alt.hn

7/20/2026 at 6:23:32 PM

Build a Game That Fits on a Single Floppy Disk: 1.44MB Game Development Contest

 https://www.gamespress.com/Build-a-Game-That-Fits-on-a-Single-Floppy-Disk-The-144MB-Game-Developm

by haunter

7/20/2026 at 9:37:32 PM

My recollection is that Civilization (1) came on 5 (? 7?) floppy disks for Mac, but only the first disk was needed for the full game in black and white; the additional disks were needed for color and some add-on assets like improving your palace.

"Build a game that stands the test of time as well as Civilization" is a pretty high bar. 1.44 MB is huge.

by addaon

7/21/2026 at 2:44:49 AM

Ironically what doesn't stand the test of time are Civ 2: Test of Time and the Civ 7 Test of Time update

by nylonstrung

7/21/2026 at 2:53:24 AM

Civ 7 still isn't good, but Test of Time made it somewhat better. It took a long time for Civ 6 to get good after release, but I'd argue they got there. Still frustrating, though.

by addaon

7/21/2026 at 12:44:54 AM

While I can appreciate the general concept of designing withing limitations, 1.44MB just isn't quite the limit it's being presented as. Look at Pico-8 games, for example. With the full Pico-8 runtime environment bundled in, typical games still clock in well under 1MB for Windows builds, and even smaller for Linux (macOS builds bloat up to 3+ MB, unfortunately). That's an entire virtual console + a full game, and still half a meg to spare on a floppy.

POOM, the DOOM clone, is a "multi-cart" on the Pico-8 and still only comes in at 1.2MB on Windows. I guess what I'm getting at is, if someone wants a fast-track to meeting the challenge of 1.44MB, make a Pico-8 game.

by ChristopherDrum

7/21/2026 at 1:49:15 AM

If the best someone can do within that 1.44MB constraint is a pico-8 game, then so be it. But I bet we're going to see much more impressive stuff!

Competitions for 16KB games exist. as well as 64KB. And likely everything between 0KB and 1440KB. It doesn't reduce the fun to have multiple tiers, in my opinion.

by tredre3

7/20/2026 at 8:59:01 PM

the requirement is too vague. whats the OS? are common dll (assuming windows) like msvcrt included in the 1.44 MB size or not? .Net runtime also usually installed, will it count too?

by degurechaff

7/21/2026 at 1:58:14 AM

To me the spirit seems to be that it should run on your average Windows machine without any external dependencies and without a web browser.

Your average PC has half a dozen .net runtimes installed but likely not the correct .net version you want (yay), so to me it seems like it would be out. Same for the various C++ redistributables, better not rely on that unless you ship the DLLs you need with it (which I don't think you're allowed to do per Microsoft).

https://2pgarcade.com/contest-144mb.html isn't much more elaborate than the article unfortunately.

by tredre3

7/20/2026 at 10:41:11 PM

From the article:

> All files required to run each game must fit within 1.44MB. Entries must be standalone games that run without a separate server or internet connection, and the size limit includes every required component, including game engines and libraries.

by hybrasian

7/20/2026 at 11:31:51 PM

Booting on what? Are BIOS calls (if allowed) considered a library? The overhead of managing a framebuffer etc without an OS (which would be a required component not included on the disk) feels like it would dominate.

by addaon

7/21/2026 at 10:36:30 AM

I was an avid fan of 64k demoscene intros, so this fills me with joy. In fact, 96k is plenty of space for fun, even 20 years ago: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=12036

by theandrewbailey

7/20/2026 at 10:55:18 PM

A well written, well thought out text based game would crush this competition

by asimovfan

7/21/2026 at 2:51:20 AM

I imagine whatever wins will probably resemble demoscene stuff or .kkrieger in that it's impressively optimized and modern looking despite the size

by nylonstrung

7/21/2026 at 12:34:01 AM

What genre do you think would be best ? Zork was basically fantasy Dungeon & Dragons. Infocom in their day had science fiction and several other kinds of games

by whitten

7/21/2026 at 2:54:26 AM

- challenge should be renamed to "build a 3d first person shooter that fits on a single floppy disk"

- now that would be very interesting to see

by vivzkestrel

7/21/2026 at 5:34:05 AM

Nice challenge, plenty of 8 and 16 bits games to get inspired from.

by pjmlp

7/20/2026 at 11:06:19 PM

Until relatively recently in computing history, games (and all other programs) were small. Hell, Pokemon Gold fits un a floppy trivially compressed, together with a working GBC emulator. I can trivially fit rePalm unto a floppy and leave enough space for a great PalmOS RTS - "Warfare Inc"

by dmitrygr

7/21/2026 at 2:06:37 AM

I disagree with your blanket statement. The vast majority of (commercial) PC games were never that small, even in the 3.5" heydays. Most games required 2-10 disks.

by tredre3

7/21/2026 at 5:29:57 AM

When PC really took off as gamming platform against Amiga and Atari ST, shipping games in CD-ROM was already a thing.

Amiga had plenty of single disk games.

by pjmlp

7/21/2026 at 2:55:18 AM

PC? what pc?

Every single NES game or CGB game would fit on a floppy. More or less all GBC and SNES games could compress down to a floppy

by dmitrygr

7/21/2026 at 5:32:30 AM

At least in many European countries, game consoles were never that big during the 1980-90's, until PlayStation really took off.

However, and to go with your remark,

ZX Spectrum, C64, CPC, Archimedes, Amiga, Atari, plenty of games that would fit into a single floppy.

by pjmlp

7/21/2026 at 6:39:50 AM

Off-topic: regarding Windows NT emulation challenge, now IA64 and AXP32/64 target are also somehow filled.

by roytam87