Introduction

The 2025 edition of the Game Maker's Toolkit Jam has concluded! With 9,671 submissions, it's by far the biggest game jam ever hosted on Itch.io, only behind the GMTK Game Jam 2024, the GMTK Game Jam 2023, the GMTK Game Jam 2022, and...you get the picture.

This year, the theme was "loop." Whether that means laps around a racetrack, looping audio, or simply a game loop, it's up to the participants' imagination! (perhaps you can even find a "loophole" in this theme and make whatever you want?)

Despite only having 96 hours to conceptualize, implement, and polish their game ideas, many very talented developers were able to create some truly incredible games! In this article, I'll go over my three most favorite games from the jam and why I loved them so much, so you can be in the loop!

3. Everyone Hold Hands!

Everyone Hold Hands!, developed by Team OC-no-ko, is a cutesy puzzle game about forming friend groups (er, friend loops) by joining together chains of paper dolls with matching colored friendship bracelets.

Though moving around the paper dolls with your mouse can take some getting used to, the puzzles are surprisingly complex, just like real-life friendships, I suppose!

The hand-drawn art style is a nice break from the ordinary pixel art games, and the paper dolls themselves remind me of crafts we'd used to make in elementary school. I especially love how the dolls have little expressions when you join them or break their chains! My only criticism with the art is that some characters repeat twice or even thrice per level, which makes it a little hard to immediately know who is who.

The gameplay is super fun! It feels like it would've been perfect on the DS or the Wii U with their touch screen support. However, I feel like the gameplay had a lot of unrealized potential. There's only a few levels, and some mechanics, like bracelet-less dolls, are only used once and are never seen again!

Regardless, I'm a fan of Everyone Holds Hands!, and I think the team did an excellent job interpreting the jam's theme. If you're looking for a relaxing, papery puzzle game to play, loop no further!

2. BootLoop

BootLoop, developed by Tetraminose, DataGoblin, Cruise Elroy, Sunnexco, and Stellazium (big team!) is a roguelike where you play as a battery who must complete the loop of electrical circuits to shock and kill computer viruses. You do this by walking up to multiple randomly-placed pegs and forming shapes like triangles and polygons that damage all enemies in their area.

After zapping all the foes on the screen, you progress to the next level and get to choose from one of three upgrades to aid you in your conquest. These upgrades add a ton of strategy! Mine, for instance, was to unlock anything bomb-related and just spam them, since I was bad at looping around all the pegs without getting hit.

Of course, being a roguelike, no two rounds of BootLoop are quite the same. From the upgrades presented to you, to the locations of enemies and pegs! Roguelike elements are a fantastic way to add a lot of replay value with a small amount of content, making them perfect for the time-crunch nature of game jams.

I genuinely cannot believe how much BootLoop's team was able to accomplish with just 96 hours. The pixel art is crisp, the soundtrack hits hard, and the gameplay is just plain fun in an arcadey kind of way. I highly encourage you to try the game out for yourself. Perhaps you'll be as shocked with it as I was!

1. VoodLoop

VoodLoop, developed by Cubox and scored by Nate Sasson, is genuinely one of the coolest GAME games I've ever played, let alone game jam games, due to its incredibly innovative core mechanic!

You play as a voodoo doll who, at the start, can't jump, dash, attack, or do any other basic moves. Instead, they're are unlocked by collecting tokens hidden across the levels and assigning them on a rack from I to IV. Here's the cool part: the numbers on your rack correspond to the BEATS of the background music, which, of course, loop endlessly! Thus, to progress through challenges, you'll have to creatively sequence your moves so they're performed on the right beats in the right order.

Though VoodLoop only has five levels, they're all masterfully designed, forcing you to use a variety of moves to keep you on (or off) your toes. The game can get quite hectic later on as the tempo increases dramatically and you have to juggle with several different moves happening one after the other!

I could easily see this game being expanded into a full release, with new moves to unlock, such as crouching, wall-jumping, and ground-pounding, as well as new limitations like different time signatures!

All the music in VoodLoop is in 4/4, meaning there's four beats per measure that loop forever, but it would add in even more strategic flair if there were songs in 3/4 or 5/4! This would allow the game to subtract from or add to the moves you're able to choose from. Perhaps you could also find items like a pepper that would speed up the tempo of the music, or items like an ice cube that would slow it down.

Either way, I am absolutely IN LOVE with this game, and after finishing this article I plan to look through the other games In Cubox's catalog to see if they're just as cool as VoodLoop! In the meantime, if you'd like to check out the game for yourself, use this handy dandy link.

Conclusion

It's clear why the GMTK Game Jam continues to be among the most popular jams of all time. Its simple, yet deep, jam themes, combined with the expert guidance offered by GMTK himself, and of course the developer talent, all combine to create a positive feedback loop of amazing experiences that celebrate game dev each and every year.

Next year will be the 10th anniversary of the GMTK Game Jam! I surely hope it's able to surpass 10,000 entries this time, just to satisfy the "number go big" urge in my monkey brain. I may even whip up something myself for the occasion, who knows? We'll just have to wait until 2026 when the next GMTK Game Jam loops back around.