Mystery, Zombies, and LibGDX: Building Day Off

👋 Hello everyone!

We’re a small indie team of three people — a programmer, a 2D artist, and a musician.

I've just published a demo of our project: 🎮 Day Off: Moonriver Incident

🧠 What is the game about?

Day Off: Moonriver Incident is a nostalgic 2D top-down shooter set in an open world with physics, vehicles, and a rich atmosphere.

The game blends:

• 🧟 Action & survival

• 🕵️ Detective investigation

• 🎮 Stealth & puzzles

• 💥 Tactical combat

All inspired by classic '80s horror and mystery.

🎬 Inspirations

The idea came after watching the documentary In Search of Darkness. We wanted to capture the surreal and eerie mood of cult series like Twin Peaks and The X-Files.

🛠️ Our journey so far

Back in 2022, we released a proof-of-concept version of Day Off here on itch.io.

Why a proof of concept?

Because we built everything from scratch using libGDX, not a full game engine — which meant writing a lot of custom tools ourselves. But we love that kind of challenge.

That early version helped us define:

• 🧩 The game’s core mechanics

• 🎨 The visual style

• 🌍 The setting

• 📖 The story direction

🧪 The game is almost ready!

I won’t lie — the journey has been long and far from easy.

But hey, aren’t we all here for the process? 🙂
We truly value the road we’ve taken — if nothing else, it made us better at what we do

We’re currently testing the final version, preparing for the Steam release. But I couldn’t wait — so here’s a free demo, available now on itch.io!

We really hope you enjoy it 🙌 If you do, it would mean the world to us if you added the game to your wishlist:

💚 👉 Wishlist on Steam 👈

(That one click really helps visibility — thank you!)

Thanks so much for checking out our project. — your friends at jetzackgames