My Favourite Games from GMTK Game Jam 2025

0:00 Earlier this month we held the 9th annual GMTK Game Jam which is… well,

0:05 you know the drill by now.

0:06 It’s a game-making marathon where people race to make a game in just four days,

0:11 and that game must fit within a specific theme.

0:14 As always, we saw even more people enter the jam than last year,

0:19 with more than 37,000 participants making over 9,600 games.

0:25 Which means that it’s still the biggest jam in itch.io history.

0:29 And boy, do their servers feel it.

0:33 So, what was this year’s theme?

0:36 Well, it was a single word: loop.

0:39 And so we saw thousands of games about programming loops, about musical loops,

0:45 about running loops around people, about loops in time and in space.

0:51 The way you all managed to take

0:53 this theme and spit out so many distinctly clever,

0:56 imaginative, and fun games… well, it’s absolutely inspiring.

1:01 And now it’s time for me to pick my 20

1:05 favourite games from the jam… Pause the video right there.

1:09 Normally this is where I’d say I’m choosing the “best” games from the jam,

1:13 or even the “winners” of the jam.

1:16 But the truth is… as GMTK Game Jam grows bigger and bigger,

1:19 I don’t think it makes sense for the whole thing

1:22 to come down to a single judge who really likes puzzle platformers.

1:27 Especially when I’ve only played like 1% of the total entries.

1:32 So, from now on, I’ll let the community

1:34 pick the winners through rating and ranking the games.

1:37 You can see those over on itch.io.

1:39 But I’ll simply choose some personal favourites.

1:44 That cool?

1:45 Cool.

1:46 Back to the video.

1:49 Let’s start with Rhythmetric.

1:51 This is a game about a circle who fights rather more pointy shapes,

1:56 using laser beams, dodges, and shields.

1:59 But it’s up to you when those moves are triggered.

2:02 You see, there’s a track on the right side of the screen,

2:05 and here you can plop down moves at different points.

2:08 Then, when the looping indicator scrolls across the track,

2:11 it will play each move on the beat.

2:14 This turns your fighting style into a personalised anthem.

2:19 Attack, attack, attack, shield… dodge, dodge, dodge.

2:23 You know, simply by feel,

2:25 when it’s time to aim at the enemies and unleash a barrage,

2:29 and when it’s time to swing the mouse in the opposite direction to dodge away.

2:33 It turns the player into a deadly DJ, mixing between fighting and composing.

2:39 And then, as you pick up more beats and add to the track,

2:43 the game naturally gets more complex.

2:44 It’s addictive, smart, and puts you into a dizzying zen-like state.

2:52 The next game, Voodloop, has a somewhat similar premise.

2:56 This time, though, it’s a 2D platformer and we can assign moves like jump,

3:00 kick, and dash- which will then trigger on the beat.

3:04 So you’ll need to build the right loop to do double jumps over pits,

3:07 or to fight simple enemies.

3:10 What I really like about the game, though,

3:12 is that each level is like a miniature Metroidvania.

3:15 You must hunt for new moves to lay down

3:17 on the track- which then lets you access new areas,

3:19 in order to find new moves- so you can reach the exit and do it all over again.

3:24 Also, by changing the style and tempo of each level’s soundtrack,

3:28 the game takes on a very different feel from stage to stage.

3:31 Super smart stuff, with a rather dashing, chunky pixel art visual style.

3:38 With a theme like loop, we were bound to see a few entries

3:42 inspired by the ultimate time loop game, Outer Wilds.

3:46 But my favourite of the bunch is Night O’Clock- a quick-fire

3:51 murder mystery where you have just one minute to scour a mansion,

3:55 collect clues, and gather knowledge… before time’s

3:57 up and you have to start again.

4:00 A clever twist on the formula is that you keep

4:02 hold of any item you’ve got when time runs out,

4:04 so you have to think carefully about, say,

4:07 which key you want in your hand before restarting the loop.

4:10 Night O’Clock is absurdly polished for a game made in four days,

4:14 and it kept me rapt for the entire run time.

