deeperbeige.com

This chaotic physics game was built for the annual GMTK Games Jam 2026, where you have to build a full game in just 4 days to fit the theme “Count Down“.

I had the idea to make a game where you had to get chips to various targets such that they count down to exactly zero. Just one more and you BUSTED!

Play Zero or Bust in your browser (and click the fullscreen button in the bottom right of the game for the best experience).

Instructions
Drag and throw: Click and drag items to throw them around.
Experiment: Different items can be dragged on different levels.
Hit the targets: Guide chips to the targets. When they touch, the chip’s value is subtracted from that target.
WIN: Get all countdown targets to zero…
LOSE: Go even one point over on any target, you’re BUSTED!

Controls
Left mouse click & hold: Drag item.
R: Quickly restart the level.
Left/right arrow keys: Skip to the previous/next level.
M: Toggle music.

Trailer

Postmortem

Traditionally, I like to enter this jam each year as a sort of long-term barometer of how my fatigue is recovering. Games Jams are meant to be exhausting, and this one was no exception. I spent roughly 52 hours over 4 days, and ended up top 10% for Creativity and top 25% for Enjoyment. I’m really happy with those results.

I also ended up making 16 pretty good levels (all available via the arrow keys), a juicy fail sequence, lots of sounds, and graphics via the excellent Shapes plugin. I was determined to keep the scope limited, and that let me add a fair bit of polish. I submitted my entry about an hour into the final day, then recorded/edited 2 hours of gameplay into a trailer, walkthrough and speedrun videos. I also made an animated GIF for the main logo, showing the title and a short section of gameplay. This should entice people to play it, although I didn’t get all that many ratings compared to previous years.

The only ‘bug’ (as far as I know) is that the text often layers incorrectly. This was because I tried to use Textmesh Pro for infinitely scalable text, but it doesn’t sort nicely with Shapes. I decided it wasn’t that detrimental, and anywhere it interfered with gameplay I sorted it. I could have sorted it all, but I estimated it would take a full day… There were better things to spend my limited time on.

Walkthrough

Speedrun

Screenshots