BELTRUNNER: game design postmortem ⌘I Get Info
BELTRUNNER: game design postmortem
2026-08-06
• edited
15 mins read
#arcade
#design
#gamedev
#gmtkjam
#postmortem
#videogame
2026-08-06
15 mins read<br>true
Last week I shared a look at an arcade-faithful version of Asteroids to demonstrate the totally new way of making games that I’ve been working on. It’s called Jinks and it’s a lightweight game engine, interactive development environment, a language of sorts, and more.
BELTRUNNER is an original game built from the same bones as Asteroids, and was my entry into #GMTKjam 2026. The whole thing is roughly 1,300 lines and, importantly, it is a complete game that you can finish. It uses the same system and succinct language as my Asteroids recreation, though I’m going to remain a little coy about the machinery for now because it is still a work in progress and changing every day. I need it to settle down enough that I can describe what it is, rather than what it used to be.
For now I want to talk about how the game developed: which ideas made it in, which ones didn’t, and what Jinks had to learn along the way. Many of the design methods are adapted from lessons learned playing old games, which is how I like to approach game design.
BELTRUNNER by gingerbeardman
Explorations
The first prototype was nothing like Asteroids. I built an orbital shooter, perhaps more like Space Duel, with numbered targets on fixed shells around a central sun. As with everything made in Jinks it was quick to get up and running, but playing it just wasn’t fun. I had to decide whether it showed enough promise to keep going, and I don’t think it did. I always say that no work is truly wasted; it’s simply put aside until it usefulness or suitability becomes apparent.
The fixed orbits made the targets into sitting ducks. What I missed from Asteroids was the unpredictable drift of the rocks and the dodging that comes with it. I discarded the orbital structure but kept the numbered targets, the highlight, and the idea of a chain. It also got me thinking about the song “Countdown” by Phoenix (Bankrupt!, 2013).
So I moved back towards Asteroids and turned the numbered pickups into something more like the rings in Pilotwings or the gates in Wave Race 64. I also borrowed a trick from Donkey Kong ‘94: initially pretend to be an old, familiar game, then reveal that something different and new has been hiding behind it.
Masquerade
Wave 1 is pure Asteroids: one large rock, classic thrust-and-drift, classic splits, classic death-and-respawn. The only clue that things are not quite as they seem is a race clock that appears when you make the first hit, and no lives to be lost on your first collision. Clear the field and, instead of another wave of rocks, a black hole tears open at the centre of the screen. Gravity pulls you in, and you can do a little dash to help it along.
From wave 2 the real game reveals itself. Numbered gates are scattered through the same drifting rock field and must be taken in descending order—5… 4… 3… 2… 1…—so the race chants a countdown as you fly it. Take the last gate and the black hole opens again, then you warp to the next wave.
Starting this way lets the player learn the controls before the race asks them to do something more involved. If you already know Asteroids you can fly the first wave on muscle memory. If you don’t, you still get some time with the central game mechanic.
Two countdowns converge on zero:
The gate count , which you drive.
The race clock , which drives you—every gate feeds it and every collision depletes it.
There are no lives, so time becomes the only resource. This got rid of a lot of classic arcade bookkeeping and left me with one thing that can be read at a glance. It worked well and stuck through every play-test.
Waves with stepped difficulty (the Nintendo way)
The game has sixteen waves arranged as four acts of four. I didn’t want an endless difficulty ramp that quietly plateaus; I wanted to make a game you can actually finish.
Each act teaches one new gate behaviour, then spends three more waves letting it bed in:
Act<br>Waves<br>What it teaches
1–4<br>The reveal—pure Asteroids, black hole, elliptical gates—introduces pathfinding skill
II<br>5–8<br>Directional (one-way) gates—introduces routing skill
III<br>9–12<br>Spinning gates—introduces timing skill
IV<br>13–16<br>Both at once—everything all at once, then ends
I think of that “introduce → practice → practice → close” cadence as a very Nintendo way of doing things. A mechanic shown once and then immediately buried under the next one was never really taught. Four waves gives you enough time to notice it, get caught by it, and then start planning around it.
In the game code I only write down what changes from one wave to the next. A practice wave that keeps the previous setup is empty on purpose. Introductory text appears only when something new is actually on screen. It isn’t a tutorial, just a small toast that gives you enough of a...