Untitled (Time Waltz loop)

“Simple pixel 2d top-down desktop game made as the submission for SEMO Game Jam 2026 using the Godot game engine and assets from kenney”

01. What the Project Is

Untitled (Time Waltz Loop) is a 2D top-down puzzle game developed under a strict 24-hour time constraint for the SEMO Game Jam 2026. Responding to the theme 'Time Waltz,' the game features a protagonist trapped in a strict 1-2-3 waltz-timed rhythmic loop. Players must coordinate movements and strategically deploy recording echoes—temporal ghosts of their past actions—to solve interactive environmental puzzles and navigate through seven increasingly difficult trial chambers.

Untitled (Time Waltz loop)_01.png

Untitled (Time Waltz Loop) puzzle mechanics interface

02. Why Technical Choices Were Made

Game development is what originally inspired me to pursue software engineering, but finding the massive runway needed for solo game projects can be incredibly challenging. After working through numerous incomplete prototypes, jumping into a rapid fire, single-day game jam was the perfect catalyst to push past development friction and force a completed build. The intense constraint pushed me to focus purely on a core, elegant mechanics loop rather than over-engineering wide features.

03. How It Was Implemented

To meet the 24-hour delivery deadline, I relied on the lightweight, rapid-prototyping capabilities of the Godot engine, scripting the entire state machine in GDScript. I utilized pixel-art tilemaps and characters from Kenney's public asset libraries to instantly establish structural level layouts. The core mechanics track cell movements over specific intervals, caching step coordinates into arrays that instantiate 'ghost objects' upon loop resets to replicate previous inputs. While the competition window has closed, I am actively refactoring the rendering pipeline and expanding the level design.

Untitled (Time Waltz loop)_03.png

> stream closed // text layer read complete.