In the last few days, I built a shoot ’em up game by embedding a tiny custom bytecode VM and rendering the graphics using a fullscreen pixel shader. The result is a 3kB Windows executable.
This was done for Langjam Gamejam, a 7-day challenge where you create a programming language and then use it to build a game.
The project combines several interests of mine: language tooling, game development, procedural graphics, and demoscene-style size constraints. The game jam format forced me to keep the scope small and explore new ideas. Also, it was fun!
↫ Laurent Le Brun
In seven days, Le Brun created a brand new programming language, compiler, bytecode interpreter, a game written in the new language, and rendered it, ending up with a 3kB. It’s amazing what humans can do.
