A complete action-survival game built solo in 48 hours at NAU's Global Game Jam 2026 — OOP enemy AI, 5-mode player transformation, and 60 FPS with 30+ simultaneous entities.
Fragment of the Mask is a complete action-survival game designed, built, and published solo in 48 hours at NAU's Global Game Jam 2026. The game centers on a risk-reward transformation mechanic where the player cycles through five combat archetypes — each with distinct movement speed, damage output, and health trade-offs.
The core mechanic: switching between Titan, Warrior, Balanced, Agile, and Berserker modes costs health. Each mode has distinct stats tuned across 12+ gameplay variables through rapid playtesting during the jam. The health cost creates genuine strategic tension — you can be more powerful, but at a price.
Built using a parent-child OOP inheritance structure in GameMaker Studio 2. The parent object handles shared behavior: pathfinding, health management, death, and attack telegraphing (0.3–0.75 second wind-up windows). Three enemy types override specific behaviors while sharing the foundation — reducing code duplication by approximately 60%.
Dynamic wave-based difficulty scaling with algorithms that adjust enemy count, spawn rate, and type composition based on survival time. The system maintains challenge without overwhelming the player in the early game.
The jam deadline. 40% of planned features were cut by hour 36 — a boss fight, upgrade system, secondary weapons, and online leaderboard. The decision to cut was the right one: the core loop was fun, the AI was working, the five modes were balanced. Adding more would have introduced bugs without time to fix them.
Published to both itch.io and the Global Game Jam platform before the deadline. A complete, polished game built end-to-end solo in 48 hours — demonstrating gameplay programming, systems design, UI implementation, audio integration, and project delivery under pressure.
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