4:17 An easy recommendation among a sea of games

4:20 about repeating the same day over and over.

4:23 Now, game ideas can come from the weirdest places.

4:27 Like, what about that shower thought of… if you plug a power strip into itself,

4:32 wouldn’t that give you an infinite energy source?

4:35 Forget conservation of energy and other boring realities- in this game,

4:40 you can cheat physics and unlock an eternal electrical source.

4:44 But it’s more than a meme- this is actually a very clever,

4:48 mind-bending puzzle game.

4:49 You need to understand a simple set of rules-

4:52 about where power comes from and where it goes.

4:55 Deal with restrictions like the short length of your cables.

4:59 And think outside the box as you make temporary

5:02 connections and purposefully undo your actions to make everything work.

5:06 It made my brain hurt… but like, in a nice fuzzy way.

5:13 Talk about thinking outside of the box.

5:15 When developer SI Interactive heard the theme loop,

5:18 they thought about the looping lasso tool in Photoshop.

5:23 And so we get a game about being a freelance photo editor.

5:27 Each day you get a request in your inbox.

5:29 Can you take this photo of me and add hair?

5:32 Can you block out my ex?

5:33 Can you add friends to my birthday party?

5:36 You can then use the loop to select stickers,

5:39 people, and cartoon characters to place into the photo.

5:43 Send it back and hope the client is happy.

5:45 There’s even a hint of detective work in here,

5:49 as your clients ask you to figure out relationships from their email.

5:53 It’s only a sprinkle- but you could see this being expanded

5:56 into a clever deduction game where you

5:59 provide your answer through doctored digital images.

6:02 But as for the game that’s actually here- it’s cute, clever,

6:06 and as someone who spends their life selecting crap in Photoshop,

6:10 it was nice to play a game where my pointless life skills are finally validated.

6:17 Circuit Breaker starts out as a pretty simple puzzle platformer.

6:21 Walk, jump, manipulate machines, plop batteries into sockets.

6:25 But when you finally make it to the far end of the room,

6:29 you realise you can loop back around to the start and do the whole thing again.

6:33 Or, you can walk back on yourself

6:35 and play the level in reverse- all while making

6:38 changes to the level that may help or hinder

6:41 your progress depending on which direction you’re going.

6:43 It turns a single level into a galaxy-brained spatial reasoning puzzle.

6:49 I want to reach this spot but it’s impossible from where I’m standing.

6:52 But if I loop all the way around the other side, I can make my way up!

6:57 It reminds me of those puzzle box Zelda dungeons I love so much.

7:01 It scratches a very specific itch, and that’s why I dig it.

7:07 Walk It!

7:07 takes Crypt of the Necrodancer- that excellent roguelike where you have to move

7:12 on the beat of the music- and turns it into a series of single-screen vignettes.

7:17 You play as a dancing dude who cuts shapes from pavement slab to pavement slab,

7:23 while dodging dogs, pushchairs, and Pilates posers.

7:27 You have to move to the beat.

7:28 You have to start on the first beat.

7:30 And you have to reach the goal on the last beat.

7:33 It should be effortless.

7:35 And maybe it is if you have any sense of rhythm.

7:38 But I do not- so it turned each one of these short

7:41 levels into an epic showdown where I had to learn the beat,

7:46 internalise the music,

7:47 and feel the rhythm before I could finally dance my way to victory.

7:52 Great animations, great art style, make 100 levels and put it on Steam.

7:59 I’m always impressed by people’s ability to make a Zachlike-

8:03 a game inspired by SpaceChem and Opus Magnum- during a 4-day jam.

8:09 It shouldn’t be possible!

8:10 And yet, here we are.

8:12 This is Cooking by the Numbers,

8:14 a game where you build an engine to turn one number into another,

8:18 using nodes that can add, minus, divide, and multiply.

8:23 But most importantly, there are the conditional nodes:

8:27 do one thing if the number is greater than 15, and another if it’s less.

