$ a looping puzzle game built in 72 hours for GMTK 2025
Forgotten Paths is the second game built with a partner, this time for GMTK 2025. The jam theme was "Loop." The player programs a sequence of movement commands (RIGHT, LEFT, UP, DOWN, and three rotation variants) and those commands execute repeatedly in a loop until the player stops manually or clears the level by defeating all enemies. To win each level, all enemies must be slain.
The game ranked highly out of over 9,500 submissions in the jam, an impressive result for our second-ever game. You can play it directly on itch.io or via the embed below.
The player's behavior is entirely driven by a command queue. The player selects up to several commands from the available set, then hits play. Each command is a discrete type: movement commands (RIGHT/LEFT/UP/DOWN) and rotation commands (ROTATE90/ROTATE180/ROTATE270). The player executes them one at a time in sequence, then starts over from the first.
The rotation commands change the player's facing direction, which affects how subsequent movement commands are interpreted. A direction transform lookup maps each absolute grid direction (UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT) to the correct grid offset given the player's current facing, so if the player is rotated 90 degrees clockwise, a "UP" command moves it in the direction that is now "forward" from its perspective. This makes multi-step sequences with rotations non-trivially puzzling.
Grid objects (the player, enemies, walls) are registered with a global singleton which maintains a Dictionary mapping grid coordinates to objects. This gives O(1) occupancy lookup for movement validation and collision detection without scanning all objects. A separate Dictionary tracks defeated enemies so the same enemy cannot be killed twice if the loop revisits its cell.
Building a puzzle game where the challenge comes from compositional command sequences required thinking carefully about what the player sees and understands at each moment. Over 9,500 games were submitted to this jam; ranking highly out of that pool while making only the second game ever is motivating. If you're truly stuck, there is a hints & solutions cheat sheet on the itch.io page. Some key takeaways:
hunter baker