The first monster - GMTK 2025

The GMTK Game Jam is an annual game making marathon, where individuals and teams try to make a game that fits a theme, in a super short time period.

The Game Jam started on July 30th and ended on August 3rd. For a duration of 3 days actually 4, but i started on the second day

I had never really made a game before, beside tinkering a bit with Godot, and thought it was a great opportunity to learn.

The theme was a single word: Loop

My first idea was to make a "The Exit 8" clone. It fits the theme quite well, but I wanted to find something more original.

I had an idea about an endless runner, or someone perpetually falling down stairs. And while a endless free fall through a multitude of staircases sounds very fun, I couldn't figure out the gameplay. lol

My following idea was something about arrows/bullets going back around. That's when I thought about having a looping screen.

When a bullet would be shot and reach the edge of the screen, it would loop back around to come back at you.

The gameplay is pretty simple, but I find it quite fun

You have 10hp, and the boss has 100. You click where you want to shoot, and your bullet will be fired in a straight line, until it reaches the edge of the screen where it will teleport to the other side.

The boss will only shoot you if it doesn't get hit fast enough.

Bullets never disappear. The game is initially very easy, but becomes very hard. The boss having 100hp means that, if he currently has 20hp, there are at minimum 80 bullets on the screen.

You effectively create your own bullet hell.

That means you need to be careful not to miss, not to get hit by your own bullets, and to be fast enough so that the boss doesn't shoot its bullets (that are stronger than yours).

Of course, every time you hit the boss/monster, it will teleport to a random location to make things more difficult

You can play the game in the embed below, or on itch.io. bugs beware

Overall I'm pretty happy with what I managed to make.

The graphics are not, eh, incredible. And the code became spaghetti by the last day. But I find the gameplay solid and everyone I forced to play the game found it quite enjoyable.