Correspondent Brendan Keogh recently attended a 48 hour "game jam" at the Queensland University of Technology to document how 20 sleep-addled dev teams create complete video games in only two days using the words "key," "badger," and "suit" for guidance. Here's the third and final part of the story about that strange weekend.

Sunday, 6:22am

I wake with a start as Becky shakes my shoulder. "Sorry, Brendan," she says. "I fell asleep, too."

My iPhone lies right beside my head. I slept through the alarm that must have been going off for ages. The sun is shining through a single slit in the light-blocking curtains and I feel worse now than I did before I went to sleep nearly five hours ago.

I look up at the countdown clock: 09:35:40 to go. We are now well and truly in the final stretch. I expect the frantic crunch to have started, but looking around the indie room, sleeping bodies still lie everywhere. Jason, the programmer, is the sole person awake for Rockin' Moses; everyone else is asleep below and around him. Ash is nowhere to be seen. Matchbox Battery is out.

Downstairs I find the rest of the pros and indies sleeping, scattered around the halls and under the stairs, away from the noise.

In the bathroom, I splash cold water on my face and hair before I realize that I don't have a towel. I use my hoodie instead—it's already been a makeshift blanket, pillow, and blindfold. Outside, the morning air is cool and windy but the sky is that translucent kind of blue you only get in springtime, right after dawn. Going back to the indie room, a cold breeze hits my face and finally snaps me awake.

It's too early for any nearby cafes to be open, if they open at all on a Sunday. I make my way to the kitchen instead for a Styrofoam cup of instant coffee-sludge, but the kitchen is out of Styrofoam cups. I take a risk, pouring the boiling water and brown powder into one of the plastic cups instead. The bottom doesn't melt through; that's good enough for me.

I take the cup around the side of the building, walking past a glazed-over Kai nursing a steaming mug of her own, to sit in the sun. Being outside really brings home the particular warm scent of the indie room. It's the stagnant heat of dead air, bodies, and computer towers. The photographer who has been visiting intermittently over the weekend described it best: "Walking into that room is like sticking your head in a box full of puppies." By contrast, the morning breeze and direct sunlight feel like a fresh shower.

It truly alarms me how tired I feel. Somewhere in my arms is this hollow, shivering feeling. I can't focus on anything; I don't know what to do next. I sympathise with the contestants refusing to get up, even as the timer ticks past 09:00:00. Why would you?

But even as I type this paragraph, Jason of Rockin' Moses gets up from his computer and wakes his team members. Tim looks alarmed, almost like a wild beast, not sure where he is or how he got here. He immediately starts to walk toward the door, stops, then walks slowly back to his workstation. Rocco rubs his eyes and sits right back down at his desk, pulls out a notepad, and starts to scribble ideas.

I ask him how he is feeling. He nods, still groggy. "I think I slept far more deeply than I intended to."

"Yeah. I know that feeling," I say.

I read back over the stuff I typed last night. The paragraphs spiral into incoherency near the time I passed out. I do my best to mold them into actual sentences. I remove a brainstorming-as-egg-fertilization metaphor that seemed so clever the night before.

8:00am

Feeling slightly more human now, I do another round of the indie room. Teammates are now being forcefully awakened and told to get back to work. The key to the showers is in high demand.

Matchbox Battery are still recharging, though. Isaac has left and now James is the only one at the workstation, though he hardly seems awake. All of Rockin' Moses are back and are working on a menu screen, HUD, and yet more polish. At Well Placed Cactus, Tyson tells me that they have everything more-or-less working and now they just need to polish and tweak. While talking to him, I hear a snoring sound. Not a few inches from my foot is Chris' head, camouflaged in his sleeping bag among piles of chip packets and soft drink cans.

Notably, lone developer Ash hasn't appeared at his workstation yet. I don't know how late he worked, though; for all I know, he went to sleep just before I woke up.

Entering the pro room for the first time that morning, I notice that For Science! are all still there, sleeping beneath their desks like an indie team. Steve and Szevvy are the only ones awake, working on code.

All of Heinous Agenda are back, too. Their game looks practically the same as when Pres talked me through it yesterday afternoon, but they have been implementing sound and tweaking the gameplay.

Over at Convict Agenda, Rebecca is toying with a playable prototype, flicking pink squares around a picket-fence yard. It surprises me how few prototypes there are in the pro room compared to the rough-but-playable things coming out of the indie room twelve, fifteen hours ago.

"I guess we are more relaxed about it," Rebecca says. The indies need to prototype early to ensure what they are doing is actually fun. The pros can take a bigger gamble on assuming what they have designed will be enjoyable. Rebecca does give me one caveat: "If you come back and ask us at 3pm—or at least try to ask us—we might not be so calm."

