100 Steam Games that started life during GMTK Game Jam
From Tethergeist to Rollerdrome
Every year, thousands of people sign up to the GMTK Game Jam and, somehow, manage to make an entire ass video game in just a few days.
Now - for most developers, that’s that. The jam entry has served its purpose. Perhaps it was simply a chance to practice a new genre or engine or art style. Or it was a welcome break from a longer project. Or maybe the game is a perfectly formed five minute miracle that does everything it needs to do.
But every now and again, the developer thinks - hey, this game is pretty good. This thing has the sauce. And so they develop it further. Add more features. Add more levels. Replace the programmer art with professional assets. And release it as an actual game on Steam.
And you know what? It’s happened a bunch of times now. Like... 100 times. That’s right, there are more than 100 games on Steam that started life as GMTK Game Jam entries. And I want to celebrate them all.
So in this video, let’s look at 100 games that went from GMTK Game Jam entries to full on Steam releases. Ready? Let’s go.
100 Keys to Your Heart is a puzzle platformer where you collect keys to open doors - but the keys are heavy, so you’ve got to leave keys behind on the rack, or pick up keys in the correct order. I’ve already said the word “keys” too much. One thing I can tell you for sure is that it’s 809% bigger than the original jam version, 11 Keys to Your Heart. That’s just maths.
A Little to the Left is a bonafide cozy game classic. I mean, it’s among the top rated games for the tag Cozy, on Steam. That’s amazing! Anyway - in this one, each screen is a miniature messy vignette where you have to intuit how to make the scene tidy again - perhaps sorting by size or colour or shape. It’s chill as hell, it’s the only game in this video with a physical release, and it’s the only game in this video that my wife has completed.
The Baby in Yellow is a Lovecraftian horror game about a nightmare baby. It was a viral smash hit on mobile, so it’s no surprise that the developers are trying their luck on Steam. I would play it - but as a brand new dad, I think a game about a crying, pooping baby who doesn’t sleep... yeah, that’s a bit too close to home.
Blood Typers is a survival horror game where you type words to kill zombies. So, yeah, I know - it’s totally Dreamcast cult classic Typing of the Dead. But actually this game goes much further as you must type to move around the environment, open doors, scavenge and use items, and interact with puzzles. It’s also got four player co-op, if you’ve got some buddies. Still - I don’t think it’s as scary as its original jam prototype, Showtime Massacre. That music creeps me out!
Blueprint Bob is a physics-based construction game where you have to build as tall of a tower as possible, so Bob can climb up to the tippy top and surpass a specific hight. This one made my list of favourite games from the 2024 jam - and now it’s here with new levels, improved gameplay, a level editor, and that classic Zachtronics-style histogram leaderboard. We love a histogram on GMTK. Oooh baby - there’s no better way to visually represent the distribution of quantitative data. Show me a better way and I’ll show you a liar. Uh...
Boomerang X is an arena shooter, ala Devil Daggers, but with - and you’ll never believe this - a boomerang! This game is sick - it’s lightning fast, and you can chuck your boomerang, teleport to its location, spin around, go into slow motion, and take out an enemy from across the room. I bet you can’t do THAT in GTA 6. Anyway, the jam version was cool but hard as nails. The final version, published by the certified sickos at Devolver Digital, is much more fair.
Breezy is a golf game where you play as the wind. Who wouldn’t want to be the wind. The wind is awesome. I haven’t actually played this one and it might suck but I feel bad that it only has one review on Steam so I had to include it out of pity.
Cappy & Tappy: Temples of Peril is a block-stacking platformer where Cappy the Capybara jumps around dusty ol’ tombs, while buddy Tappy the Tapir helps out by dropping massive Tetris blocks into the environment. You can play solo but it’s surely more fun with a friend - especially as you can trap or squash your buddy if you suddenly decide you hate them, actually. Forget them, get new friends. It’s not out yet but there is a demo on Steam.
Cleaning the System is actually still my favourite jam game I’ve ever played on one of my live streams. It’s a stupidly simple game. You play as a stick with a spring on each end. And you can rotate the stick left and right. That’s it. But it leads to a deliciously fun movement system that is effortless to learn, but deviously difficult to master. I love it. This Steam edition adds more mechanics, levels, and even multiplayer and a level editor.
