here's a screenshot:

You can download a demo of the game here. Please let me know what you think of it! Also let me know if you'd like to translate it into another language.

Please note that an Xbox 360 wired controller is required to play this demo, because analog joystick control and rumble are integral parts of the game. If you don't already have one, go buy one now. They're about $30. You can also use a normal, wireless Xbox 360 controller if you have an Xbox 360 wireless controller receiver.

Requirements:

  • Windows XP
  • A sound card
  • An Xbox360 wired controller, or an "Xbox360 Controller for Windows" (which is exactly the same thing) or a wireless Xbox360 controller and an Xbox360 wireless controller receiver.
  • Headphones are highly recommended

Notes:

This game was inspired by an audio-only "Space Invaders"-style game called Sonic Invaders, and was my submission to The Experimental Gameplay Project's "CONSUME" competition.

4-17-06: I wrote up a "Postnatal" for the game.

Updates:

4-21-06: OK, I've rewritten the game to use the fmod audio library instead of the audiere audio library. It's not open source, and it's a bit more complicated to implement, but I think it's a little more solid, and should fix the problem some people were having where it crashed right after saying "Studio Hunty presents..." Please let me know if this fixes the problem, or if this causes further problems! Thanks!
Huge thanks to Greg Underwood, Tyler Parsons, and Joe for helping me track down the problem!

4-19-06: I've been getting a lot of requests to make this game accept more than just one specific type of joystick. I sat down tonight committed to making that happen, and after a lot or research I unfortunately have to say "no". There is not enough force feedback standardization, and what there is is very klunky, and would require much more of my time and effort than I'm willing to put into it. Sorry. It's 360 wired or nothing.
I've also gotten emails from a few people (less than 1% of the people who have downloaded the game) that on their computers the game crashes immediately after saying "Studio Hunty presents...". It looks like this is being caused by a very obscure bug in the audio library the game uses, and there is no way for me to fix it. This is why it's taken me so long to make a PC game; I love knowing that anything I program for a console will work exactly the same on everyone's console, and I hate knowing that no matter how careful I am programming something for the PC, there are going to be a few people who will have some sort of obscure compatibility issue and won't be able to get it to run.