Holding On

A short, atmospheric, narrative-focused tower defense game about getting over a one-sided breakup. Made for Ludum Dare 50.

You've been dumped. With each day that passes, you're contacted by friends and family as you continue hanging on to something you've already lost.

Chatting with your friends on the phone is followed by a wave of enemies -- the thoughts and activities that would have you forget about your ex. Choose between placing defenses and letting go of the relationship that's now behind you.

Each wave, you may drag and drop a tower onto an empty space to begin building it, onto an unfinished tower to complete it, or onto a completed tower to upgrade it. Unfinished towers don't fire at enemies. You can also hover over a tower with your cursor, focusing on it to increase its firing rate.

Each time you lose a life, you may place additional towers, but the difficulty increases; the themes and topics represented in your thoughts and chats increase with them.

The game features atmospheric aesthetics, touching topics, and relaxing gameplay for a pleasant playthrough. Ultimately though, the goal is only to let go.

The game contains themes of grieving and relationships.

CHANGE LOG

The original jam version without bug fixes can be found as holding_on_win_original.zip.

April 5, 2022

• Adjusted project settings to fix a screen scaling issue in some environments. 
• Changed the project window title to the correct one.
• Fixed an issue with an incorrect dialogue box appearing during gameplay.
• Linked an HTML version of the game in download & install instructions