Shadowing Practice: My Favourite Games From GMTK Game Jam 2026 - Learn English Speaking with Video

Video games are all about numbers going up.

Score going up.

Money going up.

Power going up.

They're about adding and multiplying and doing out-of-control combos.

It's just rampant, unchecked greed, and I'm sick of it.

So, I challenged game developers around the world to come up

with games about numbers going in the other direction by asking them to make games with the theme Count Down.

And boy did you all come through.

Because for GMTK Game Jam 2026, more than 37,000 people signed up to make more than 10,500 games.

Which is not only the biggest GMTK Game Jam yet, but it also meant we surpassed Global Game Jam this year.

Which, I guess, means we're the biggest jam now.

Okay.

Cool.

But enough yapping and back-slapping.

Let's look at some games.

As always, I got the community to rate and review the submissions,

which gave me a shortlist of incredible experiences to check out across a bunch of different categories.

And from there I chose my 20 favourite games of the jam.

Here they are, in no particular order.

Today takes inspiration from a photo booth countdown to make a

game where kids can tort their face in the few seconds before their portrait is taken.

So you've got a target expression on the left side of the screen, and then by using all manner of keyboard keys or controller buttons,

you've got to squeeze your subject's facial features to match the mug on the left.

It's one of those things where you never quite get the hang of it.

Even when you internalise where the eyebrows or the lips are situated on your gamepad, you still find yourself stumbling and fumbling at the very last second.

Which is always more funny than frustrating.

Now Picture Day certainly wasn't the only game to play with facial features and camera countdowns, but it's certainly the most polished and playable of the bunch.

11.59 simulates that moment where you're just minutes away from your homework deadline.

And now you're in a mad dash sprint to get it uploaded before time counts down to midnight.

So you've got a rapidly expanding list of deliverables.

And each one requires more steps and side quests than the last.

Like looking up the password to a document, or converting the file into a PDF, or having to watch through a video.

Then your screen is littered with spammy pop-ups.

Then you've got to clear out the task manager by playing Space Invaders.

Then you realise you can leave the computer and walk around your apartment to find more clues and passwords.

What?

No one told me that.

It's a rapid-fire, nightmare-inducing gem of a game, and I absolutely loved it.

1, 2, 3D is a clever game about switching perspective by counting down the number of dimensions.

From an isometric, tunic-looking 3D game to a side-scrolling 2D platformer and even a single dimensional line.

Each perspective has unique strengths and weaknesses, so you'll need to flip through the lot of them to find the perfect place to be.

Ultimately, I'm just super impressed by how the developer pulled this off.

It seems simple, but I'm sure this was a programming nightmare to get done in just four days.

Bravo.

VeggieBrawl is an auto-battler where you watch your squad of pumpkins,

aubergines, and tomatoes duke it out with another group of groceries.

And if it was just that, well, then it wouldn't be in this video.

But what makes VeggieBrawl so brilliant is the way you put together your team.

Because each battle starts at an auction house, where ten vegetable fighters are put up as lots.

You and your opponent each start with a thousand bucks, and then you have to decide how much you want to spend on each warrior by choosing

when to stop this countdown clock.

Now obviously you want to pay as little as possible for each team member, but you can't wait too long or your opponent will snap them up first.

So you have to look at the vegetable stats and decide how much they're worth and if they're worth losing.

It's a brilliant twist on the genre.

So much so that I've recommended it here, even though I lost every single round I played.

Circuit Breaker is a grid-based puzzle game that plays with the countdown of a bomb and its fuse.

In each level, you must connect a stick of dynamite to this fuse, and then exit the level before you're blown up.

Oh, that's no good.

So you'll have to be clever about where you lay the fuse,

perhaps making it as long as possible so you've got time to get out before the whole level goes boom.

Things escalate elegantly from there.

Like, the fuse becomes electrified as the spark passes along it, which means it eventually becomes an impassable obstacle.