Coasterama is a rollercoaster builder where you have to satisfy all the desires of the tiny guys who’ve paid good money to get into your monochrome theme park. So if some riders want to go fast, others want to go high, and another dude will lose his lunch if the track is too curvy... you’ve got to figure out how to make them all happy. The M. C. Escher-inspired art style is a particularly nice touch.
Deadly Heart Gambit is, according to the Steam description, an Anime Gambling Visual Novel. I don’t think I like any of those things. But, I gotta say I dig these vibes all the same. This one is all about flipping cards, and whoever gets the joker loses. And you’re playing with Alice-Sama, who is very interested in stealing your heart. And I don’t think she means it in like a cool, Persona 5 kinda way. She wants your heart. For real.
Diceomancer is not just a Slay the Spire-alike with a quirky first-person perspective. Because in this one, you can replace any number with the result of a die roll. So suddenly your attack goes from 6 damage to 18 damage... or one damage. It’s all the roll of the dice, baby. YouTube’s favourite egg seemed to dig it. And, also, the trailer opens with the phrase “unexpected trip to fishing”, which... uh... I’m really not sure what that means. But I’m intrigued!
Frogmageddon is pure Vampire Survivors, but with its own twist. And no, the twist is not that it features frogs. That’s not a twist. The twist is that instead of just gaining more power over time, you actually gain more team members - slowly bolstering your army from a loan toad to a massive battalion of bullfrogs. Looks addictive!
Okay, this is gonna take forever. So let’s do a rapid-fire speed round of more games available right now on Steam.
There’s also... the cozy collectathon BunnyFly: Season of Summer, object stacking game Clean Stack, rollercoaster design sim Coaster Crash Course, claymation timeloop Metroidvania Collapse Relapse, cyberspace puzzler Control:Override, Inscryption inspired Death in your Dice, the non-Euclidean Deep Snake, Tetris and Dice mash-up Dicetris, co-op puzzler (Dis)assemble, tricky block connector Dyestributor, roguelike rabbit racer Faster Bunnies, the looping low rez horror game Fragment, cursed twin stick shooter GIMMIKO, train defender Gunslinger Express, absurdist cereal collector IM LOOPY FOR DOOP LOOPS!!!, cosmic clean-up game In Space No One Can Hear You Clean, and the non-stop spinning game Loop my Crank.
Phew. Okay, back to the list.
The Gardener and the Wild Vines is a fun little score-chasing platformer where you leap and slash at flowers to bounce your way up a tower. All so the knight can save his true love - the prince. There are also challenge modes and quirky cutscenes.
Globs is a puzzle game about chunky cubic characters who can resize in different directions to move around, push blocks, make platforms, and more. The pixel art is giving Nitrome and - is that how you use that phrase? It’s giving Nitrome? Do you have to say It’s giving Nitrome vibes, or do you not have to say vibes? Anyway, it’s short, sweet, has immaculate art and music, and is a super cute package on both Steam and mobile.
The Good Overlord is an auto battler bag builder, where you play as the evil overlord of some dusty old dungeon. Your job is to guide the hero to your lair - by placing down baddies and collectibles along the way. I’m not 100% sure why you’re helping the hero instead of snuffing him out as quick as possible - but I’m sure the demo on Steam will explain more. The full game is coming soon.
Happenlance is sort of a Getting Over It style rage game, where your valiant knight uses a massive great lance as a lever to clamber up hills and vault over gaps. But it’s also a jousting sim, where those same kooky controls are used to outmatch foes in online multiplayer. And if you’d rather play with your friends than against them, it’s also got co-op with physics based puzzles. Clever stuff.
Hate Me Not is a role-swapping twin stick shooter. For half of the game, you’re in the black world - protecting and powering up a menacing monster yin yang from incoming enemies. But then you flip to the white world and you’ve got to dodge bullets from that very same yin yang. It’s a clever back-and-forth twist on a classic arcade formula.
How Many Dudes? comes from Butterscotch Shenanigans - the peeps behind Crashlands and Levelhead. And it’s a ridiculous game that asks the question... how many dudes would it take to beat up a gorilla? What about a horse-sized duck AND 10 duck-sized horses? How many dudes would that take? Obviously you can also power up your dudes, unlock perks and synergies, and bend the rules in your favour, making for a game that looks to essentially turn a Reddit thread into a roguelike. This one’s out at the end of July but there’s a demo available right now.
