For Tomorrow

For Tomorrow is a metroidvania set in a dystopian world, robbed of its joy and life. Fight through various areas as you struggle to find a reason to push on.

Developed for the Safe In Our World Mental Health -  Game Dev Champions 2024 Game Jam within the "Solo Dev - 25+"  category

Development

Mental Health

About Me

Controls

What is a Metroidvania?

Download

Development

I'm a firm believer in the idea that to spread awareness it's more about the wrapper than the contents.

Games like Celeste, Unpacking, SpiritFarer, Psychonauts etc. all deal with mental health, but if they had not also been great games to play, the messages would only have reached a fraction of the audience. As an extention of this, I saw this jam as an exercise in blending fun and addicting gameplay, with subtle storytelling.

I only joined the jam at the beginning of August, so I had hoped for more time to implement more elements of environmental storytelling and more subtle effects on the world based on the characters mental state, but some features had to be sacrificed for the sake of time.

Overall I am happy with the result, but I will likely expand on the project in the future.

Mental Health

The game centers around depression, isolation and hope as well as briefly touching on some of the darkest thoughts that occur when in that state, so trigger warning for that.

A lot of the themes touched on in For Tomorrow are drawn from my real life feelings I've dealt with throughout my life. Masks to represent the constant feeling of having to pretend to be someone else when around others, the constant doubt and harmful thoughts leading to deep spirals of depression. But eventually, everything got better, I just had to wait.

About Me

Altogether, I have been a Game Developer for just under 2 years. I released my own game a few years ago after having working on a it for a few months, and managed to land a job in a game studio for a while, until the industry's infamous instability caught up with me. After a long while of unemployment, I'm slowly managing to get back up on the Game Dev track.

Controls

Keyboard & Mouse :

• WASD to Move
• Left Click to attack towards cursor (if unlocked)
• Right Click to Dash towards cursor (if unlocked)
• Hold shift while running to Slide (if unlocked)
• Hold F to Heal
• M to open Map
• Escape to Pause

What is a Metroidvania?

A metroidvania is usually a 2D platformer, in which the player's progress is a little less linear than something like Mario.

You are going to run into obstacles that you cannot get past, which is usually your cue to turn back and explore, finding some ability that will make it possible. In other words, if you get stuck trying the same seemingly impossible jump for 20 minutes.. you probably need to find another solution ;)

Usually games within the genre also includes boss fights, puzzles etc.