8:32 With these, we can- going back to the theme- make loops where

8:36 the same sum is performed over and over until the condition is met,

8:40 and then a different path is taken through the flow chart.

8:43 You’re constantly thinking about how to use loops to get the result you want.

8:47 And- if you didn’t realise it by now-

8:49 you’re also learning the basics of programming,

8:51 as you figure out the inner workings of if statements and while loops.

8:56 You clever clogs, you.

8:59 Okay, this game- Caw Across Time- needs a bit of set-up.

9:04 You get a phone call- it’s you from the future.

9:08 Future you delivers a key that helps present you get through a door.

9:12 Handy!

9:13 But now the space-time continuum is all goofy, so you’ve gotta fix it.

9:18 But aha- you’re now future you.

9:21 And you can deliver the key to present you.

9:24 Who is now past you.

9:25 Thus finishing the time loop, fixing that nasty rift in the timeline,

9:29 and letting you move on to the next level.

9:32 Did that make sense?

9:33 Does your brain hurt?

9:34 Whatever.

9:35 Keep up.

9:35 Because this game is really clever.

9:38 A whole sequence of single-screen conundrums where you

9:40 have to not only make it through the level,

9:43 but also tidy up the timeline by putting back

9:47 any time-travelling keys and blocks you end up using.

9:50 It’s an absolute belter of a game- and it’s utterly frustrating to play a puzzle

9:55 platformer made in 4 days that’s better than the one I made in 4 years.

10:00 Burn this jam to the ground.

10:04 Nokia classic Snake got some love in this loop-themed jam.

10:08 But my absolute favourite take on the idea came from Goop Snake.

10:13 It’s a Sokoban-style grid puzzler that works on the basic

10:17 rules of Snake- eat apples to grow in size.

10:19 Your lengthy body mimics the exact movements of your head.

10:23 But then it adds loads more ideas.

10:25 Eating soft apples lets you shift past your own stomach,

10:29 but hard apples block your head entirely.

10:32 You can spit out apples to shrink back down, or hold down buttons.

10:36 Stuff like that.

10:37 With each of these additions to the rule set,

10:40 Goop Snake can create some truly clever levels,

10:42 with those all-important “a-ha” moments.

10:46 Alright, let’s look at Curse of the Amethyst Skull.

10:50 This is a dungeon-crawling puzzle game,

10:52 where each time you die- you have to start the whole thing from scratch.

10:56 But you can at least keep your items, your notes, your knowledge,

11:00 and most fun of all, your hand-drawn map of the environment.

11:05 Maybe I’m just a massive frickin’ nerd,

11:07 but I really enjoyed charting out the contours and contents

11:10 of this underground world- making notes of traps and treasure and dead ends.

11:15 I think I hit a bug where my map didn’t show properly,

11:18 because I think I should have been able

11:20 to see my current position on the map screen.

11:22 But I guess I just played on hard mode,

11:24 because I had to draw things out without knowing where the hell I am.

11:27 Another nice touch- you can light lanterns

11:30 to know where you’ve been on previous runs.

11:32 And when you come back as a new adventurer,

11:35 you have a new, randomly generated name.

11:38 No idea how Frances Grumblejack got access to Roswell Chapman’s notebook,

11:43 but we’ve seen stranger things in this jam.

11:48 Here’s another common take on the theme:

11:50 looping around from one side of the screen to the other, like in Pac-Man.

11:55 Mobia’s Trip uses it as the main mechanic in a cute

11:58 platformer- hold a key to lock the camera in place,

12:01 and then you can waltz off to the left of this frame to appear

12:05 on the right- which lets you bypass a big ol’ wall and be on your way.

12:10 This kicks off a number of clever scenarios

12:13 where you’re manipulating the position of the frame,

12:15 perhaps shifting the frame up with each jump

12:17 so it’s high enough to reach a platform.

12:19 Another mechanic comes from looping through

12:21 the loop multiple times to build up speed,

12:24 before using that excess energy to crash through the floor.

12:29 How’s this for a unique spin on the card battler?

