Making a game on a custom bytecode VM in 7 days and 3kB

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 self-contained executable. It's amazing what humans can do.