The 1.44MB Game Development Contest — organized by 2P GAME ARCADE and co-sponsored by indiegame.com — has expanded its special award structure to eight separate prizes as the September 4 submission deadline approaches.
Eight partner institutions will each select one entry from the full submission pool according to their own criteria: indiegame.com, Minimap, Myongji College, Chungkang College of Cultural Industries, SingleCore Games, Nextstage, Game Culture Foundation’s Game Culture Education Center, and Bada Games.
Each special award carries a prize of ₩144,000 — a figure that deliberately mirrors the contest’s defining constraint. The prize amount isn’t arbitrary; it’s the competition’s thesis statement in monetary form.
The Competition
The 1.44MB Game Development Contest asks participants to build a complete, independently executable game — no internet connection, no server dependency, no browser required — within the storage capacity of a single 3.5-inch floppy disk. That constraint, 1.44 megabytes, was the practical limit of portable software distribution in the early-to-mid 1990s. Games shipped on two or three disks were considered large.
In a current development environment where asset files routinely reach gigabytes in size and a single uncompressed audio track can exceed the entire contest limit, the constraint serves as both a technical challenge and a creative philosophy: to demonstrate that an enjoyable, complete play experience doesn’t require the resources that contemporary development assumes.
The competition is open to individuals and teams, professional developers, and students. The entry requirements are simple: the total distribution file package must not exceed 1.44 MB, and the game must run independently without external dependencies.
The Main Prizes
1st Place: ₩720,000
2nd Place: ₩280,000
3rd Place: ₩140,000
Total prize pool (main + special): ₩1,140,000+
Submission Details
Deadline: September 4, 2026
Organizer: 2P GAME ARCADE
Institutional partners: Minimap, indiegame.com, Chungkang College of Cultural Industries, Myongji College
Contact: 2PGARCADE.COM / mecagun@2pgarcade.com
indiegame.com is an official sponsor and special award partner for this contest.
