Zero Control
A 7-day Brackeys Game Jam shooter where movement is player-controlled but the turret is intentionally out of control.
Overview
Zero Control was my first game jam project. I built it with three friends for Brackeys Game Jam 2025.1, from February 16 to February 23.
Out of 2,162 entries, we finished at rank #342 overall.
The jam theme was “Nothing can go wrong” and we interpreted that as a ship system failure: the turret rotates and fires continuously, while the player can only control movement and positioning.
Core Loop
The game has 10 short survival levels. In each level, the goal is to stay alive for 60 seconds while using movement to line up automatic shots.
Destroyed enemies drop mechanical parts, which become currency for upgrades between levels. This created a loop of survive, collect, then improve health, speed, and cannon stats before the next stage.
Key Systems and Decisions
The biggest design decision was movement. Instead of standard top-down controls, players rotate engines with directional input and hold thrust to move. It made the ship feel different from most jam shooters, but it also introduced a steep learning curve.
Enemy AI was another major challenge under jam time limits. Unity NavMesh did not fit well with 2D projects, so we switched to the free version of A* Pathfinding Project. Once integrated, it gave us reliable movement and let us focus on enemy behaviors.
The most successful behavior was a blue enemy that orbits the player before taking shots. We built it by attaching an invisible tail target behind the player and making the enemy follow that target for circling movement.
Narrative Beats and Progression
Every two levels, the game pauses for a short visual-novel-style story scene. These sections gave players a break from combat and helped pacing across the full run.
Upgrade Shop
Between levels, players spend collected parts in a shop to tune survivability and damage output.
Upgrade flow between stages, captured from the in-game shop screen.
Outcome and Lessons
We finished the project on time, but the process exposed clear gaps in architecture and documentation. The codebase ended up tightly coupled and difficult to maintain, especially around cross-script references and persistence.
The most important lesson was scope discipline. For a one-week jam, unique mechanics are valuable, but they need fast onboarding and clear readability. Zero Control gave us a strong first result and a clear baseline for building cleaner systems in later projects.
Play the Game
You can play Zero Control on itch.io: Zero Control on itch.io