Imagine Sisyphus Happy, goes the saying. Well I don’t need to imagine it, Camus, you big dork. Because now I can play your philosophical thought experiment as a video game which is obviously the BEST medium for such a thing. Anyway - in this one you watch poor Sissy push his boulder up the hill, while you type words, play mini-games, stream your struggle to the masses, and unlock perks and boulders. This is absolutely, 100% what Albert Camus was thinking and I’m sure he has already downloaded the demo on Steam.
Koromeke is described as “the deckbuilder dissected”. It’s a simple board game where you roll dice to do loops around the board - and get upgrades and perks to score more points as you go. That sounds fun enough, but the real treat is the idea that this is some lost game made in 1993, and has been reconstructed in 2026 after decrypting its source code - all suggesting a sort of spooky Inscryption style meta-layer to uncover. It’s out soon but there’s already a demo on Steam.
KoroNeko is, I should say, almost nothing like its game jam prototype Qube - an ugly, fiddly game about rolling dice. A game that didn’t even get into the jam on time. But the developers assure me that this unfinished turd eventually turned into the adorable, cozy, and ultra kawaii puzzle game KoroNeko. And yes, that is the first time I’ve said kawaii on this channel, for anyone keeping track. Add that to your Mark Brown wiki.
Mingle is an adorable hidden object game where you hunt through a crowd of monochrome mates in order to find your exact doppleganger. Which transforms you into a new doodle, so it’s off to find your twin once again. The game’s got a great sense of style, thanks to Kiwi studio Cookiecrayon’s focus on simple shapes and colours. This one isn’t out just yet, but there’s a demo available already.
Molecoole is another Vampire Survivors-esque game, but this time you build your character bit by bit by shoving together different atoms to make a molecule. Each one has unique powers, which means there are millions of possible combinations. And you’ll almost certainly learn nothing about chemistry as you play, which is good because learning is for losers and it’s fine if you fail all your exams and have to become a YouTuber. That’s actually good and fine and cool.
Moonbrella is a bonkers-looking mix of Hollow Knight and Getting Over It - it’s a Metroidvania, but with a miles-deep physics-based movement system where you can use your brolly to pole-vault, grab onto ledges, and float safely over big gaps. Mastering this acrobatic character controller is going to be just as important as puzzling out the layout of the world. It’s got a vague 2026 release date on Steam, but there is a demo you can play right now.
Time for another break, with another lightning round.
There’s also... the dice-rolling dungeon crawler Maces and Dices, time-travelling bullet hell Negative Time, soul-swapping puzzle platformer ODA, picture editing gem PhotoLoop, the dual protagonist puzzler Roku and Rei, die-rollin’ game Roll it to the End, parcel puzzler Scale Mail, sadomasochistic sokoban game Side by Size, tower stacking Skyblocker, tricky seafaring ship sim Sloop, one button scrap dodger Spaceship for Newbies, object estimator Split Happens, first-person adventure game Trigger of Time, time-looping FPS Wait, Is That Me?, slippy car park game Where Is My Parking Spot, genre-bending adventure Willow Guard, the programming puzzle game You Are The Code, and VR cockpit game Ziggy’s Cosmic Adventures.
Deep breath!
Negative Nancy is a visual novel - or as the devs call it, an “interactive sitcom”, where your only way to respond to people is to say “no”. Basically, the opposite of that Jim Carrey movie. The Mask. Anyway - a Steam review sums it up nicely: “How you can manage to make this many outcomes and story branches by choosing between staying quiet or saying no is a mystery to me.” I guess you’ll have to play it and see for yourself.
Neon Shift is a simple, speed running, Geometry Dash-style platformer where you have to sprint through a level as quickly as possible. But then you switch to a phantom version of yourself and have to chase down your previous player before they hit the finish line. Clever stuff. And it won’t be the last time we talk about a game where you play against yourself.
Nested is a grid-based Sokoban-style game, but with an ingenious twist: you play as a set of Russian Nesting Dolls, which means you can stack multiple characters together or split them into separate entities. And you can use their unique shapes and sizes and colours to solve puzzles. I really enjoyed the jam version of this one - it made my list of best games for 2024. And I always felt that this could be even better with more time dedicated to designing puzzles. It’s due for release in August but there’s a demo on Steam right now.
Omelet You Cook is a chaotic cooking roguelike where you have to create the perfect omelet by mashing together the ingredients on a conveyer belt. Each customer has unique tastes and requirements so you’ll have to adjust your recipes to match. This is actually a super popular game with over 1000 overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam, which is pretty great for a game where you feed a peanut butter and screwdriver omelet to a hungry chicken.
