Indie game contest challenges devs to fit an entire game on a 1.44MB floppy disk

Modern indie games are often celebrated for pushing creative boundaries, but one new competition is asking developers to do the exact opposite by squeezing an entire game into a 1.44mb floppy disk.

With developers constantly working around hardware limitations on handhelds, older consoles, and even retro-inspired systems, game jams and coding challenges have become a popular way to test technical creativity.

Well, now one Korean contest is reviving one of gaming’s oldest storage formats with an incredibly strict size limit, and anyone can enter.

Korean contest challenges devs to make games under 1.44MB

Essentially, Korean indie game site 2P Game Arcade has launched a new contest challenging developers to create an original game that takes up no more than 1,474,560 bytes, or 1.44MB, after decompression. That’s the exact storage capacity of a standard 3.5-inch floppy disk.

The challenge is open to any game engine, meaning developers are free to use tools like Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot, GameMaker, or custom engines. However, everything required to run the game, including the executable and any runtime files, must fit within the 1.44MB limit, so it’s not going to be a walk in the park for any modern games.

2P Game Arcade

Nevertheless, the competition is focused entirely on brand new creations. Every entry must have been started after the contest was officially announced on May 26, with submissions closing at 23:39 Korean time on September 4.

Games must also be playable as standalone executables, ruling out browser-based projects entirely. Both solo developers and teams are welcome to enter, and the site only has one primary rule outside its technical restrictions: the game has to be fun.

There is a prize to be won too, though the contest page describes the prizes as “a small souvenir.” First place will earn 720,000 South Korean won (roughly $490), while second place will receive 280,000 won (roughly $190) and third place will take home 144,000 won (roughly $98).

With modern games regularly exceeding 100GB in size, it’s certainly going to be a tough challenge for many developers.