And then later, the spark can be used to trigger special switches.

All in all, this is a very clever puzzler with a bunch of thoughtful conundrums that, if you're asking me, strike a perfect difficulty balance.

Major Moo's moonbound Milky Way mission is… a mouthful.

But it's also a manic rocket building farce where you've got to construct the perfect spaceship in the few seconds before liftoff.

Now, okay, this game does also count up as you make more money the higher you go.

And then you can spend that cash to unlock upgrades like a longer countdown, better fuel consumption and improved durability for your ramshackle cow construction.

Although we're not exactly escaping the number go-up grind here.

But I gotta admit, I put a lot of time into this game as there was something oh

so addictive about slowly improving my rocket-making skills and getting closer and closer to the moon.

God damn it, that's why so many games are all about counting up.

I've been had.

Count Your Clones is a mind-bending, single-player co-op game.

Basically, you're a little alien who is trying to explore a

planet before they're killed off at the end of a six second countdown.

Now you've got to start again, but your previous self is still here, repeating everything they just did in the previous loop.

So if Alien 1 stands on a pressure pad and dies, Alien 2 can walt through the door that's linked to said pressure pad.

Things get more complex from there.

You'll find items that let you take shortcuts and open up new parts of the world.

And eventually, you'll get a gun.

And realise that not only can you use it to break boxes and hit buttons,

but you can also kill your previous clones to stop them from doing what they did last time.

What?

Help?

How?

I'll be honest, it'll get a little bit much, as dozens of old ewes are swarming the screen like confused mice.

But I've got to admit, it's one of the most creative and ambitious games I played during the jam.

I was seen as the weakest hero

but I can secretly edit the metadata of the world is… a name and a half.

So this one is a simple story game about a knight and a princess.

In each scene you're given a short paragraph, and then must remove words until you've whittled down the word count while still keeping it as a plausible English sentence.

It's easy, but I ended up kidnapping the princess, stabbing her, bribing a horse with a guard ,

and then riding off into the sunset with truly awful karma.

Ah.

Turns out you can omit other words and make different stories, and the tale will branch out in other directions.

It's silly, funny, and actually pretty darn clever.

I'd like to see an expanded version of this idea.

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Even Segments is one of many games that use the literal digits of a countdown clock.

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This one is my favourite, though.

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A mini Metroidvania that has you scouring a map for levers and buttons that make the clock do different things.

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So at first, you'll have to wait until the numbers are in the perfect position.

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So you can slip past the thin one, or use the three as a ladder.

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But then you'll find a switch to make the numbers stop.

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Or count up.

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or flip the digits, and so on.

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It turns the whole thing into a digital Zelda dungeon, as you must zigzag around to make everything line up perfectly.

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This is also a good example of why presentation doesn't really matter in game jams.

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This one has no audio, and the main character is a rectangle, but if you look past that, you get a puzzle platformer that will have your head spinning.

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My Hand Is A Gun is a top-down shooter with just five shots.

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You start with an outstretched hand, which works like a big ol' baseball bat.

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But once that's been used, it's onto forefingers, which acts like an SMG.

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And so on until you're out of digits.

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It turns each battle into a tense tactical fight where you have to carefully use each of your powers.

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And you'll have to internalise what each finger combo does, right in the heat of battle.

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else you'll waste your awesome pointer finger laser by shooting at the wall.

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Between rounds you'll get to level up your weapons, adding an addictive meta-level structure to the whole thing.

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Fun.

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Rudimentary, unfinished shooter entry is, well, a ruse.

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Sorry for the spoiler, but I can't really talk about this one without telling you

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that it's a bit more than just a dodgy twin-stick shooter prototype

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that looks like the creator struggled to get it in on time.

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No. Because once you get past the intro, it turns into a clever puzzle game about shooting orbs to swap their position.

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And using temporal zones to slow down your bullets so you'll have time to get in position before the shot hits.

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Clever stuff.

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And then it does something I've never seen in a game before.

