@Ivan

The results for the GMTK Game Jam 2026 are in! “The Game Jam Experience” got 149th place in the Creativity criteria out of more than 10k submissions which is my record so far. I received a lot of positive feedback however there was a consensus that the game was a bit too short which is why I decided to add a few new gameplay elements.

• The game icon will now try to run away from the cursor which adds yet another comic element to the gameplay.
• Added a new bug for players to find and fix
• Added animations to the robot
• Updated the main menu
• Made the bug list more straightforward

Throughout GMTK2026, I realised that making Fake OS Games is pretty fun. Unfortunately, as many people remarked during the rating period, the game ended up very short due to the fact that creating a fake OS took a significant part of the 96 hours of the jam. For this reason, I have decided to create a template for future game jams. Following the jam, I created a new Unity Project featuring a minimal fake OS setup that I am currently working on improving. One of the first things I did was commenting my code and adding null checks to make execution safer. In addition to that, originally, mini games were created by instantiating a prefab inside which was problematic as several mini games needed to exist in the same scene at the same time. In my fake OS template, I replaced prefab creation with additive scene loading to better separate mini games.

• Added 5 different ending to the game depending on how good the final game is
• Added music and sound effects
• Submitted to the GMTK2026 Game Jam

• Added a simple browser where players can submit their game
• Created the main menu by reusing some of the game’s assets

• Added a game editor in which players must debug their game and fix issues

• Finished coding the conversation with the artist.
• Added a countdown before the end of the game jam
• Added a Hints and Tips window
• Changed background colour and made many new textures for the game

Teamwork is an essential part of any game jam (except of course if you are working alone like me). I started working on a chat app inside the game and improved window graphics.

“You have 96 hours to make a game that fits the following theme : [Countdown]”. For this year’s GMTK game jam, I decided to make a game which simulates those last 10 stressful minutes right before the end of a Game Jam when you actually need to submit something that works. I want this game to consist of a simple Operating System UI in which the player will have to face various challenges before being able to finally submit the game. I decided to use Unity for this project as it’s the engine I am most comfortable in. Started by making a simple draggable window UI.

I’ve been wanting to learn how to use Blender for quite a while which is why I decided to make an icon for Dots using this software. I found it quite complicated a first but quickly learnt the basics of how it works. Choosing the right shades of red and blue took quite a lot of time.

Worked on the readme file and polished the game for its first ship!

Added a few menus to make launching the game more straightforward. Also included a short guide.

I got inspired by Sebastian Lague’s series on Chess engines so I decided to create my own engine but for Dots. I implemented the Minimax algorithm with Alpha-beta pruning which is often used in Chess bots. It is worth mentioning that despite it’s simple nature, the computational complexity of a dots engine is WAY higher than that of a chess engine: there are about 10^40 possible positions in chess compared to 10^120 in Dots. Furthermore, there is very little documentation on Dots engines, except for one article from 2002. The image attached is a game between a depth 2 and a depth 4 engine.

Implemented the ability to have more than 2 players! This is not part of the classical game rules but I found this variation to be very fun to play. Currently it supports up to 6 players. Implementing this functionality required me to change the way players are handled which made the code clearer.

Fully separated the game logic from the Pygame graphical interface. I am now considering making a web version of the game using Django

Lost against my little sister TWICE

Significantly increased the precision of the dot-capturing algorithm and added a scoreboard.

Implemented the dot-capturing algorithm. A dot is captured when it is completely surrounded by opponents’ dots. This turned out to be much more complicated than expected.

I decided to start off Stardance by coding a pen-and-paper strategy game that I loved playing as a child: Dots (aka Kropki or Tochki). First, I created a grid layout and implemented the ability to place dots.