Your Mission

Every great game starts with limits. Your team will be given a theme, a thematic constraint, and a choice of beginner-friendly engines. In roughly three to four hours, your job is to design, build, and export a small, playable game that embraces those limits rather than fighting them.

You don't need prior game development experience — the tools in this track are chosen specifically so that teams of any level can build something playable and polished.

Team Setup

• Teams consist of 4 participants - tasks should be defined for each member.
• Teams choose an engine together based on their combined comfort with code, drag-and-drop tools, or visual editors.
• All submitted work must be created during the competition period.

The Theme (Y2K)

Organizers will announce a theme at the start of the event (for example, a 90s–00s retro theme). Your game's visuals, sound, and tone should reflect this theme — through art style, references, mechanics, or all three.

Rules & Constraints

• Teams consist of 4 participants.
• Development time: approximately 4 hours including submission.
• Participants may use official engine documentation, tutorials, and the provided Game Development Cheat Sheet.
• Engine choice is up to the team and should be based on experience level.
• AI tools are not permitted for creative aspects of the game (art design, music, story…) - traditional search engines and programming documentation are allowed. AI tools include but are not limited to: ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, Claude, Gemini, AI code generators, AI APIs…

Why This Track?

This challenge introduces participants to the fundamentals of game design and development — working within constraints, iterating quickly, and shipping something playable in a fixed window of time.

It gives complete beginners an accessible entry point through no-code and low-code engines, while still giving more experienced participants (via PICO-8 or Godot) room to demonstrate stronger technical skills.