Blood Count

The sun is coming up. The coffin is right there. Nine flights of stairs of holy hostility stand between you and a decent day's sleep.

Made in 96 hours for GMTK Game Jam 2026 - theme: Count Down.

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The Story

Count Dracula has had a long night.

He is tired. He is full. He is, frankly, over it. All he wants is to get back to his coffin before dawn burns him to ash.

Unfortunately, the Church heard he was in town. Nuns, priests, and one extremely committed Pope are lined up between the Count and his bed - and each one is guarded by a chain of blood gems that has to be drained in exactly the right order.

Drain the count down. Get to the coffin. Sleep.

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Theme: Count Down

Count Down isn't a mechanic we bolted on - it's the whole game, three times over:

• You count down. Every board is a chain of numbered blood gems. You must drink them in descending order - the highest number first, all the way down to 1. Reach 1 and the enemy falls.
• The clock counts down. Every stage is a handful of seconds. You hear it tick. Under 5 seconds it goes red and starts screaming at you.
• The Count goes down. He's the Count. He's counting down. He'd like to lie down. Everything about this vampire is a countdown.

And the timer itself counts down across each level: the first stage is generous, and every stage after it gives you less time than the last, until the final stage of every level lands on a knife-edge 5 seconds.

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How to Play

Mouse only. One button. No tutorial needed.

1. Press and hold on the highest-numbered gem on the grid (it's highlighted green at the start of each stage).
2. Drag through neighbouring squares - up, down, left, right. No diagonals.
3. Pass through the numbers in descending order: 9 → 8 → 7 … → 1.
4. Hit 1 before the timer runs out and the Count feasts. The stage is yours.

Useful things to know:

• You can back out. Drag back over your own line to retract it - all the way back if you need to. Mistakes are free; hesitation isn't.
• You don't have to be efficient. You can wander through empty squares as much as you like. You just can't cross your own line, and you can't skip a number.
• Let go and you keep your progress - the line stays. Only the clock punishes you.
• Esc pauses everything, mid-drag, mid-tick. Music and SFX sliders are in Settings.
• Pick your Count. Settings → Character lets you choose who stalks the night before you press Play.

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The Ladder

9 levels. 5 stages each. 45 boards between you and the coffin.

Rank	Who's in the way	What they do
Nuns	Levels 1–4	Plain boards. Longer chains each level.
Priests	Levels 5–8	Green gem - touch it and the remaining numbers vanish. Keep counting from memory.
The Pope	Level 9	Red gem - touch it and the entire board reshuffles under your hand. Start again. Faster.

No lives, no save. Lose once and the Count crawls back to the start of the night.

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Features

• Chain-drawing puzzle that teaches itself in one board and turns vicious by board twenty
• 9 hand-tuned difficulty tiers with two escalating twist mechanics
• Every board is procedurally generated - no memorising solutions, no two runs alike
• Hand-drawn gothic art, a full walk from the crypt to the coffin, and a proper ending
• Juicy audio: per-second clock ticks, blood-drain pops, dying screams, and a very tired vampire

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Tips from the Count

• Find 1 first. Plan your ending, then work backwards to your beginning.
• The line is a wall. Every square you walk over is a square you can never use again. Hug the edges.
• Against priests, say the numbers out loud. It genuinely works.
• Against the Pope, don't panic on the reshuffle. You get a free breath while the board resettles. Use it to find the highest number.

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Credits

Blood Count - created for GMTK Game Jam 2026 by Neutral Item Studios.

Built in Unity 6 (URP + UI Toolkit).

Asset Attribution

"Coffin" by TeaX3 is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution.

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Rate it, then let the man sleep.