Jenga and WarioWare collide in this free game
Jingoku was developed in less than 72 hours for Ludum Dare 49.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
The first thing I need you to know about Jingoku is that I’m bad at Jingoku. The second thing is that I’m still going to be playing a lot of Jenga and the accompanying minigames, because it’s that impressive. And because it has a leaderboard, which will help me prove when I’m improving. Eventually. Hopefully.
Jingoku was developed in only 72 hours by indie developer Buried Things for the Ludum Dare 49 game jam, resulting in a bunch of surprisingly polished minigames. In it, you’re playing a solo game of virtual Jenga. For each brick you remove, you’ll have a few seconds to complete a WarioWare-style minigame. Your goal is to win as many minigames as possible before your Jenga tower topples. It’s a goal I’ve been reattempting a lot.
All of Jingoku’s minigames are played with mouse controls, and they offer a good amount of variety—you’ll be firing foam darts at targets, playing tug of war and digging through the menus of fake software. Not only are the minigames fun to play, Buried Things somehow found time in those 72 hours to include in-game achievements, as well as stats and a global leaderboard ranking, all wrapped up in a stylish presentation. The difficulty level swings pretty wildly from game to game, however, and I feel a sense of dread whenever I pull a brick for the symbol-matching or spam text minigames.
Jingoku is available for free in a browser and for download onItch.io, or at itsLudum Dare 49 entry pagewhere you can even watch the livestream of its complete development process. And you can also check out any of thenearly 3,000 other gamesdeveloped for the game jam, which I intend to do once I’ve mastered placing this hat.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Lincoln started writing about games while convincing his college professors to accept his essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress, eventually leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte. After three years freelancing for PC Gamer, he joined on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.
The first PUBG spinoff with real promise is a top-down take on Rainbow Six Siege
Black Ops 6 is wasting no time stinking up the joint with ugly skins
Co-op survival game Icarus is celebrating 153 consecutive weekly updates by giving you a flamethrower and a free weekend
