You are the loop

Hey everyone! 👋

This year’s GMTK Game Jam theme was “Loop”, and I took it literally but with a twist.
I’m excited to share my entry: You Are the Loop, a minimalist puzzle-platformer where you don’t control the player directly you control the loop of commands they follow.

💡 Idea & Concept

The theme “Loop” instantly made me think of automation like programming a character that just blindly follows instructions over and over. I wanted to create a game where the challenge comes from planning, not reacting.

So in You Are the Loop, the player:

• Selects from a set of 6 commands

• Fills a limited number of slots (3–5 per level)

• Watches their character execute the sequence in a loop, until they either reach the goal… or fail dramatically 😅

Think of it as programming a little cube bot that never questions your logic even if you loop them straight into a spike pit.

🎮 Core Commands

• ← Move Left

• → Move Right

• ⏩ Dash (2 tiles forward — default right; dash left by placing a left move before it)

• ⇧→ Jump Forward (3-tile jump)

• ⇧← Jump Backward (3-tile jump)

• ⏸ Wait (Stay in place 1 turn)

🧪 What I Focused On

Since I worked solo, I kept the scope small and clean:

• Click-to-assign UI for commands

• Minimalist cube-based levels

• A handful of handcrafted puzzles (Level 1–4)

• Soft SFX, simple loops, and a calming background track

🧩 Development Challenges

• Designing levels that are solvable within a loop, yet non-trivial

• Making the command system feel intuitive but powerful

• UI clarity it had to clearly show your loop and be fast to iterate with