Updates to video games nowadays can weigh in at gigabytes in size, but a new project from indie developer Daivuk is so tiny that even a screenshot of it is gigantic in comparison. The project is dubbed QUOD, and it"s a fully functional single-player 3D shooter packed with multiple levels, weapons, enemies, sound, and music, all packed into just 64 kilobytes.
The levels aren"t simple rooms either. There are secrets to find, switches to flip, particle effects, blood splatters, accurate lights, pathfinding enemies, and smooth animations. Using either the melee axe weapon or firearms, you can go around blasting enemies while dodging their attacks with fast-paced movements.
To pack everything into such a tiny size, the developer has used a multitude of space-saving techniques. While the experience is a crafted one, the game spins itself up using instruction recipes for generating the visuals, a custom-built synthesizer for generating sound effects, symmetrical asset and enemy models to save up on half the data, and plenty of other original tools focused on space management.
Daivuk has even developed a custom virtual machine and an entire programming language specifically for this project, all for the sake of saving two whole kilobytes, letting him squeeze in an entire extra level thanks to it.
A deep dive video log about the QUOD project from the developer himself can be seen below, where Daivuk goes over how he tackled the 64-kilobyte challenge, how code optimizations were done to meet the microscopic footprint, and plenty of other intricate development details.
Despite being tiny in size, it still needs some relatively decent hardware to run the game properly. The developer"s minimum specifications include an Intel i5 and a GTX 770 (or equivalent hardware), 8 GB of RAM, and, as expected, 64 kilobytes of disk space.
In its current state, QUOD ships with three levels, four unique enemies, four weapons, "a handful of" power-ups, and even a boss fight. You can download and play the project now from itch.io.