At the end of July, we decided to participate in the GMTK Game Jam as a team of students from the HSE Art and Design School to create an extracurricular game project.
GMTK Game Jam is an annual game creation hackathon centered around a specific theme over four days.
The theme for the 2026 Jam was «Count Down.»
For us, the outcome of the jam was the game «One Last Card»—a turn-based puzzle game where you guide a mouse through a maze-like yard using cards drawn from a deck.
The deck of movement cards is limited on each level, aligning with the theme of countdown through finite resources. You can rotate the cards themselves to find a more optimal route.
I served as team lead, producer, and the sole programmer on the team. My responsibilities included the initial organization of the team, providing ongoing feedback on progress, task delegation, documentation review, and the full realization of the entire game.
Team Lead and Producer
As a lead, I: — Organized workflows within the team. — Allocated tasks among all members based on their capabilities. — Answered team questions: from audio alignment to debugging code issues. — Gathered the team for morning and evening meetings.
Programmer
I wrote all the code, but the team helped me with the level design!
Initially, I developed all the core mechanics: — Grid movement. — Card selection. — Card rotation. — Hand and deck card base.
Next, obstacles appeared in the game.
This resulted in: — A character health system. — Obstacles in the form of stones and logs. — Damage-dealing bushes. — An AI enemy grandmother.
I was also responsible for: — Implementing sound effects in the game. — User feedback integration. — Interface design (main menu, pause screen, game over screen). — Move counting.
And other small details.
Achievements
Our game ranked 490th in the art category and 1605th in sound among over 10,000 published games.
Team Projects
