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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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