12:33 Like a Record puts your moves on a spinning

12:36 disc- playing each card as the record shifts position.

12:40 Only- your opponent is doing the same thing.

12:43 So you’ll need to be smart about how the two discs will line up.

12:46 Things get even more strategic when you add in cards

12:49 that can change the direction of your disc- or your opponent’s.

12:53 I’ll be honest, this was too much for my pigeon-sized mind,

12:57 but even this simpleton can see

13:00 the potential of putting Hearthstone on a turntable.

13:04 Here’s a clever one- Side Effects.

13:07 It’s a puzzle game on a Rubik’s Cube.

13:09 You’re presented with a starting point.

13:11 Perhaps some seeds.

13:12 And a goal.

13:14 Say...

13:14 a forest.

13:15 By rotating the cube, you move the seeds into different zones-

13:20 the water zone turns the seeds into saplings,

13:23 and the sun zone turns the saplings into trees.

13:27 Done, smashing.

13:28 But just like solving a real Rubik’s Cube, things get complicated fast.

13:33 Sometimes you’ll need to manipulate things so two elements perfectly line up.

13:38 Other times you’ll realise that one turn will solve one part of the puzzle,

13:42 but utterly ruin another part.

13:45 It becomes a sticky strategy game of thinking several

13:48 moves ahead to get everything to the goal simultaneously.

13:52 Maddening, but good.

13:56 Next up: Killover.

13:58 A super-stylish game where you hunt down and kill a target.

14:02 Then you do it again- only you also

14:05 have to kill yourself from the previous loop.

14:07 Then do it again and again and again,

14:11 and now you’ve got to murder an entire army of yous from past loops.

14:16 Every time you advance, the game naturally gets harder and more chaotic.

14:21 You’ve got to defeat more targets in the same short timeframe.

14:25 And you have to dodge the bullets of all your previous selves.

14:28 It becomes a manic warzone of your own creation

14:32 as you dance through a hailstorm of bullets for which,

14:35 to be honest, you only have yourself to blame.

14:38 Quick shout-out to the clever animation style.

14:41 Snapping between distinct poses makes things very

14:44 economical for a hurried game jam participant.

14:47 But it also means that every time the game freeze-frames

14:50 on the last kill of the round… it looks utterly badass.

14:54 Everyone’s going to be jacking this style soon, I can feel it.

14:58 Okay, this is Draftula- which deserves a nod for its name alone.

15:03 On each loop, you draft a new mansion

15:06 for Dracula by plonking down rooms on this Tetris-style board.

15:10 Each room has benefits and drawbacks- and must be

15:12 placed strategically to get the most out of them.

15:15 For instance, one room adds more coins every

15:17 time you draft another room on the same row.

15:20 Another room blocks you from drafting anything directly above it.

15:24 Once you run out of money, a valiant knight knocks on the door,

15:28 knocks down your gaff, and you have to start the whole thing again.

15:31 But there’s also a meta-level mystery to solve,

15:34 as you must draft specific rooms next to each other to unlock more

15:37 stuff- like putting two sigils next

15:39 to each other to unlock infinitely high buildings.

15:42 There’s a, ahem, lot of room to build on top of this idea,

15:47 if the developer fancies it.

15:49 Okay, next up is Songrunner.

15:52 This is a series of single-screen platforming

15:55 stages where you build the level yourself.

15:59 How?

15:59 By playing notes- triggered through the keys 1

16:02 through 8- when the timeline sweeps through the stage.

16:06 So it’s like Lumines, but as a platformer.

16:09 And that’s pretty neat.

16:11 Best of all, your stage-making shenanigans create a unique track as you play.

16:16 And when you finish the stage,

16:18 all the other instruments kick in to turn your level layout into a song-

16:23 which sounds surprisingly good for a track

16:26 made up of awkwardly placed platforms.

16:28 This one is simple but smart- just the way I like ’em.

16:35 While 1 couldn’t be much more basic.

16:38 Use your mouse to draw a loop around the entire screen.

