Carving Pumpkins & Dwarfing Dumplings

A party game about slicing your friends into smaller and smaller pieces, or protecting a huge dumpling from meeting the same fate.

Each knife thrown has the potential to deflect off the environment, get stuck in something, or realistically slice through your opponent's character. But no matter the result, you'll have to retrieve it and go again. Without getting decimated along the way.

This game is free during this Halloween period! Soon afterwards, it will receive a (final) update and become paid.

What's Pumpkinside?

• Player count? 1-6 Players. You can easily team up.
• Input? Keyboard & Controller. (Any combination. Four keyboard players max.)
• Tutorial? Interactive (individual instructions appear above players during your first round), only a handful of seconds long
• Complexity? Anyone can play. 
• Variety? Loads  of it. Different modes, different arenas, many powerups, bonus rules to turn on/off, unique shapes for players to start with, etcetera
• Scary? Not at all. The Halloween theme is just there to add some extra spice. It remains a cartoony family-friendly game. Not a single drop of blood is shown.

You get two actions: move around and throw your (active) knife. While holding the "throw" button, aim with your movement input.

This means you only need to learn two buttons for the whole game.  Aiming well, on the other hand ...

Gather your friends or family and carve some pumpkins!

Remark: This game has some "flashy" visual effects whenever someone is sliced, which can be too much for hypersensitive people. It can be turned off in the settings.

Remark: the game has support for bots, but it's incomplete. They are either very good and near unbeatable ... or extremely dumb. The update will add full support.

Remark: yes, the only reason dumplings  are in the game, is because it made for a nice title. I'm aware dumplings aren't, you know, a main staple at Halloween dinners. Or particularly frightening food.

The Challenge

This game is part of my series of "One Week Games". I challenge myself to create and publish a game in a week. (Usually, I take more like 2 weeks to prevent uploading a broken and unpolished mess, but the idea is nice.)

This time, though, I already had the code for the main mechanic of the game: realistically slicing any body. (Long story short: wrote it for a different game, ended up being cut from that project.)

This meant I could focus on all other elements: beautiful menus, solid gameplay, lots of playtesting, special arenas, all that good stuff.

Read my devlog about the development: (A link comes here when the devlog is done)

As always, feedback is highly appreciated! Hundreds of people download every new game I make on the first day, yet they never leave comments. Just let me know what you think, good or bad, especially bugs and crashes :)

The Update

The current game has about 70% of the content I planned.

It misses some modes, arenas, throwable objects, and rule changes I want to test.

The game will also be extended to 8 players max. The support is already there, it just needs some adjustments to the current modes/arenas and more testing.

And lastly, the bots need major improvements and full support.

Why publish now instead of waiting one or two weeks? Obviously, I wanted to get the base game out before Halloween :)