INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Grindmore Grocery, before the pandemic, it was a bustling grocery store full of goods. During a pandemic, it has turned into a dangerous place with more viruses than food and patrons. Your character Rudy must travel through the ever changing supermarket once full of “the best buyables for your buckos.”

Shinny beacons contain items based on what object you find them in, such as chicken will only be found in a freezer. Each shinny beacon has a 1% chance of being something on your shopping list. Every 3 rooms of the grocery store will contain a guaranteed item on your list within a shinny beacon.

OBJECTIVE

You have 30 minutes to do the following:

• Collect the items on your shopping list.
• Pay for items at checkout in the front of the store.
• Make it out of the store… alive.

KEYBOARD CONTROLS

Movement = WSAD or arrow keys
Sprint = X or shift key
Menu / Pause = P or escape key
Menu Back = X or shift key
Menu Confirm = CTRL or Enter key

GAMEPAD CONTROLS

Movement = L-stick or D-pad
Sprint = A button
Menu / Pause = Start button
Menu Back = B button
Menu Confirm = A button

TITLE SCREEN MENU

After you press start (or enter) in the title screen, you will be taken to the menu that has the following options:

• Play game (continue game or new game)
• Abilities (to set or purchase passive abilities to aide you in the game)
• Setup (to change the length of the game)
• Settings (to change the game window size, and the volume of sounds and music)
• Seed (to tweak what randomness you’ll be playing)
• Achievements (know everything you’ve achieved and when you achieved it)
• Exit Game (back to the real world)

CONTINUE GAME & NEW GAME

ViralMarket automatically saves when entering a new room. Once the game is saved, it can be continued from the title screen menu. New game is available if you don’t want to continue, but all progress will be lost once saved. Upon beating the game or losing with a game over screen, the save file will be removed.

GAME SETUP MENU

There are a few things to tweak to make your game shorter or longer.

• Shopping list length +/- 1 item under 10. +/- 2 when 10. This means that it can be + or – 1 item. ex: 5 can be either 4, 5, or 6.
• Guaranteed shopping items contain a guaranteed shopping item so you spend less time searching random shinny beacons on shelves. The higher the number, the larger the store.
• Sink rooms have sinks, where you can wash your hands for full health and other perks. You can only wash your hands once per sink.

SETTINGS MENU

Here you can tweak visual and audio things like full screen, screen scaling, music, and sound volume. Health bar visuals are here too, but only appear for the four lesser difficulties. Settings can be altered in game.

ABILITIES MENU & SHOP

Here is where you can set up to four passive abilities from abilities you’ve purchased in the shop. These abilities are passively used during gameplay. Assign your abilities wisely, because they cannot be changed in game.

The ability shop lets you purchase from four abilities. To get a fresh selection of four new abilities in the store for a fee, use the refresh store. There are around 30 types of abilities. Abilities have 10 strengths. The higher the strength, the higher its rarity and cost. The shop will only generate ability strengths one above the highest ability strength you own.

DIFFICULTIES

The five difficulties are: Kid Mode, Casual, Normal, Hard, and Extreme Shopper.

Each difficulty increases enemy stats from 0.25x on Kid Mode, to 1x on Normal, to 1.5x on Extreme Shopper. Enemy HP and MP will increase on top of that by 1.05x – 1.5x.

The highest difficulty does not allow battles to be paused. The higher the difficulty, the higher the point multiplier at the end.

More enemies will appear in battle for higher difficulties.

Kid mode will revive player characters after battle to 1 health point.

THE OVERWORLD

ViralMarket is divided into halves: overworld and battle. In the overworld, Rudy can navigate in 4 directions. There are plenty of friendly shoppers to give hints and reward you for good deeds.

The store is also full of viruses called wanderers that can be avoided in the overworld or fought in battle to be scrubbed away from existence forever. Rudy has a sprint to outrun slow wanderers, but only a limited amount of stamina to stay ahead of the chase.

WANDERERS MOVEMENT

Rudy can see the wanderers on the overworld map. Touching a wanderer will commit you to battle against enemies. These wanderers have different movement patterns:

• Guarding: Will stay anchored and attack when someone draws near.
• Seekers: Will seek out Rudy wherever he is in a room.
• Standing: Stays where it is and never moves.
• Wanders: Have a set anchor they won’t wander far from.
• Pacers: Walk back and forth. When stopped by objects, they will turn around.
• Bouncers: Will go forward until they bump into something and then select a new random direction.

After a battle, the wanderer you had defeated will never return, and the nearby wanderers will disappear, but return later.

BATTLE

Battles consist of your heroes (up to 3), against single or several enemies. Each character has several actions in battle:

• Attack (a foe)
• Skill (costs mana)
• Limit (builds up slowly with actions during battle)
• Guard (to defend when low on HP)
• Item (use an item)
• Flee (when you want out of a battle)

The battle is over when there are either no more heroes or no more enemies. The lowest three difficulties can see enemy health, but it can be toggled in the settings.

BATTLE METER

For each attack, special, or limit used in battle, the battle meter will appear. This fast paced meter will guarantee you a critical move if you press the button when the cursor is over the red, and will miss if you hit the button over the gray.

Harder difficulties will make the battle meter go faster. The two lowest difficulties give more back-and-forth chances to press the button. Lower difficulties will count a miss on the battle meter as a half-damage hit.

Beyond the battle meter, each character and enemy has their own chance for a critical hit and miss. Each enemy and character have their own chance of evasion and accuracy.

ARROW QUICK WAIT

When your entire party is waiting to take their next turn in battle, the arrow meter will appear. Pressing the correct combination of arrows will result in a shorter wait time. The higher the difficulty, the more arrows you will need to enter correctly to get the shorter wait time. There is no penalty for failure.