16:42 And yeah, it’s so straightforward that you can look

16:46 at the screen and intuit what to do in seconds.

16:49 But that’s an impressive feat.

16:51 Also impressive: how the developer used music, visual effects,

16:55 and a singular sense of style to make

16:58 something so basic into something thrilling and dangerous.

17:02 An easy recommendation.

17:06 Another interesting take on the theme:

17:08 how repeating the same level over and over

17:11 again allows you to gain mastery and new understanding.

17:15 That’s clearly shown in Loophole Pie.

17:18 The premise is simple:

17:20 a little boy wants to sneak into his neighbour’s garden and pinch a cooling pie.

17:25 Easy.

17:25 Only once you do that, the loop repeats with a new rule

17:29 that blocks you from doing what you did in the last go.

17:33 So: no more gate.

17:34 Maybe sneak across the grass.

17:36 Okay, next time- no gate, no grass.

17:38 Then: no gate, no grass, no crates, no remote-controlled lawnmower, no rocks.

17:44 It turns the game into a sort of mix of Untitled Goose Game and Hitman,

17:49 as you must use your mastery of this simple level

17:53 to find more and more outlandish ways to reach the pie.

17:56 It’s a great game design lesson:

17:58 the more restrictions you put on the player, the more devious they must become.

18:05 And then finally- there were a lot of games

18:08 in the jam about drawing loops around enemies to kill them.

18:12 That became a common refrain.

18:15 But no one did it better than the developers behind Bootloop.

18:20 This is a rapid-fire knockabout arcade gem about

18:25 ensnaring computer viruses in a deadly electrical trap.

18:28 Here’s how it works: walk into a peg to start a loop.

18:32 Then walk into another to make it bigger.

18:34 Then hit Z to close the circuit and make a zapping zone in the middle.

18:39 Simple enough, but things escalate.

18:42 For one, every peg you use must cool down,

18:45 so using too many at once will leave you vulnerable after you attack.

18:49 New enemy types appear, including a nasty scissor enemy that can cut your wire

18:54 before you have a chance to complete the circuit.

18:56 And then, between rounds, we get the classic three-upgrade screen

19:00 as we must choose whether to boost health, the circuit, or last-ditch bombs.

19:05 It’s got fantastic pixel art and music,

19:08 but this thing is not all style, no substance.

19:10 It’s also just a really sharp time sink that I

19:13 could see myself going back to again and again.

19:16 Bravo, Team Booti.

19:19 And so there we have it!

19:21 By thinking about a game being on a loop,

19:25 we got games about building knowledge and mastery,

19:27 about considering your past actions, about feeling the beat,

19:32 and about manipulating space and time.

19:35 And now it’s, ahem, time for some honourable mentions!

19:39 Ninja Step has you programming the looping choreography

19:42 of your player character to get through baddies and obstacles.

19:46 Bend-Jo has you bending the entire playspace to solve mind-melting puzzles.

19:53 Love Letters has you circling letters to get your jumbled

19:56 words out to a lady who has you tongue-tied.

20:00 And Loop/ Death has you looping back

20:03 to the starting point to solve tricky conundrums.

20:05 I could go on- did I mention there were over 9,000 games submitted?

20:10 As always, I want to give a humongous thank you

20:12 to everyone who took the time to make a game.

20:14 There’s something amazing about a bunch of people coming

20:17 together to make something just for the thrill of it.

20:20 To be part of a community, to impress their friends,

20:24 to better their skills, or for the sheer joy of making games.

20:28 And all by hand- no AI slop in sight.

20:31 It’s absolutely inspirational.

20:33 Thanks also to my fabulous mod team who make the jam run smoothly,

20:38 the staff at itch who are always on hand to help,

20:41 and my patrons who pay for the jam

20:44 and mean we never need to bother with corporate sponsors.

20:47 GMTK Game Jam will be back in 2026 for its 10th birthday!

20:53 10!

20:53 How time flies!

20:55 You can register your interest now by following

20:58 the link in the description down below.

21:01 Thanks, see you soon.