Day 0: The theme, the rules, and an empty project

The theme is Director's Cut. The rules say gameplay and art get made during the four days, so the engine I'd built stays out and the game starts from an empty Unreal project.

The 2026 Epic AI MegaJam’s theme went up this afternoon: Director’s Cut. The jam runs four days, November 12 to 15.

The first idea: bring my engine

Before the jam I’d built a game engine core of my own, with rewind, replays and cameras that cut between angles. A lot of what Director’s Cut suggests is already in it. The plan was to build the jam game on top of it.

Then I read the rules

The official rules let you prepare tools ahead of time: AI tools, agent setups, MCP settings, prompts and scripts. Gameplay, levels and art have to be made during the contest. So the core stays out, along with every model and material I’d made before. The game starts on Thursday as an empty Unreal 5.9 project.

That turned out to be a good constraint. Everything that ends up on screen will have been made in these four days, and this log will show how.

The plan

The idea is picked and the plan is written. What the game is goes up on Day 1. For now, the shape of it: four days, with one gate to pass each day.

Thursday: something playable that already feels good, and a packaged build that runs.
Friday: the game’s central idea working from start to finish.
Saturday: the whole game, start to finish, in a packaged build.
Sunday: fixes and polish, submitted by 7 PM ET, two hours early.

Tools

Claude Code for planning, code and builds. Tripo for characters. OpenAI Astra for modelling and cleanup in Blender. Unreal’s MCP for driving the editor. These were prepared before the jam and are declared with the submission: the plan, the agents’ instructions and settings, the MCP setup and prompt guides.