Undying Dusk
A downloadable game for Windows
Undying Dusk is a video game in a PDF format, with a gameplay based on exploration and logic puzzles, in the tradition of dungeon crawlers.
A curse set by the Empress keeps the world in an eternal dusk. You have recently found shelter in an eerie monastery.
Featuring:
- ~ 200 000 PDF pages
- retro aesthetics: 160x120 resolution & a 16 colors palette
- grid-based world with 50+ distinct tiles & 10 maps to explore
- more than 30 treasure items, weapons & spells to pick up in order to face 15 enemy monsters
- 20 music tracks
- thousands of "Game Over" pages, and a single path to victory
- 4 hidden secrets & a concealed epilogue
- an online hall of fame
It was made in 2020-2021 by Lucas Cimon.
To my knowledge, this is the very first video game in a PDF format.
Note that it cannot be played using Adobe Acrobat Reader, due to technical limitations of this software.
I recommend that you use instead Sumatra PDF reader. If you do not wish to install it on your computer, you can use it only to launch Undying Dusk by downloading the undying-dusk-with-sumatra-windows.zip archive. Once the ZIP content is extracted in a folder, simply double-click on the LAUNCH_UNDYING_DUSK_IN_SUMATRA.bat file to start the game.
You will find more informations, including a detailed comparison of PDF readers compatibility with the game, on GitHub.
🤔 Feeling stuck in the game? Ask for advice on Reddit!
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- v1.0.1 Extra hints and a map!May 04, 2021
Comments
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I can't believe you've done this.
Is there a version that runs in an actual game engine? I'm both impressed and horrified. If I wasn't supposed to be entertaining my niece, I'd probably lose a whole night to this game instead of the 30 minutes I could spare.
Thank you very much for your feedback @nudemanonbike 😊
No, there is only a PDF version!
This atypical choice of format was my main drive and creative constraint for this project.
Amazing game! I managed to beat it with all 4 secrets, but the ending felt really abrupt. I took a look into your github source code, and found reference to a scene "the_end" that near as I can tell should play after defeating the final boss, but it doesn't; it just jumps directly to the "VICTORY!" screen. Is this a bug or is there some other way of getting the ending cutscene?
Relatedly, I found several other mostly minor bugs and wanted to know if you would like to know of them (and if so, where to send those). The largest is that the the audio file "JourneyToTheEastRocks" is not actually linked to in the book, while the rest are mostly minor rendering glitches or typos that can basically be ignored.
I flipped through over 10,000 pages to see if I could find those pages, but they were nowhere to be found (which seems unlikely, given that there should be 10*2^4=160 of them, making almost 1 per thousand). Are they not actually included in the current pdf version or something?
Hi! Thank you for your great feedback 😊
You are right, this is a bug, the_end() should be displayed after the final boss battle, but it is not! I will fix that before the next reelase.
Feel free to report the other bugs & there or on GitHub: https://github.com/Lucas-C/undying-dusk
Looking forward to playing this. Is there a released version with the ending fixed?
Hi @Lucas-C this isn't my type of game but, the format... is a PDF file?... wot O_o ... I couldn't just let it pass, I have to try-it-out, and I just did!
Like I said in the beginning it's not my type of game but I played for about 45+ minutes nonetheless, lol.
very well done awesome! :-)
PS: I don't know for sure but I think this is my 1st comment on this site "itch.io". :-D
BTW: if you use "7-Zip" ( https://7-zip.org ) to compress your game (v1.02) it can be about 14MB, even with an auto-extract. ;-)
Welcome on itch.io, and thank you very much for your support, playing my game, and taking the time to even create an account in order to post this comment!
You are totally right, the game would be a lot smaller if compressed with Zzip (around 28MB for an original 192MB PDF, and 23MB if using RAR), but not everyone has it installed. The auto-extracter is a great idea though, thanks!
Hi again @Lucas-C, thanks for your kind words, anyway I already had an account prior to the comment. :-D
No, not 28MB I really mean about 14MB (game version (v1.0.2)):
If you want (just let me know) I can provide you with the compressed files, by other method, like DM or something else?
PS: I don't know if it's possible to DM someone here at itch.io. :-)
Thank you for your kind offer, but no thanks, I'll do it myself when I'll make a new release 😊
You welcome. :-)
Sumatra is up to version 3.5. Is it okay to use?
Came here from ThioJoe's YT channel- never knew this existed, I've been in IT for decades, am an avid gamer & I can't recall ever seeing a game in PDF format before.(packaging a autoloading ver of sumatra with it is also a really nice touch) Now we just need to see if you can make it run DOOM lol. I think you'd have 2 world firsts then...
