You’re a big safe in Safecrack, and you just wanna get that $100000 out of your belly. So you hire enemies to beat it out of you.
This year’s Ludum Dare theme was ‘Your life is currency.’ However, few games have taken that as literally as Safecrack, a game where your health stat is the currency stored within you that you want to be rid of. You’re furious, you’re fuming and you’re desperate to get this money away. As it turns out, the best way to get those gems out of you are to take a few hits. Unfortunately the only thing around is a single flame, and it’s not the brightest spark. Here begins your journey of self-destruction.
In Safecrack, you must throw yourself into your enemies and then collect your own drops in order to both upgrade yourself and buy more enemies onto the screen. There are five types of enemies, from launchers to buffers, to laser-gobbing blobs, and each comes in three different strengths. You can upgrade the lower-level enemies, but you have to do it all at the same time, which can be costly if you’ve spammed on one type. Upgrades for yourself include speed, softness, and an ever-valuable ability to passively suck up any drops.
It makes for a very clever subversion of many genres; you’re trying to create a bullet hell situation which either traps you or surrounds you with enough opportunities for injury that you can rapidly dump out as much money as possible. Once you’ve got the hang of things, you can even try and trap yourself into a corner — the scorn of side-on-fighters is a bonus here.
Safecrack is playable for free on Itch.io.
About The Author
