Not necessarily - the actual output exe doesn't actually use the .NET framework for anything at all, besides invoking the main. The actual logic of outputting t

Not necessarily - the actual output exe doesn't actually use the .NET framework for anything at all, besides invoking the main. The actual logic of outputting the bytes to the console is done via a pinvoke (c# ffi) call to the underlying unmanaged (non-.net) code exposed by ucrt.dll But anyway, this other article [0] (shared in another comment here) about creating the smallest version of Snake (the game) was done on top of .NET Core (the new version of .NET that isn't bundled with Windows) and effectively does the same thing, but actually produces a non-.NET binary, if that's more to your taste. [0]: https://medium.com/@MStrehovsky/building-a-self-contained-game-in-c-under-8-kilobytes-74c3cf60ea04 https://medium.com/@MStrehovsky/building-a-self-contained-ga...