“Ok so now I know about the devs, how you came up with the idea, the art style and the characters, but what do I actually do in Dead End Job?” I hear you ask, ”Is it a dating simulator, or a match 3 game, or a kart racer?”
No, friend, it is none of those things (but a kart game where you date 3 matching ghosts at the same time sounds pretty good doesn’t it?). Dead End Job is a game where you shoot ghosts and then catch them, to try and earn as much money as you can - basically a very realistic job simulator, then.
You work for Ghoul-B-Gone, the self-styled “number one experts in paranormal pest control”, and this lovely map shows where customers all across the city are having an outbreak of ghosts. So pick a job and get to it!
Alright, now you’re in an office (or park. Or restaurant. Or … ) and it’s full of ghosts. Pop quiz, hotshot - what are you going to do? You’ve got two goals on every job. Firstly, you need to rescue all of the stupid idiots innocent civilians who have been slimed and trapped by the ghosts. You do that by capturing all of the spooks in that room. Easy.
“But how do I catch ghosts, Tony?” eurgh, so many questions today! Dead End Job’s combat happens in two steps. First of all you wear down an enemy’s health with your plasma blaster. So far, so standard shooter. Once a phantom’s taken enough damage they become stunned, and this is your chance to rush in and vacuum them up while they can’t fight back.
We went this route because it means that players have to get right in close to the combat, and can’t just sit across the other side of the room taking pot-shots. If there’s a group of enemies you need to keep on the move and try and use their behaviour to split them up so that you can get in and capture stunned ghosts without taking damage yourself, because if you leave a stunned enemy for too long they’ll recover and get angry. And you wouldn’t like an angry ghost, believe me.
Your second goal on a job is to make as much money as possible. Just like in real life. Every ghoul you bust and person you rescue gets added to your client invoice (along with a few extras, such as equipment wear-and-tear, biscuit tax, cups of tea, and the like), and you’ll also find plenty of loose change to hoover up. Top tip: sometimes you might have to “encourage” money to “fall” out of furniture by shooting it repeatedly with a plasma blaster. (Don’t worry about damaging things in the process of getting rid of the ghosts - the clients agree to an extensive damage and liability waiver as part of Ghoul-B-Gone’s terms of service.)
Catching ghosts also has another benefit, as it fills up your promotion bar. And what happens when you fill up your promotion bar at work? That’s right, you get promoted. A new job title, increased respect from your co-workers, and most importantly a sweet employee perk. You get three to choose from, and these make your weapons more powerful, improve Hector’s abilities, or generally give you some other useful side effect. Perks are persistent between jobs, you only lose them if you get demoted (unless you have the “Verbal Warning” perk - then HR just gives you a telling off).
Long term in Dead End Job you’re trying to save Beryl’s soul, of course. You have 30 jobs to earn enough money to … well I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but it’s pretty big. You’ve also got Hector’s scrapbook to fill up, it keeps track of every ghost you’ve defeated, and all of the weird items you’ve picked up and used.
We also have a challenge system, where you can earn extra cash by completing really arbitrary goals. And not just cash - this is how you earn tokens to spend at the art gallery, and unlock wonderful behind-the-scenes concept art to look at.
So that’s a kind of breakdown of how Dead End Job all fits together. A lot of the gameplay comes from my frustration with being a bit bad at action roguelikes, and getting annoyed when I lose two hours of game progress to a boss fight I couldn’t practice. So I wanted to make something that you could play in smaller chunks and that would keep better track of your progress, while still giving you plenty of stuff to do and variety of things to see. I think we’ve struck ka pretty great balance, and I hope when you play on the 13th of December you feel that way too!
Cheers,
Tony
https://store.steampowered.com/app/827610