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Because if you refresh the page, the game world resets but your character's position stays the same.

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Which can be used to solve certain puzzles.

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That's slightly unnerving, this is not how games are supposed to work, but it also adds a bizarre extra dimension to proceedings, as you must always remember

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that you can break outside the confines of the game to unlock more angles for your puzzle solving.

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Huh.

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By the numbers?

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Made my brain hurt.

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The game features a line of people, each counting down one number from 20 to 1.

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So when it's your turn, remember the last number and say the next in sequence.

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Easy, right?

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Ah.

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Except there are other rules to remember.

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Like if the number is a multiple of three, you've got to say fizz instead.

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And if it's a multiple of five, you've got to say buzz.

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Oh, and if it's both, say fizz buzz.

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Of course, if you're a dog, you've got to say woof.

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And if you've got an afro, you just have to say alright.

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it becomes a game of mental gymnastics where you have to keep track of the sequence

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and do a bunch of calculations and quick-fire assessments before answering.

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I ended up saying everything out loud to my computer like some sort of maniac shouting fizz, buzz, 16, woof, and so on.

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Good stuff would woof again.

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Game Jam Simulator 2026 is a silly little slice of life,

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showing exactly what it's like to make a game in a ridiculously short period of time.

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So with just 80 seconds left to go, you've got to cut the scope, draw the graphics, fix the bugs,

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and so on in a series of silly minigames.

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At least the Game Jam website doesn't crash at the last second.

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A Bug's Short Life is a platformer about a tiny bug who can only survive for about five seconds.

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So hopefully you can use

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that time to quickly grab a bunch of golden leaves you can then spend those to unlock more time, more powers, more speed, more mid-air jumps.

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Now you can go further, get more money, get more powers.

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Oh my god, we're counting up again, aren't we?

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But it's so much fun.

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Because the level layout is exactly the same each time, you learn the best routes and the best ways to make money.

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And eking out a little more distance with each run just feels oh so satisfying.

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It's hard not to keep going until you manage to make the final rush through the hardest bit

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and get to the end.

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Null Rush is the brilliant Balatro successor we've all been waiting for.

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It's a game where you fight a number by playing cards that make it count up.

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Or more importantly, count down.

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Because if you get it to zero, you win and move on.

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But if you mess it up and run out of cards, the number is removed from your health bar.

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And so begins a ludicrously clever game about maths.

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Where you'll need to perhaps add to a number, temporarily making it more deadly, before you chop it down to size with a deadly division symbol.

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There are also special cards with powerful extra abilities.

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It's just about playable for mathematical morons like myself, though at one point I did have, like, a children's six times table on my phone,

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which felt like a particularly pathetic way to cheat.

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The animal clipart really rubs it in.

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Otherwise, Null Rush is an absolute belter and one of the games I'd really like to play more of.

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Quick shout out to Number, which had a similar idea and is also pretty swell.

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Research and Detonation is a game about carefully placing down bombs.

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Your goal is to move boxes into goal spaces by blowing the boxes across the room with a bomb.

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And each bomb counts down at a different rate, so you'll need to get the timing right to make everything line up.

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It is perhaps a little… clean and clinical.

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Soulless, if you will.

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Check out Minibolf or Cat-Esposion for other games with a similar idea.

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But there's something so sharp and elegant about this one that I really like.

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I feel like it could have come on a demo disc for Windows 95

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and I would have played the hell out of it in the mid-90s.

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Dexfusal is a game about driving a car while looking at your phone.

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Which normally I would wholeheartedly oppose.

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But, seeing as you need to play mini-games on your mobile to defuse a stack of dynamite on your dashboard, I'll let you off just this once.

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And so it becomes a game of dividing your attention.

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Between a driving game where you swap lanes to avoid crashing into mountains, and a mini-game collection where you answer math problems,

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play two-button DDR, and return ping-pong serves.

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It's manic, lots of fun, pretty addictive, and has a great pixel art art style.

