What I built
Glimmerhop is a portrait mobile puzzle-action game about Glim, a teal slime carrying a fragment of the shattered Heartlight Crystal. The basic idea is simple: keep hopping, light every block, and survive the creatures and hazards trying to stop you. I wanted it to feel relaxed and musical without making it effortless.
I entered Build Week with an existing playable 3D hopping foundation. During the submission period I turned that foundation into a much more complete game: a 60-level campaign across the Mystical Forest, Gloamwood, Crystal Caverns, and Emberdeep, with a world map, progression, scoring, results, distinct procedural music, environmental storytelling, and Android-ready controls.
How it plays
Movement is continuous once Glim starts hopping. You steer between blocks and can double-jump across a gap or over a ground threat. Fresh landings build a musical flow streak. Ten successful steps activate Radiance, allowing Glim to absorb one enemy before the charge drains.
Each area changes the problem:
- The Forest introduces the basic route-planning loop.
- Gloamwood becomes darker and more hostile, including Veiled enemies that can jump gaps.
- Crystal Caverns adds paired tunnel portals, Shardrollers, and Burrowers.
- Emberdeep places the board over flowing lava and introduces telegraphed eruptions that leave tiles temporarily dangerous.
The game also includes a boss, collectibles, score bonuses, three-star results based on remaining lives, local save progression, slime colour customization, audio controls, and Aster dialogue for tutorials and story context.
What changed during Build Week
The biggest additions were the Glimmerhop identity and Glim direction, the completed Gloamwood/Caverns/Emberdeep campaign content, Radiance combat, area-native enemies and hazards, portal travel, game-wide scoring, results screens, Aster dialogue, Android pause/back behavior, customization, and a much broader automated regression suite.
The Emberdeep work was one of the largest single slices. It added a flowing lava-sea shader, pooled eruption effects, warning/spit/hot phases driven by the gameplay clock, area audio, fifteen levels, focused tests, and phone verification on the Android Vulkan Mobile renderer.
How I used Codex and GPT-5.6
I used Codex with GPT-5.6 extensively throughout Build Week, often in standalone Codex sessions. It helped with product exploration, architecture, GDScript implementation, debugging, level-rule design, regression testing, Blender asset builders, visual iteration, Android export troubleshooting, code review, and release preparation.
For larger pieces I also used a TRIP planning and review workflow. Some of those workflows used Claude Fable as an orchestrator while GPT-5.6 Luna handled scoped implementation and GPT-5.6 Sol reviewed plans and code. GPT-5.6 was also used independently for substantial implementation work, including the Emberdeep/lava-cave slice referenced by the submitted Codex feedback session.
I directed the design, made the game-feel decisions, reviewed the output, and repeatedly tested builds on an Android phone. The repository preserves the dated plans, promoted reviews, tests, changelog, and commit history.
Technical notes
Glimmerhop is built in Godot 4.7 with GDScript. Most visuals are procedural meshes and drawing code, while the character and several enemies use Blender-built GLB assets. Music and sound effects are synthesized at runtime. The Android build targets arm64 and uses Vulkan Mobile.
The release includes a downloadable APK, and the README documents both the quickest Android test path and how to run the project from source.
What is next
The next major step is expanding Radiance absorption into short enemy-inspired movement/combat forms, then designing the Gloamwood and Caverns bosses.