Alliance of Indie's Milenko and Liam are working on their Alien Badger Queen model. She is sprawled on her back with multiple autonomous teats squirming around her underside. She is also wearing a small crown. "I think the breasts are jiggling too much," Milenko muses. It's the perpetual bane of videogame design.

Finally, the cafe across the road opens. I head over for a proper, strong coffee and a ham and cheese croissant. On the way, I spy a familiar lump asleep on a park bench: James from Matchbox Battery is passed out in the sunlight like a lizard.

9:00am

As I re-enter the indie room, the timer ticks down to 06:59:59. Rockin' Moses is back in 3DS Max. I ask what they could possibly be animating at this stage. "Oh no," says Elliot. "We're just taking pictures of the badgers in poses for the menu and stuff."

Ash has yet to re-appear. I worry he has overslept his alarm, much like I did. He has no teammates to wake him. I want him to make it, I realize, one man doing everything. He came into the competition with such clear vision, and to see him stumble now would be heartbreaking. I head downstairs to see if I can't find him in the hallways, but no sleepers are left.

Matchbox Battery's workstation, meanwhile, is practically abandoned. Only Andrew is sitting at his computer, but his eyes are bloodshot and glazed over. Minutes later, he just up and walks out of the room.

Heads are all down at Well Placed Cactus, frantically pulling together the various game assets. The team is increasingly enthusiastic about their project, which has a name now: "Badger of Honour." Tyson hands me a controller and some earphones and gives me a turn. Jack's sound effects work great. The game doesn't quite have the atmosphere of Modern Warfare's gunship level, but it's getting close. The camera can be viewed in normal color, showing the green island, white beaches, and crystal water, with worms walking around. Swapping to "white hot," the worms stand out against the backdrop. I zoom in, the camera "whirring" beautifully, and fire. The projectile is still just a cube and not yet a badger.

"That's a cluster badger," Tyson tells me. "If you press the button again you split up and explode everywhere."

I press 'A' and the camera switches right back to the gunship as smaller cubes rain down on the island and fiery explosions ripple through the air. It can't be overestimated how having the "spectator" camera grounded in the gunship lends a strange sense of gravitas to a game about shooting kamikaze badgers down at evil worms.

"Try the honey badger," Tyson says.

The honey badger is the navigable one. I shoot one and direct it right into a worm. The explosion is huge, and it's incredibly fun. I'm astounded to think that less than 42 hours ago this was just a crazy idea in a pub.

"So what do you guys have left to do?" I ask.

Tyson points at blue Post-it notes stuck down the sides of his monitor: menu visuals/sounds, badger animations, inversion, score. It doesn't sound too bad until I realize that each team member's computer has a similar number of notes.

10:00am

I ask Rockin' Moses if I can have another go at their game, "The Fifth Suit."

It feels like a lifetime since Rocco pitched me on "Bomberman Musical Chairs," but now here it is. Four players. Four 360 controllers. I'm playing the badger of clubs and the other team members take the other suits. I start digging through blocks and before long I burst into the badger of hearts' tunnel. I sprint past him and beeline to my first card. On my way to the second card, I get punched out by the badger of spades. Still, I get my key first and make it to the next level while the others are still bickering. Badger of spades, meanwhile, is knocked out.

The "ghost" mechanic has finally been implemented, so in the next level, while the three remaining badgers try to get our cards, the badger of spades' ghost can steal cards and run around with them at half speed. The other badgers have to chase him down and punch him to get their cards back. This is, essentially, trolling, but it works great. You can't win once you are kicked out, but you can still play. Most crucially, it is truly fun.

Matchbox Battery is back in place and Andrew gives me a turn on their dual-stick "shooter" in which players "badger" each other by bouncing balls around using shields. I'm a Geometry Wars addict and have been eager to try this one further. The controls are slick. Moving the shield to cover your ship feels perfect and intuitive. Various USB keys appear as power-ups (full shield, more speed, destroy all balls) and the number of balls on the level steadily increases. While one player staying alive is pretty basic, I can see that with four players bouncing balls everywhere, badgering the other players, the action will quickly get chaotic. Sound hasn't been implemented yet, however, and there are still a lot of bugs. The server is lagging, and occasionally balls pass straight through the shield. I leave Andrew with his pages of code to figure out the solution.

The countdown clock is at 05:47:04 and Ash is still not here. One Lonely Developer's workstation is empty. I mention this to Truna, who is busy uploading her latest round of "body count" photos to the Twitter feed. She isn't bothered. "I think that demonstrates a quiet confidence on his behalf," she says.

I wish I could share her confidence in Ash's confidence. He is running out of time.