PortalSnake is a mind-bending Sokoban game from the mad genius behind SquishCraft. It’s all about guiding a snake to delicious apples using portals that don’t just teleport the snake through space - but also change its size and rotation. Or even duplicate the snake. It will mess with your bonce. And it has one of the best trailers on Steam. This guy is clearly a marketing genius.
Press Ctrl is a recursive meta adventure where you control a character, that controls another character, that controls another character, that controls another character. The jam version was an honourable mention in my video about 2020’s top games.
Push The Cat with WASD is a Baba Is You-lookin’ puzzler where you move certain letters on the screen - based on specific rules. So the letters W, A, S, and D can move up, left, down, and right - but others can move diagonally. This is all you need to solve a bunch of tricky screens - which are also telling you a meta narrative about kitty cats.
Rollerdrome is... yes, that Rollerdrome. Okay, this one has definitely had the biggest glow up between its jam version and the final release. It started as a fiddly top-down twin-stick for the very first GMTK Game Jam. But the central idea - a game where you do rollerskating tricks to reload your guns - stuck with the designer. So he ended up turning it into a 3D game, getting a publishing deal with Roll7, and making one of the coolest arena shooters of the decade. It’s slick as hell, feels great to play, and has a really compelling scoring system. All told, it totally nails that idea to marry DOOM with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Sadly, mega-publisher Take-Two shut down Roll7 a few years ago, and so I doubt any of the original developers are getting paid if you buy this on Steam. I’m sure there are other ways to get it, mind you.
Scale the Depths is a satisfying fishing game where you catch critters, remove their scales, sell them for cash, buy upgrades, and repeat. The original jam project was one of my picks during the 2024 competition, so it’s wonderful to see it on Steam - and doing so well with over 800 very positive reviews. The developers knew they had something good when Chinese scammers started cloning the game and uploading them to Android. Frustrating, but at least they knew they’d made something special.
Singled Out is a rapid-fire identification game where you’re given a bunch of targets, a basic description of their features, and a few seconds to find and shoot the correct one. It was one of my favourites from the 2019 jam - which is perhaps apt as developer Matt Glanville’s previous game, Switch ‘n’ Shoot, was actually the inspiration for the jam’s theme “Only One”.
Sisyphus Is a Bug is... hey! Our old friend Sisyphus is back. And now in bug form! This one is more of a Metroidbrania - the only way to finally get that dung ball up the mountain is to discover new movement techniques that you’ve always had access to, you just probably didn’t know about them until you find the tutorial someway up the hill. It’s clever and squeezes a lot of game out of only a few buttons.
Slider is a game about moving chunks of the world in order to explore a large space and solve puzzles. Kinda like that dungeon at the end of Skyward Sword, you can open up a sliding block puzzle and move the tiles around to completely reinvent the layout of the world. I believe this is GMTK Game Jam’s first IGF winner, taking home the prize for best Student Game in 2023.
Final break! This time - games that have pages on Steam, but they’re not available and there’s no demo to play yet. They’ve all paid Gabe $100 though, so they’re pretty serious about getting these games on the store at some point.
That includes... Draftula, First Class Rescue, Galactic Diner, Getting Goopy, House Always WINS!, Kickochet, Laser Guy, Last Round at the End of the World, Loaded Dice, Looplash, Mycelium Mayhem, Robot Reckoning, Songrunner, Splatterpus, and Time Travel Shanty
Okay, final stretch!
Sol Cesto is a very popular roguelite that’s sold over 100,000 copies. This one is heavily focused on luck and is all about using magical items and sinister curses to bend the odds in your favour. Now I’ll admit, the link to the GMTK Game Jam is a little tenuous - the game is based on a failed jam entry that was never actually submitted to 2022’s competition. But you can see the first inklings of Sol Cesto in this prototype so god damnit I’m counting it, it’s my video, I don’t care.
Squarepinski is a cozy jigsaw game where every piece is a simple square. So that means instead of relying on the shapes of the tabs and holes, you can only use the pictures. Also, the tiles can be resized and mirrored - which adds a unique challenge. The built-in puzzles are cool, but you can also import your own pictures to generate infinite puzzles. I recommend this one - though I might be a little biased as it’s made by one of the mods on the GMTK Discord! Hi Dotwo!
