The Hold the Picket! victory screen - a title bar reads 'Victory to the Strikers!', and a Black man waves a red flag with a white star on it.

Hold the Picket!

Hold the Picket! is my first ever published game, primarily made to prove to myself that I could design, execute and deliver a fully-finished project within a limited timeframe (four days, to be exact). It is a short arcade-style game where the player controls a group of striking factory workers, moving up and down in a single lane to meet up with supporters, stop scabs from filling the boss’ pockets while the strike is on, and avoid strikebreakers. The game features both a Time Trial mode, where the player must drain the boss’ cash reserves as quickly as possible, and an Endless Mode, where the goal is to survive for as long as possible.

With the exception of the game’s soundtrack, which the YouTuber Synth1a-Music very kindly let me use as this was a noncommercial project, all assets and code in this game were designed by me.

You can play Hold the Picket! here.

Game Statistics

  • Release: 10-10-2021

  • Engine: Unity

  • Project Type: Solo

  • Commercial: No

  • Hosting Site: itch.io

Hold the Picket! being played; a group of strikers meeting supporters, dodging strikebreakers, and stopping scabs.

  • Create a full game project from scratch within a limited timespan

  • Build a simple, repeatable core game loop that does not lose its appeal after one playthrough

  • Integrate mechanical and narrative design; provide adequate justification for all interaction types (strikebreakers/scabs/supporters/sabotabbies)

  • Experiment with ‘game juice’ — sound effects, screenshake, splash icons, etc. — to add texture and depth to a project

  • Familiarize myself with the basics of all aspects of indie game development

Design Goals

Project Trivia

  • There’s one bug left in the game - if a new screenshake effect starts before the previous shake ended, the camera will permanently be very slightly displaced. The impact is negligible in a Time Trial, but becomes extremely noticeable in Endless Mode.

  • I am convinced I based the colour scheme of the stopwatch that keeps track of the time the player has spent in playthroughs on a similar clock or stopwatch from a game I played as a child, but I cannot for the life of me remember which one.

  • I liked the design of the little top-hatted skull-and-crossbones for the enemy health bar (the Boss’ Liquid Reserves) so much that it became a bit of a mascot for my personal game projects! I’ve affectionately named it the ‘Capitalist Ghoul’.