Deadweight

Chapter 1 of 3 — The Heist

Every second is borrowed. Every dollar makes you slower. Get in, get rich, get out — before the clock runs out, your ammo runs dry, or your own legs give out under everything you tried to carry.

Deadweight is a top-down bullet-hell heist built entirely around things that only ever run out. Your level timer counts down. Your health counts down. Your ammo counts down. And the cash you can't resist scooping up on the way? It counts against you too — every stack you grab makes you heavier, slower, and easier to hit. There is no "topping up." Every choice trades one problem for another.

Fight or flee through a bank guarded by trigger-happy security. Gun a guard down and you'll burn ammo and eat return fire doing it — dodge past instead, and they don't forget: once a guard spots you, it chases, all the way to the vault if it has to. Skip a room clean and you're just deferring the fight to somewhere more crowded. Crack the safe, then decide whether everything in your pockets is worth the walk back to the door — weighed down, low on time, and however much ammo you've got left standing between you and the exit.

What's here:

• A risk/reward loop where every resource only ever depletes — no pickups that top you back up, only ones that make a different problem worse
• Guards that stay alerted permanently and chase via real pathfinding once they've spotted you
• Three difficulty tiers (Easy/Medium/Hard) tuning guard fire rate, your starting time, and your ammo margin all at once
• A floor plan built around one real decision — which rooms you loot on the way through — before a fixed, escalating gauntlet to the exit

Deadweight is the first of a planned three-chapter arc built for GMTK Game Jam 2026 (theme: "Count Down") — a bank heist, then a getaway car chase, then a boat escape to international waters, each one the same shape: everything you're carrying only ever counts down.

Controls: WASD / arrow keys to move, mouse to aim and shoot, E to interact.

Credits: Environment and character art adapted from the "Modern Bank Tileset" pack and CraftPix's "TDS Modern Pixel Game Kit" (both licensed asset packs, used per their terms). Gunfire sound effects from the "Realistic Weapons Bundle" (GameDevMarket). Alarm bell sound ("1950's Bank Alarm Bell" by TheSupremeMuffinPooter, Freesound, CC0) from a bank-robbery scene in the 1956 film "No Road Back". No generative AI art or audio was used anywhere in this game, per the jam's rules.