Looks like it'll be fun to play. For some reason this reminded me of when I got contacted by the creator of RPG Maker '95 out of the blue because I had used nothing but items triggering each other through local switches to give a skill to a character they could use in battle if they were holding the item. Transferring the item to another character removed it from the one that originally had it & instead worked for the new character. He told me what I had posted was impossible- (the engine only had local switches, no global ones, & didn't have any variables at all. No local, no global, not even preset addressable ones.) So I sent him the game file. He apologized for being wrong publicly, & played what I had of the game & liked it. 5 other friends of mine & I were working on it, but about 4 month's later my friends sister's friend got a boot sector virus that killed the HD. And back then I didn't know how to repair something like that like I do now. Our game was almost 700MB, <mostly because of custom music in huge .wav file format<the engine didn't allow MP3 until I think RPG Maker XP or VX? Anyway, like idiots we didn't have backups & although we were saving up for a CD/RW burner it was about $350.00. We were still in school & weren't old enough to work part time yet, & odd jobs didn't make enough.
Anyhow, cool project. Keep up with that kind of creativity & critical thinking & I fully expect you to do something else completely unique & interesting. I appreciate the time & effort this must have taken- well done, & good luck with your future endeavors.
Thank you for your support!
check out ThioJoe on yt & maybe thank him for the shout out too lol
I just did so 😊
Thanks for mentioning it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvVNRRQjDh8
J'en ai fait une courte et modeste présentation sur une tout aussi modeste chaine YT. Merci pour l'expérience vraiment sympa :)
C'est chic, merci !
Et ravi que le jeu t'ait plu 😊
Je travaille sur un autre jeu PDF avec un ami, mais il ne sortira pas avant l'année prochaine...
Hâte de voir ça quand ce sera prêt !
really good, I love the visuals!
The new hints and map helped a lot!
Thanks for this gem of a game. I had fun with this new approach!
Thank you for your warm feedback 😊
I'm really glad you liked the game.
I started working on a new PDF game and your comment motivates me to go on!
wow awesome!
Wtf this is super cool. Kudos to you!
This looks INCREDIBLE!
Any idea which PDF reader I could use on Mac to make the game work?
I cannot advice you about compatible PDF readers on Mac right now, sorry :(
However I'd be really happy to have your feedbacks if you test the game with some OSX PDF readers!
Pretty impressive feat, making something beyond a basic game in a PDF! Did some testing with Okular and filed a PR with the results:
https://github.com/Lucas-C/undying-dusk/pull/5
Many thanks! Should be merged in a few minutes
I pay for that effort !
Thank you sir!
All those financial & verbal feedbacks motivate me a lot to create more games!
This is really well done, I'm looking forward to playing through whenever I find time. And the pdf is such a great idea!
Thank you for your kind words
How much RAM does it take? I have 8 GB of RAM, and with Sumatra on Linux, it says it couldn't allocate memory for that.
8GB of RAM should be enough!
What version of Sumatra are you using? Version 3.2 contains a bug, but the previous & upcoming versions should be OK.
Sumatra says it's version 1.0.31.
Btw, if I use the default program in Linux for viewing pdfs and check the RAM usage, it keeps increasing until there's only 2 GB left, thenthe pdf stops loading.
You are using Sumatra on linux? Maybe try a more recent version then. You may have to compile it if no binaries nor packages are available though...
This table list PDF readers compatibility with the game:
https://github.com/Lucas-C/undying-dusk#compatible-pdf-readers
Feel free to open an issue on the GitHub project with more details on the PDF readers you tried to open the game with.
Got it working with MuPDF. =D
(just had some minor image artifacts)
To those interested, the command in Ubuntu 20.04 to get the program was:
$ sudo apt install mupdf
Then to run the PDF, I opened a terminal window where the PDF was placed and used the command:
$ mupdf [name of the file]
You can either put it in full screen (press f) or maximize the window (click in the square button in the top right of the window).
Either way, you'll need to expand the image as well. To do that, either press shift + w (fit to width) or shift + h (fit to height).
To get the page number, press shift + p, and it'll appear very faintly in the top left of the screen.
To go to a specific page, type the number of the page + g (e.g. 269g to go to the page 269).
There are a few more shortcuts I found, but I don't think they're needed for the game.
Thank you for sharing those instructions!
If I recall correctly, "t" can also be used instead of ALT+<left arrow> to "rewind time" in the game