Piece Work

One-liner

A rhythm game about falling into step with a factory line—then discovering that the only way out is to make your own number count down to zero.

About the idea

Our idea first emerged during a word-combination exercise in the brainstorming phase. The four words were “reveal,” “predictable rhythm,” “second,” and “tension.”

One team member immediately thought of the factory scene from Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. Chaplin’s wonderfully ridiculous struggle to keep up with the assembly line caught our attention right away. From there, we were reminded of the iconic fish-processing sequence in What Remains of Edith Finch.

Together, these inspirations led us to a simple idea: the player is suddenly thrown onto an assembly line with little idea of what is happening. But the music is catchy, the rhythm is strangely satisfying, and before long, you naturally begin to fit in.

You can keep tapping along with the beat. You can become faster and faster. The factory rewards you, your number rises, and everything appears to be going exactly as it should. 

Everything in this factory is designed to count upward—until someone stops playing along.

Credits

@Dyn2221

@GennnjiRR

@czhou2822

@PlayWithExperiences

ASSET CREDITS

Visual Art

• Tiny Factory Asset Pack — mwaayk
  Worker and player sprites, conveyor belts, factory machinery, item icons, and environment elements.
  Used under the creator’s commercial-use asset license. Credit is appreciated but not required.
• Industrial Tileset (formerly Industrial Tileset Starter Pack) — Atomic Realm
  Factory environment, background layers, industrial structures, and robot/boss artwork.
  Used under the Atomic Realm asset license. Attribution is required.
  Creator: Atomic Realm
• Keyboard/Controller Keys — Hyohnoo
  Keyboard input prompt sprites.
  Licensed under Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal (CC0).
• Doors and Portals Pixel Art Asset Pack — CraftPix.net
  Animated escape-door artwork.
  Used under the CraftPix commercial asset license.
• Light Masks — Kenney
  Escape-door light-cone effect.
  Licensed under Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal (CC0).
• Additional scene composition, UI artwork, visual effects, and asset adaptations by the Piece Work team.

Font

• Pixeloid — GGBotNet
  Pixeloid Sans, Pixeloid Sans Bold, and Pixeloid Mono.
  Licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Music

• “8bit Dungeon Level” — Kevin MacLeod
  Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

Alternate Music Included in the Project

• “Beep Beep Beep Level Music (C64 Chiptune)” — Martin Nilsson / skrjablin
  Licensed under Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal (CC0).
• “Empacotatron” — Fupi
  Licensed under Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal (CC0).

Sound Effects and Ambience

• “Steam Boiler Sound Loop” — bart — CC0
• “MachineLoop004” — mitchelk — CC0
• “Blacksmith’s Hammer” — VishwaJai — CC0
• “Short Alarm” — yd — CC0
• “Oldschool Win and Die Jump and Run Sounds” — sauer2 — CC0
• “Machine Shutting Down” — Cough-E — CC0
• “Ambient Bird Sounds” — isaiah658 — CC0
• “Explosion or Collapse.wav” — tec_studio — CC0
  An edited excerpt of the first three seconds is used in the game.