Swan Song is a cozy... sorry, I need a new word for cozy. I’ve already said it too many times. Swan Song is a peaceful puzzle game about constructing a song that will manipulate the internal gears and springs of a music box - so that a swan can get to the goal. It’s got over 100 puzzles, plus also a nine chapter storyline with voice acting. Move over goose game, it’s all about swans now.
Tape Man is a puzzle platformer about a builder who can use a tape measure to solve puzzles. Not only can your expanding measure be used as a platform, but it can also interact with various elements - in surprising and mysterious ways. You’ll have to figure that out for yourself. It was in June’s Steam Next Fest with a free demo - but expect the full game sometime in 2026.
Tenvader is described by developer Rikerat as Tetris meets Space Invaders. What the heck does that entail? Hey shut up I’ll tell you. So you’re blasting at alien baddies with your lil’ spaceship. And then legally-distinct blocks drop out of the sky - which you can slot into your ship. Each one confers new abilities and powers - giving the game an addictive roguelike loop. It’s got one review, but it sums it up nicely - “an incredibly ambitious game that packs a lot of great ideas into a very cohesive package”.
TetherGeist is a pixel art platformer that’s all about precision and perseverance. It’s definitely inspired by Celeste but has its own core mechanic: namely the ability to eject the hero’s spirit into the astral plane, move it about, and then snap back into the new position. Marry that up with dozens of clever mechanics and enemy types and you’ve got a truly terrific platformer. With an indepth story to boot. Plus, developer O. and Co. games did a long devlog series about evolving this game from a jam entry to a full Steam and console release, which I’d highly recommend watching through.
Threadbound is a puzzle platformer where you can connect two objects in the environment, and have them share the same movement. So now you can shift one block in order to move another object on the other side of the screen. This charming pixel art head scratcher was one of my top picks in the 2021 jam - so it’s great to see that a full version will come to Steam in the future. There’s a demo right now if you want to check out the current progress.
Tiny Traffic is a relaxing turn-based puzzle game about redirecting the flow of traffic. You can tell I’m running out of steam on writing these descriptions because that’s literally what it says on the game’s store page. But anyway - it’s a clever take on this familiar set-and-forget puzzle design. And I feel like I definitely played the jam version during a stream, maybe? I’ve played a LOT of jam games at this point. Well over 1000. Where’s my congressional medal, Obama?
Two-Timin’ Towers is a clever twist on the tower defence game, with the simple change that your character runs around the battlefield... and your towers have friendly fire. So that means the more defensive structures you place down, and the more bullets they spew out, the more difficult it is to stay alive. I often use it as a go-to example of taking a familiar genre and doing something unexpected. Sadly this one has been stuck in “coming soon” mode for years, but there is a demo on Steam at least.
UvsU: You vs. You - the game so nice they named it twice - is the next game from dietzribi - developers of the genre-bending puzzle game Toodee and Topdee. This one is equally clever: you must finish the level. Then play it again as the villain, killing your previous self. Then play it again as the hero, avoiding the villain. And so on. A recursive self-defeating spiral of death. All with a funky claymation art style. There’s a demo on Steam right now.
Word Factori is a simplified Zachtronics game, where you create a production line to spell words. Only one factory can actually make a letter: the letter I. The rest can bend, flip, and combine that shape to make the other letters. So if you want to spell out the word cat, you need to make a complex mega factory with dozens of processing steps. And best of all: it’s got a histogram! We’ve come full circle!
Word Play is... hey! That’s my game! Okay this one is a bit cheeky as yes, I am promoting my own game. And also it wasn’t in the official GMTK Game Jam, but the secret Patreon-only jam for my Discord community. Which means I’m promoting that too. But as previously established: my video, my rules. BYE.
And finally, Wrangle Ranch is a roguelike about lassoing animals on a farm. And then, in classic Balatro style, you can get upgrades to score more points, more quickly. It’s a cute and fun game, but then YouTuber and developer BenBonk said he made minus 200 dollars on the game which, uh, I feel partly responsible for, as the host of the game jam. Sorry about that, Ben!
And so there we have it. One hundred games that went from jam to Steam.
If you want to find out more, I’ve got an ever-growing list on Backloggd where you can see all the games that have made the jump from the jam.
And so the final thing I have to ask is... who’s next? Who’s the next person who will discover a great game idea during the jam - and turn it into a game that makes millions of dollars, or wins a BAFTA, or gets released on Switch, or is just a cool ass video game that people enjoy. Could it be you?
There’s only one way to find out. GMTK Game Jam 2026 starts on July 22nd. I’ll see you there.