Not On The List

NOT ON THE LIST: IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU RSVP

A stealth comedy for the GameDev.tv Halloween Jam 2026 (theme: "Uninvited").

Far from here, there is a museum of Earth. It has one exhibit: an old fishing boat. Everyone loved the one who brought it home. Nobody noticed the small alien who kept it polished.

So one night, without telling anyone, that alien left for Earth to bring back more. Tonight the finest humans on the planet are all in one place, at a penthouse Halloween masquerade. All in masks. Nobody sent it an invitation. That has never stopped it before.

HOW TO PLAY

You are a small octopus alien who can copy any colour it sees. Humans come in groups (party guests, waiters, chefs and security), and each group has a colour and a thing it carries: a party mask, a serving tray, a chef's hat, a stun baton. Copy a group's colour, pick up its prop, stand up on two tentacles, and as far as anyone can tell you are one of them.

Get it half right and people start to stare. Get caught bare and the screaming starts.

To win, escape by the service lift with:

- the kitchen keycard (the lift won't open without it)

- the skull tequila, on the bar

- one big prize, carried in your hands: the champagne fountain or the roast turkey

Anything else you pocket on the way goes on display in the museum back home.

THINGS TO TRY

- Talk to people. All 24 guests and staff have a name, a face and something to say, and what they say depends on who they think you are. Some of them know where things are kept.

- Pickpocket the guests. Twelve of them carry something worth taking. Admire it in conversation, then lift it. They will scream, so pick someone standing alone. For a while afterwards everyone will be looking for a thief dressed exactly like you, so go and change.

- Hide in the garden. The hedges block sight, and there is a small graveyard back there.

- Watch Chef Brassard. Nothing gets past him.

CONTROLS

Keyboard and mouse:

- WASD: move

- Mouse: look

- Shift: run

- Right-click or F: scan (copy a colour)

- E, left click or Space: use (take an item, talk, ride the lift)

- Q: drop what you're holding

- Esc: pause

- M: mute

Phone or tablet (landscape):

- Left stick: move

- Right stick: look

- RUN and USE by the right stick, DROP and SCAN by the left

The story plays the first time you press Start. The Story button on the menu replays it.

PLATFORMS

- Play in the browser, on desktop or phone (turn the phone sideways).

- Windows download: unzip and run Uninvited.exe. No Java needed.

- Mac and Linux download: java -jar Uninvited-1.0.0.jar (needs Java 17 or newer).

CREDITS

Made by Robert Smith for the GameDev.tv Halloween Jam 2026.

Code: written with Claude (Anthropic), an AI assistant, through Claude Code.

3D models and animations: every character, prop and room was built by script in Blender, through the Blender MCP. The pumpkin, skull and tombstone models were made the day before the jam began.

Textures, sound effects, and the menu, chase and ending music: made for the game.

Music: "The Uninvited Guest" (the party) and "The Clockmaker's Alibi" (the story), made by Robert Smith with Google Gemini (AI).

Art: the story panels, the two endings and the character portraits were generated with gamelab (AI, gamelabstudio.co).

Voices: Kokoro-82M text-to-speech by hexgrad (Apache License 2.0).

Font: Noto Sans, Copyright 2015 Google Inc. (SIL Open Font License 1.1).

Built with libGDX and gdx-gltf (Apache License 2.0).

Thanks for playing!