Hourglass

THE LORE
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[Count D.] "Who am I", you ask?

You are but a Sol, a wandering soul who does not remember their past life.

You only remember that there's something you didn't quite manage to accomplish in the Realm Above... a lingering regret, or a broken promise that's still bugging you.

Sols like you are cursed to wander these lands until they find some sort of remorse and mend their past lives ...

...at least that's what they all say. Thing is, as ruler of the Underworld, many things are under my control here, including you. In principle, I could even let you go right now.

However, the current situation is very dire, and I need all the help I can get.

You are looking at the Eternal Hourglass. In a way, the Hourglass is the very source of life. Its sand represents the balance of Overworld beings and Sols present in my domain.

However, I sense that most of the Sols that were supposed to have arrived here recently have all ended up going missing on their way here.

If they remain in the space between dimensions for too long, the Hourglass will slowly empty, and life in the Overworld will eventually cease to exist.

This is something I cannot risk. It will therefore be your job to find the missing Sols.

Moving around these parts will feel slightly off since a countdown will be placed on you due to your connection to the Hourglass as a Sol... oh and then there's all the Ice and Lava...

but I'm sure you'll manage just fine.

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Hourglass is a 2D puzzle game that I made for GMTK Game Jam 2026.

You are on an hourglass timer. Every time you make a move, time passes, and the hourglass counter decrements.

To keep on moving, you must not run out of time - certain tiles will flip your hourglass or change the counter so you can move further.

However, after the hourglass is flipped, the level will look very different from how it used to look like...

This is how I took the theme for this year's jam: use the hourglass countdown to your advantage so you can solve puzzles in environments that flip between different states.

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Controls: 

Arrow keys / WASD to move

 [ Z ]  undo move

 [ R ]  reset room

[ ESC ] level select          

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Good luck and have fun playing! :>

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All 9 levels in the jam build have been playtested and should be possible to complete.

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Used Fonts:

• monogram by datagoblin https://datagoblin.itch.io/monogram
• Tiny5 by Stefan Schmidt

All other assets (code, art, music, etc.)
created by me, without any use of AI tools.