Making a Game under 4 MB - My First Game Jam (Chiperia DevLog)

Freadel July 04, 2021

Hello readers! Today I am going to share my experience of participating in my first game jam. This game jam is hosted on Itch.io. The game jam is called '4MB Jam'.

 In this jam, you must make a game under 4 Mega Bytes and you need to follow the given rules. Some of the rules are:

- Submissions must not occupy 4MB of disk space or more.

- Submissions must be executable on stock hardware, or stock installations of Windows, macOS, or Ubuntu.

- All libraries count towards size, statically linked or not, excluding Windows/Mac/Linux standard libraries.

- No content should be streamed or obtained outside of the files provided. (No streaming assets from server, for example.)

- Modifications of games are not allowed.

- No content deemed illegal to distribute in Canada or the US, or content promoting people to commit dangerous acts.

- Appropriate warnings must be clearly present for NSFW content, flashing imagery, or other content generally considered inappropriate or jarring to the general public.

- If you're using a runtime like Flash, Pico8, Scratch, etc... the runtime will count toward the size of your game.

- All submissions must be free until the jam is over.

- A download to your game must be present on your game page until the jam is over.


The Beginning:

At first it seems easy because I know a LOT of games that have less than 4 MB. At first I tried making a blank project using the GameMaker Studio Engine and exported it as .exe. But I can not believe what I saw after exporting it.

I saw it is 3.96 MB in size!! It is a blank project.

I gave up on GameMaker Studio and instead I switched to Construct 2. It is based on html5 and it is very easy to use (not sponsored). The only option to export it to .exe is by using NW.js. The exported executable is over 100 MB!! It is a blank project!! HOW?!?

At this time I was just about to give up. But then came the enlightenment


The Enlightenment:

A couple days after the jam started, one of the mods made a post on the community post:

"HTML5 is allowed but must have a download link somewhere (the source code)."

Finally, some hope. My idea is to make a black and white 1-bit game. The mechanics is the same as my first game Testro which you can play right here:


The other advantage is that there is a game jam where you must make a black and white game called Black and White Jam №∞+1.
So I can submit my game for this jam too!

Luckily in Construct 2 the PNGs are compressed without reducing quality. So the game at first has only ~500 KB in size. But then came the audio...

The Audio:

The audio in Construct 2 is not compressed. The available formats are .ogg and .aac. To be honest with you, it is very easy to compress it. I use an online tool to compress my audio files. It can reduce the size by 50% without making a noticeable change in quality. Now all is set and done. I named my game 'Chiperia'.
It's about an artificial bacteria that is being tested. Just a simple 'mission' type shooter game. You can play this game here: (available on ANY operating system, touch controls included in the Android version)

The Conclusion:

So it was fun. The experience and the challenges is fun. The game ends up getting more than 100+ plays. But did you know what is very hard? Exporting your Construct 2 project to apk.... (Part 2?)

UPDATE: Part 2 is here:

Thank you for reading! For more content check out my YouTube channel:

tags: Game developer, gamedev, 2D games, free games, pixel art, pixel games, 8bit games, 1bit games, small sized games, games under 10 MB, free pc games, devlog, games under 1gb for pc, indie gamedev, indie games developer

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