Echo-loop Devlog-01: Game Jam

Submitted for GMTK Game Jam 2025

Theme: “Loop”

🔁 How It Started

When the theme “Loop” was announced, a few ideas immediately came to mind — games like That Level Again by IamTagir and Loop Hero by Four Quarters. While those are excellent inspirations, they felt like ideas many others might explore. So I wanted something that took the theme in a more personal direction.

That’s when I thought of an endless top-down shooter where, upon dying, you restart the level — but your previous run replays itself alongside you. In other words, your past self becomes a ghost ally, performing exactly as you did, letting you fight beside your former lives.

🛠️ Day 1: Prototyping

I started by building a basic prototype:

• The player could move using WASD.

• Enemies spawned infinitely, slowly moving toward the player.

Once that was working, I shifted focus to the ghost system. My idea was to record the player's actions and stats every frame, then replay them later with the exact same behavior and power. This way, each new loop would let the player build off previous attempts.

To add depth, I made the gun aim manually with the mouse — giving the player more control over when and where to fire. I imagined that a roguelike-style upgrade system could create even more strategic combinations across loops.

⚙️ Days 2 & 3: Stats and Upgrades (and Setbacks)

Unfortunately, I had limited time over the next two days due to personal reasons.

I focused on implementing:

• A player stat system

• A few upgrades for damage, fire rate, etc.

• A special skill where the gun fires in all directions — useful for crowd control

I also reworked the enemy spawner. Instead of infinite spawn, it now follows a looping pattern:

1. Enemies spawn slowly and randomly (up to 15 max)

2. After 1 minute, a wave begins for ~20 seconds

3. Once cleared, the loop restarts

By the end of Day 3, I had 4 working upgrades, but still hadn’t made any UI components or even worse, I haven't started the core mechanic — the ghost system.

👻 Final Day: Ghosts, Panic, and Polish

On the last day, I knew I needed to get the ghost mechanic in — even if upgrades had to wait.

Things went well at first: ghosts were spawning and replaying the previous run. It felt great... until the second ghost entered. Then the game started freezing. It turned out I wasn’t managing the recording/playback lifecycle correctly, which led to memory issues and desyncs.

With only about 3 hours left, I chose to limit the game to just one ghost replay for now, and focused on building and submitting the game.

As always, I feared the Unity  build would fail at the last moment (a very common curse during jams), but thankfully it succeeded. I recorded some gameplay, took a few screenshots, made a quick cover image, and submitted it with minutes to spare.

🧠 What I Learned

• Start with the core mechanic early, even if it’s rough.

• Be mindful of memory usage and data lifecycle when doing frame-by-frame recording.

• Don’t get too ambitious with upgrades and content unless your base systems are solid.