Singularity 2038

Context

Made for GMTK Game Jam 2026 in 1.5 days

Theme: Counting Down.

Built in Godot. Full credits, with links, are in the game on the title screen

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I wanted to make an idle game where it decrements. This is quite experimental. I know there are some balancing issues, but due to lack of time for the Game Jam, I rather let out this first iteration.

The game has leaderboards connected to a simple Supabase database.

Description

Year 2038. Simulation is solved, and existence has been industrialised

Labs around the world spin up microverses: whole sandboxed universes, allocated like lab equipment, run for an afternoon, thrown away. You think this is monstrous. Your answer is `singularity.exe`, an unfinished prototype you are not supposed to have. It is pointed at one microverse. **1.5 × 10^53 kg of matter.** Your job is to take it all.

The number goes down

This is a decremental idle game. There is no score climbing, no bigger and bigger digits. There is one number, and you win when it reaches zero. Every module you install makes it fall faster.

Upgrades cost you progress

The sandbox fights to keep its own books balanced. Installing a module makes it re-materialise mass, so every purchase pushes your countdown back up. Nothing is ever unaffordable. There is no waiting for a price. There is only the question of how much progress a faster drain is worth, and that question has a different answer every run.

Something is tracing the call

An unauthorised allocation this large does not go unnoticed. The TRACE climbs on two things: how long you take, and how much of the microverse you have torn apart. Reach 100% and the lab pulls the plug. 

So speed is not free, and speed cannot buy safety. The fastest builds finish in three and a half minutes with the trace at ninety percent, breathing on their necks. The quiet ones take twice as long and are never really in danger. Both are correct. Some builds simply lose. As the trace closes in, the prototype's interface starts coming apart, and so does the music.

Three slots, five modules

You can hold three modules at once, and there are five to choose from. A vacuum that takes a great deal and is heard doing it. A sweeper that takes less and is nearly silent. An overclock that speeds up everything you own and screams about it. A bypass that falsifies the conservation checks. And a ghost protocol that does nothing at all for your countdown, and buys the only thing you cannot drain back. 

Dumping a module gives back the mass it re-materialised, so uninstalling is progress. Swapping a loud module for stealth when the trace gets close is a real move, and it costs you seconds you may not have.

Two endings

One if you empty it. One if they reach you first. Both are written. Neither is a failure screen, and each has its own leaderboard, because a race and a survival are not ranked the same way.

Runs take four to eight minutes

Balanced deliberately short and made to be replayed. Losing should make you want another go, not close the tab.

Controls

Mouse for everything except your name. Press any key at the title.

- COLLAPSE tears out a share of what is left, on a cooldown. It is worth pressing, and it is not a clicker: mashing does nothing.

- MODULES, on the right, is where runs are won and lost. The ? on any row explains what it is and what it is for; the **NOISE** meter says how loud.

- MESSAGES, on the left, is your colleagues reacting in real time. It never interrupts, never steals focus, and you can finish a run without opening it.

- OPTIONS, top right, has volume, an optional run timer, and a way out.