Earlier this month we held the second annual GMTK Game Jam, which is a
48 hour game development marathon.
I challenged designers around the world to create a game that fit a certain genre - but was
missing one of the main mechanics that you’d find in that genre.
Like a platformer without jumping.
Or a shooter without guns.
The response was incredible.
We had a whopping 1,054 games submitted, making it the most popular jam in itch.io’s history.
The games were then made available to the public, who left over 15,000 ratings.
This gave me a shortlist of 100 games to play myself, and I’ve gone ahead and picked out
the 20 that I found the most intriguing.
These are all games that really ran with the theme and landed on something truly unique.
They might not always be perfectly polished, or finished, or even massively fun.
But they all have a certain spark, and show the true potential of making a game where
you don’t just add - but remove mechanics.
So, without further ado.
Here are the best games I’ve played from the jam - in no particular order.
Fresh Merchandise, by developer Blind Mystics, is a dungeon crawler without combat.
And when you get rid of swords and spells, this makes for a game about dashing past fireballs,
dodging skeletons, and kiting bats around boulders.
Instead of fighting, the devs put the focus on another part of RPGs: surprisingly, the
idea of your character slowing down when they carry too much stuff and get over-encumbered.
Now, you have to think very carefully about which items of treasure you should try to
pinch, because when you can’t fight back, going slow is a death sentence.
This is a very clever little game.
Space Command 1980 is a stand-out example of one of the most interesting trends in the
jam: which is games without direct control.
For this cute spaceship game, the solution is to have you type in commands to make your
ship move and shoot - like typing ML to move to the left, or SHT to shoot, or FWD to move forward.
You’ll have to really be on your toes, because you can’t react immediately with the press
of a button.
This one is a bit silly, but I like it.
Allocation, by Mush, is one of a number of Metroidvania games in the jam - which certainly
surprised me.
This one is a Metroidvania without a set world map.
Instead, you make your own by plopping down rooms on a map editor.
You can then make your way to new areas, where you don’t unlock upgrades - but new room
tiles for the editor.
There’s a lot of potential here - right now you can set your own difficulty by using
easy, medium, or hard rooms, but you could imagine some risk / reward system to encourage
you to use the hard ones.
Gravity Golf is a golf game without clubs.
So creator Haretro took inspiration from VVVVVV, and lets you flip the gravitational pull of
the course.
What makes it different from Terry Cavanagh’s platformer is that you can’t move the ball
at all so you’re relying on physics, and the slopes and spikes of the level design,
to get your ball where it needs to go.
Nicely done.
Crossfire marks another clear trend from the jam, which is games where you can’t fight
so have to find creative ways to kill your enemies.
In this case, developer Seet has you dodging through enemies bullets in the hopes that
one foe will accidentally blast another.
You can also slow down time to weave through particularly tricky patterns of ordinance.
And if that’s not enough, you can also unlock a reflective shield to bounce bullets back
at enemies.
It makes for a really fun shooter that busts apart the conventions of the genre - and it’s
also very crunchy and juicy, to boot.
Fish is Nic Magnier’s take on the match three puzzler - only, tiles don’t disappear
when you make a match.
Instead, they freeze!
To clear the tile from the board you’ve got to make a whole row of frozen blocks - full
of fish and turtles and penguin heads.
It makes for a tricky puzzler that has you thinking several steps ahead - more like Threes
than Candy Crush Saga.
It definitely needs a bit more time for balance and whatnot, but this is a great twist on
a classic genre.
Monochoroma is billed as a sidescroller without scrolling.
Which means these chunky outer bricks stop you from going back on yourself.
But then you can rotate those bricks, to open new pathways.
It quickly becomes this unique Metroidvania where you’re having to think about how moving
the outer layer of the game will affect your ability to progress in the rooms behind and
beyond you.
In fact, it’s almost like one of those 3D Zelda dungeons I keep banging on about.
There’s lots of potential here.
Well done TeriyakiPhanton.
FireFlies is a vertical platformer without jumping.
And so instead of bouncing around, you ping your glowbug hero up the shaft like its an
Angry Bird.
All the while, you’re being chased by an ever-rising ocean of lava.
There’s one very simple bit of design that makes this game great, though: you have to
touch a platform to restore your slingshot power.
That means you can’t propel yourself upwards indefinitely, and instead have to make tactical
choices of how you’re going to give yourself lift and replenish your slingshot power.
Give some good visual feedback that your power is back online and this could be a terrific
iPhone time-waster.
Ratatatatouille, by Cyberfly, is what I was thinking when I said “a shooter where you
can’t stop shooting” - but just, much better.
You play as a Rambo-like chef, killing sentient potatoes that are running about your kitchen.
You don’t have a say in when the chef will shoot or change weapon.
You only focus on moving and aiming.
One of the great outcomes of this idea is that different weapons work differently - with
some, like the shotgun and flamethrower - requiring you to run up close to enemies.
While others, like the rocket launcher, will cause splash damage if you get too close.
This forces you to constantly think about your positioning in a way most twin-stick
shooters do not.
In Space, No One Can Hear You Jump certainly starts out simple.
As a platformer without gravity, you simply aim your hero at another platform, fire them
off into the cosmic unknown, and let them float on over.
