Died Here
The guest book

Press kit

Facts, pictures and words for anyone writing about Died Here, or recording themselves dying in it.

Facts

Title
Died Here (on the App Store: Died Here: Troll Game)
Genre
Troll platformer: short, one-screen levels that lie to you
Platforms
iPhone and iPad, iOS 17 or later, landscape
Release
Not announced. The game is in testing.
Price
Free, with ads between levels (never on death)
Language
English
Developer
Quang Trung Nguyen, one person
Built with
Swift and SpriteKit on a deterministic game simulation written for this game, with a small crowd server on Cloudflare Workers
Press contact
trungpro5398@gmail.com

About the game

In one line

A troll platformer where, every time a trap gets you, you see the skulls of everyone it got before you.

In a paragraph

Died Here is a set of tiny rooms in a haunted dollhouse, and every room lies at least once: the floor that's a trapdoor, the exit door that runs away, the checkpoint that isn't. The first time a trap kills you, the game shows you the trick and drops the crowd's skulls where they fell, with one number: how many of the players who got that far fell for it too. The dollhouse itself, called the House, talks to you between attempts and on some levels learns from you, closing the trap you just figured out and opening a new one where you're about to land.

What's different about it

  • The crowd is in the level. Skulls from real players pile up where they died, but only for traps you've already seen go off, so they never spoil what's ahead. Some levels are built around the piles: the skulls tell you where not to step, and the House knows you'll listen.
  • The House. A narrator with opinions and a long memory. It redecorates when you beat it, leaves wet paint where it's been working, and sulks when it runs out of ideas.
  • Honest numbers. Small crowds get words instead of percentages. Seeded test skulls are drawn as labelled crash-test dummies and never counted as players.
  • Fair ads. Never on a death, never during play, only after you tap Next between levels. Help videos only play if you choose them twice.
  • Built for watching. After a clear, all your attempts replay at once with other players' ghosts. A share button turns a death into a short vertical clip rendered from the replay, not a screen recording.

Also in the game: a Weekly Troll level every Monday with a ranked first run on Game Center, Pass the phone for a friend or parent to try a level you've beaten, a Tell Book of every trap's giveaway, and a Bone Count that unlocks new skull styles as your deaths add up.

The House, in its own words

  • "Every skull here was confident once."
  • "That wasn't a floor. That was a suggestion."
  • "We've named this spot after you."
  • "Twenty-five. You're part of the architecture now."
  • "The house is applauding. Slowly. Sincerely."

Feel free to quote any of these.

Screenshots

These come from the development build and the earlier web prototype. Numbers on them (such as 62%, ×1.3K or a weekly death counter) are test data, and some are marked MOCK. Please don't describe them as real player statistics. Final store screenshots will be taken on a device once real players have played.

The felt skull: stitched seam, button eyes, sewn teeth. On dark backgrounds use bone lettering; on light backgrounds use ink.

Died Here
Died Here

Download the skull (SVG)

Colours

Night #1E1B2E · Bone #F2E6D0 · Ink #2A1F1A · Lamp #FFC14D · Wisp #BFF5E6 (the crowd) · Cobalt #4A70EE (you) · Lacquer #E5432C (only for things that kill).

Credits

  • Design, code, levels and the House's lines: Quang Trung Nguyen
  • Art: modelled and rendered in Blender with the game's own scripts
  • Sound: generated by the game's own code
  • Type: Fraunces (The Fraunces Project Authors, Undercase Type) and Bricolage Grotesque (The Bricolage Grotesque Project Authors, Atelier Triay), both under the SIL Open Font License 1.1