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Drill Dracula, the count goes down, is wow.

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How has it taken this long to get to a Dracula-themed game?

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Yeah, that's right.

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As with all GMTK Game Jam themes, there's a way to be cheeky and find some alternative definition for one of the words.

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And so a lot of people made games about the most famous count of all, Count Dooku.

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No, sorry, wait.

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Count Dracula.

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But this one is also about counting down, as Dracula drills deep into the earth,

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dodging moles and collecting gems before time runs out and he explodes.

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Of course, there's a shop in between runs where you can level up, get more abilities, and oi, we're counting up again, cut it out.

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Sketch Down is a game about taking rapid-fire notes.

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You're shown a series of paintings and have to quickly draw your own sketch of what you see,

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and make sure it's accurate because you'll have to link this sketch to the right picture at the end of the round.

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Soon enough you'll get the joke.

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The pictures are all alarmingly similar, and you have just seconds to make your sketch.

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So it becomes a game of finding the most unique parts and identifying features.

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Like that's the one with the dog.

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The one with the flag.

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The one with the horse.

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Oh crap, that one also has a horse.

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Despite the challenge, I managed to get 10 out of 10 thanks to my quick thinking

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and smart sketching which feels like a bit of a redemption after my maths fail earlier.

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And finally, some reassembly required is my actual favourite game of the jam.

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I lied when I said there was no order.

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So this is a Zaktronic style game where you have to

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instruct two robot arms to build a spaceship by giving them simple commands.

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But the twist is that you've only got ten instruction slots, because you have to get everything done before liftoff.

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And this time limit adds an excellent new wrinkle to the spacechem formula.

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And the second arm is a lot of fun to play with, as you can even drop pieces from one arm and catch it with the other.

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And there's even a time scrub feature, so you don't have to watch the whole thing play out in order to find bugs.

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Which should make it easy, but it's still a tricky game, where even the first easy level is a bit of a head-scratcher.

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Lovely stuff, and a truly excellent take on the theme.

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So there we have it.

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As for some honourable mentions, Mok Mok is like WarioWare as an adventure game,

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as you must figure out how to fulfil the hidden requirements on each screen.

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271 seconds is a slick, time management snipe-em-up where every action takes a certain amount of time to perform.

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Kitchen Master Cook-Em-All is a JRPG where stopping a clock as close to zero is your combat system.

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Down for the Count is a typing game where a coach must talk his boxer into getting back up.

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Clink-plonk is Bellatro Pachinko.

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Which is a real sentence.

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All of those words do have meaning.

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Chrono Sync Clockwork feels like a lost Super NES game.

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And Heist Watch is Hotline Miami meets Superhot.

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And if you run out of time, you have to battle the Time Police.

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Cool.

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What an incredible collection of games.

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And I literally only scratched the surface.

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Because despite playing over 100 games, I've barely seen 1% of the entries.

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So I implore you to go to the submission page on itch.io and look at the games for yourself.

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Almost everything you play will be inventive, ambitious, fun or funny.

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Let me know if you found a hidden gem in the comments down below.

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And if this has inspired you to enter for yourself, then I've got some good news.

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Because GMTK Game Jam will return in 2027 on August 11th.

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That's right.

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I've heard the feedback that you need more notice before the jam begins, so here's a full year to get your ducks in a row.

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Take time off work, practice your skills, get good with your engine.

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Maybe check out Godot, which actually surpassed Unity as the most popular engine of this jam.

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Anyway, you can register for GMTK Game Jam 2027 right now.

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Link in the description.

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Thanks so much to everyone who took part, as well as my faithful moderation crew over on the GMTK Discord.

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Thanks for watching, see you next year.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: My Favourite Games From GMTK Game Jam 2026 - Learn English Speaking with Video

Why This Video Is Great for Learning English

Breaking Down Natural Speech

A Simple Shadowing Practice Routine

What is the Shadowing Technique?