Things quickly get more tricky when you can latch onto attractors and repellers to bend
your arc.
It’s all a bit Mario Galaxy, just in 2D.
And with fewer plumbers.
Demonball, by Room of Snakes, is a brawler where you can’t touch your enemies.
So there’s no kicking or punching here - instead, you have to boot a football around to murderise
your opponents.
It’s a simple concept, but it’s fun to try and weave through enemies while simultaneously
kicking the ball.
I wonder if it would be fun if the ball became deadly to you after you kicked it, giving
you another thing to dodge?
Dunno.
Won’t Look Back is a fantastic example of how removing one element from a game, can
create all sorts of interesting consequences.
As the name implies, this is a puzzle game about a character who can’t walk backwards
meaning you have to think very carefully before you make a move as any step forward is permanent.
Even the simple act of walking through a maze becomes s tricky puzzle.
You can’t look back, but you’ve certainly got to look forward.
Do Unto Others, by Tom Cheshire and Sean Rugg, is a fighting game where you have to damage
yourself to hurt your opponent.
Which almost kinda just about fits the theme.
But I’ll let it off because the game is this crazy puzzle where in each level you’ve
got to quickly find the fastest route to killing yourself.
Maybe throw yourself in the sea, or get struck by lightning.
When health packs appear you’ve got to fight the urge to pick them up, as they’ll actually
heal your opponent instead.
If the devs made it so in some levels you actually can hurt the other player, this could
become a manic WarioWare-like reaction game.
Rave and Claw, by OSTSenior, is a game where two mechanics were removed.
It’s a top-down shooter where you can’t move and you can’t shoot.
Instead, you can achieve both with a hookshot.
And you guys know how much I dig a dual purpose mechanic.
So the game is all about grappling to nearby walls and hook points, and trying to latch
onto enemies before they have a chance to body slam you.
It all comes together wonderfully and is expertly juicy for a game jam game.
I really dig this one.
Sleep Walker is another game with indirect control.
Here, Kyle, Alex, and Marina have made a platformer where you play as a wizard who helps a sleep
walking hero get to his goal.
To do this, the wizard can shoot stars into the environment to kill enemies, remove obstacles,
create bridges, power springs, and deliver sandwiches.
What makes this immediately great is that the star must physically travel from the wizard
to the environment, meaning that one - you can accidentally shoot your own character.
And two - you need to account for the time it takes for your star to travel.
It adds a real extra level of depth that you don’t always see in jam games.
Fire Escape is another platformer without jumping.
Instead, you fire an ember out like a grenade in Worms, and hope to land on something flammable
like grass or a brazier.
This basically teleports you around the level, letting you move on to the next challenge.
And it’s made all the harder when you realise that water is slowly creeping up to douse
your flame.
This has lots of potential, and is almost Nintendo like in its focus on one smart idea.
PongOut is a perfect example of how clever ideas can arise when you remove something
fundamental.
So this is Pong, but without scoring.
How does that work?
Well, now your paddle is your health bar, and it gets chipped away every time you hit
the ball.
The best strategy might be to avoid the ball entirely, but then you run the risk of the
ball getting stuck behind you and obliterating your paddle like you’re playing Breakout.
Nice work, Viddlerx. Very clever.
Camp Shepard started out as a driving game without steering.
So you plop down gravitational towers that change the path a speeding automobile.
And I guess that actually makes it a tower defence game without enemies.
Whatever the case, this is a cute puzzle game that is all about optimisation and trying
to do more with less.
I like it.
What Goes Up, doesn’t necessarily come down in this clever game from LoneBot.
It’s a platformer without falling, which means that jumping into the air puts you into
this spinny anti-gravity position until you can find your feet again.
And that quickly shifts things into puzzle territory as every leap must be thought through.
Once the game gets a grappling hook and companion cubes, you really start to see how this could
make for an excellent puzzle game.
And finally, Else Walker is another game about indirect control.
This time you’re telling a robot how to navigate a level by placing floppy disks into
slots.
Only, the slots are laid out like an If Else statement in a programming language.
For example, If wall ahead, jump - else, walk.
That makes your robot move forward and jump over walls.
It’s a fascinating idea that doesn’t just make for a fun game, but teaches players a
little bit about computer code.
And that’s a really special skill.
Good on you, Super Try.
So that’s an incredible amount of innovation for just 20 games.
But of course, there’s a lot more that I could have talked about.
Like SNES-style puzzle platformer Walkie Tori.
The attractive Chick Magnet.
The keyboard smashing Rhetoric Fighter, and the friendship ruining Super Sumo Skater.
0.5 A Presses is an educational game about Super Mario 64 speedrunning categories.
FunkSynk, where your gun fires in time with the music, is this close to being incredible.
And the magnetic platformer Elfin would be wonderful with better level design.
The invisible platformer Forward isn’t much fun, but it’s certainly interesting, and
Text Adventure is a surprisingly playable interactive fiction, considering it has no text.
So even if you didn’t make it into the top 20, I hope you had a wonderful time.
Remember that game jams are about learning, practicing, prototyping, challenging yourself,
working with new people, and trying fresh ideas - not just for awards and kudos.
I hope every single person got some something out of the experience.
And if you missed it - I’ll be back in August 2019 with GMTK Game Jam number three.