- Author
- Matt Sephton (gingerbeardman)
- Published
- 30 July 2026
- Kind
- Personal blog postmortem by the game's developer
- Original
- blog.gingerbeardman.com/2026/07/30/beltrunner-game-design-postmortem/
- Subject
- Games and game design
- Themes
- Small means
What it is
Matt Sephton wrote this postmortem of Beltrunner, an original game entered in a jam. It explains how the design developed. It also says what the game demanded of the Jinks engine. It assumes the reader has played the game.
What it says
- Beltrunner opens as pure Asteroids, then reveals a numbered-gate race from wave 2.
- The game has no lives, so the race clock is the only resource.
- The game has sixteen waves in four acts. Each act teaches one new gate behaviour.
- One seeded stream drives every random draw, so a single number sets the whole layout.
- Splitting highlighted rocks in order adds voices to a chord. A hidden jackpot follows.
- The game pushed Jinks to add true torus wrapping, polygon colliders and elastic deflection.
- The whole game is about 1,300 lines and runs unchanged on several platforms.
What evidence it gives
The post is the author's own account of design decisions and play-tests. It gives a table of the four acts and lists of power-ups and engine changes. It shows no code, no player data and no measurements beyond the line count.
Interests and limits
The author built both the game and the Jinks engine. The post presents those choices favourably. No outside players or sales are reported. The author says Jinks is still changing and is coy about how it works. The post covers one small game.