NecroMilk for Mini Game Jam 055

submission for Mini Game Jam 055 for Itch.IO May 2026

main website:

https://exedexes1.com/

This is a minimalist shooter game written in JavaScript.

The start of the process was working it raw in Grok on the basic form of Grok's chat window inside Twitter (i know real Grok code is more powerful)

The thing is if you deliberately handicap your game this way you can make more basic stuff that isn't so ambitious it scares people lol.

Whereas working straight in Claude for real from the beginning makes intimidating grand scope stuff.

So i worked on this rather late in the jam period kind of on purpose because im working a different, much harder to make game for real in Claude with much higher interaction cost.

It got some treatment by Opus way at the end but only like 5 prompts worth.

Some weird things

- enemies don't disappear when dying

- space bar 'milks' enemies

- shooting them actually kills them

- shooting skeletons is bad

- skeletons when raised/milked with Space, behave like options that shoot on your behalf with blue shots but they scroll off the screen they don't stay and follow you around.

-unfortunately not all enemies show a dead form/explosion/disappear and i didn't have time to quite fix this

WASD/arrows move

C Shoots gun

V/B rotate gun arm counterclockwise / clockwise

it does have some degree of mobile device support.

I haven't raw-argued a game into existence in just Grok Chat since March of the Seventy-Two Demons (the first one) in March 2025.

So that was pleasant and nostalgic and a peek at whether Grok got better at it.

(it still drifts! it's only reliable for like 500 lines)

But you can't argue with unlimited interactions for small stubs like that.

My gut impression is this feels like parts Son Son (1984) by Capcom

and parts Jeff Minter's Llamatron (mid-80s, PC-version 90's early 00's)

Maybe Section Z (Capcom, 1985)

certainly i took inspiration from Vanguard (1981) for vertical and horiz alteration

and into the screen is inspired by Buck Rogers Planet of Zoom (1982)