BATTLES: RUDY SKILLS

• Attack: Medium crit chance
• Special: Damages all foes (use when fighting many foes)
• Limit: Damages a single foe (use on high HP foes)

BATTLES: BURGER SKILLS

• Attack: High crit chance
• Special: Gives ally slower battle meter (use in long battles)
• Limit: Damages several random foes (use when fighting many foes or a single high HP foe)

BATTLES: MOM SKILLS

• Attack: Low crit chance
• Special: Adds extra chance to attack (use in long battles)
• Limit: Damages all foes (use when fighting many foes with high HP)

BATTLES: PEDRO SKILLS

• Attack: Low crit chance
• Special: Restores HP to party member (use when low HP)
• Limit: Damages all foes + restores HP to all party (use when low HP or when fighting many foes)

BATTLES: FLEE

Each character has their own chance to flee. Burger is the best at fleeing, while Mom is the worst. If you’re exhausted from running, you can’t flee. If you’re fighting a boss, you can’t flee.

BATTLES: LEVELING-UP

Victory in battle will earn your characters expos. There are a few places in the overworld to gain expos like giving other shoppers what they’ve been searching for. With enough expos, a character will level-up. To check how many expos a character needs, you’ll need to check the stats menu in the overworld.

Upon leveling-up, the character will have a stats increase depending on the character. Each character has a maximum level that they cannot exceed.

CHARACTER STATISTICS

Every character and enemy has several statistics. Character stats can be found in the stats menu:

• HP: Health points: Running out will cause a knock-out in battle. There are items to recive characters.
• MP: Mana points are required for characters to use their skills.
• ATK: Attack power determines how much damage to health is done.
• DEF: Defensive power calculates how much damage a target takes.
• AGI: Agility is used to determine how fast a turn is taken.
• WIS: Wisdom will calculate how much damage a skill does.
• LUK: Luck is used when upgrading to get better quality upgrades.
• EVA: Evade lets a character dodge an enemy attack.
• LVL: Level is the growth of a character’s statistics. Earning enough expos will give the character a level-up.

UPGRADES

For each level that a character earns, they’re entitled to a choice of three random upgrades. These upgrades increase stats and the quality of the upgrade will determine how the stat changes. The more luck a character has, the better their chance of finding a higher quality upgrade. By default, the qualities range from:

• 54% for common
• 30% for uncommon
• 10% for rare
• 5% for epic
• 1% for legendary

ITEMS

Each Grindmore Grocery has numerous items to collect via shinny beacons that will draw your attention. Most items can be used in or out of battle.

There are non-usable items and usable items. Non-usable items are only useful for your shopping list on the left side of the overworld HUD. Excess non-usable items can be given to shoppers looking for them, rewarding your party with the experience of a good deed.

Items have their own weight. The more weight, the slower the party will travel in the overworld. Make sure to drop or use items to maintain Rudy’s running speed away from wanderers.

KEYS & DOORS

After the first few rooms, you will start finding doors blocking the next room. To get keys, you’ll either need to be lucky enough to find one in a shinny beacon on the overworld, or you’ll need to defeat a wanderer in the room with the door. Wanderers in the room have enough keys for the doors, so if a room has 2 locked doors, 2 wanderers will have keys. You can use a key on any lock in the store whether it’s the room you found the key in or not.

Doors have a chance to be locked after the 5th room based on the difficulty setting. Lower difficulties have less of a chance to be locked.

SINK CHALLENGE: HAND WASHING

If you’re low on health, or feel a need to be sanitary, visit a sink to compete in a mini game for rewards:

• 20% = full health
• 60% = full mana
• 80% = bonus bucks
• 90% = bonus bucks (again)
• 95% = full limit

The mini game has falling arrows. You’re required to press the direction of the arrow as close to the arrow’s center to baseline. Each successful press gives you 25% of that arrow’s score. The other 75% of the score is based on how far away from the center you were. Once all the arrows have gone past the baseline, you’ll be given your final score and rewarded with prizes.

SINK CHALLENGE: DIFFICULTY

The two lowest game difficulties will replenish HP and MP no matter how successful you are. The higher the game difficulty, the longer you will need to wash your hands.

The sink challenge has two difficulties in the settings menu. The easy setting allows the sink challenge to have more of a pattern to its combination of directions.

CHECKOUT + RETURNS

Once you’ve collected everything on your shopping list, you can use a checkout at the store entrance to pay for your haul and exit.

If you’re over encumbered, pay a visit to the service desk to return your items. The service desks are usually at the checkout, but can be found in other places too.

VICTORY

Once Rudy collects all the items on his shopping list, pays for them at the checkout, and finally exits Grindmore Grocery, you’ll be given a score. With this score, you can use it to purchase abilities from the ability shop.

GAME OVER

If all your heroes are defeated at the same time, it’s game over. At the game over screen, you’re given a score. With this score, you can use it to purchase abilities from the ability shop. Through wise purchases in the ability shop and setting abilities, you’ll do better next time. Get back in there and buy Dad’s groceries!

CREDITS

Developed by:
Bannon Rudis & Geoffrey Johnson

Amazing Art by:
Bannon Rudis

Programming by:
Geoffrey Johnson

MUSIC CREDITS

Music from:
Makai Symphony
Per Kiilstofte (Dystopia song)

Music copyright:
is under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Music promoted by BreakingCopyright: #https://youtu.be/9gBTKiVqprE

Trailer music by:
Megan McDuffee

SUPPORT

DRINKING NAILS, LLC.

Support is always here:
http://www.drinkingnails.com

Customer Support is available in English only.