Hi!
It's officially time for the Game Maker's Toolkit Game Jam!
As a reminder, this is a 48-hour game jam. The event has been timed to start at 6pm on Friday, July 14th in the earliest time zone on the planet, UTC+14, and end at 6pm on Sunday, July 16th in the latest time zone, UTC-12. We recommend you run the jam from 6pm Friday to 6pm Sunday in your own time zone if it's more convenient for you and/or your team. We obviously can't enforce this, so it's on the honor system that you don't jam for longer than 48 hours. If your team is working across time zones, pick one time zone and work with that one.
——————
Some ground rules/guidelines
- Don't be a jerk. Jerks get disqualified.
- Don't steal work that isn't yours. Improperly licensed or plagiarized content is unacceptable and is also grounds for disqualification.
- Don't work on your submission for more than 48 hours. This includes the ideation, planning and production phases.
- Do get some sleep. Take care of yourself, eat, shower, etc.
- Do push yourself to try new things. Jams are a great environment to grow your experiences, so push your limits!
- Do join the jam's public Discord channel to chat with the other participants!
- If you're on Twitter, do post progress updates to #gmtkjam and show off what you've been working hard on!
If you happen to have any questions about what's allowed and what isn't in a submission, we have a lovely FAQ on the jam's home page. Otherwise, you can flag down a judge in the Discord server or on Twitter using the hashtag.
——————
Theme Announcement
And now the moment you've all been waiting for. The theme is…Downwell's Dual Purpose Design!
This video is all about how everything in the indie game Downwell serves at least two purposes. Your jump button is your shoot button, shooting also helps you maneuver yourself, jumping on enemies starts a combo meter, and more.
Here’s another example of dual purpose design: In Hyper Light Drifter, you reload your gun by slashing enemies with your sword, which forces you into close-quarters combat. In Doom, the glory kill doesn’t just kill enemies, but also showers you with health, encouraging a more aggressive style of play. In Splatoon, shooting ink kills enemies, takes territory, and creates pathways. Swimming in ink is used to travel faster, climb up walls, sneak past enemies, and reload your weapon. It’s genius!
It’s all about doing more with less, and we want to see games where actions, enemies, rules, level elements, and/or buttons do multiple things - and see what fun and interesting gameplay scenarios can come from that.
——————
Judging Categories
Submissions will be judged based on five categories, each worth 20% of a total score.
- Innovation — "The unexpected. Things in a unique combination, or something so different it’s notable." –Ludum Dare
- Theme — How well an entry suits, subverts, or otherwise creatively approaches the theme
- Aesthetics — The effectiveness of the visual and/or audible style
- Feel — Juice, tight controls, ambiance, or anything else that provides an experience with feeling
- Overall — General impressions of the submission as a whole
——————
FAQ
Does the game have to be made by one person or are teams allowed?
You can work alone, or in a team of any size you wish. However, I will caution against forming groups larger than two or three people. Those groups tend to be more brittle and difficult to organize for such a short event.
Does everything have to be made in the mentioned time period or can graphics, code, sounds etc. that were already created before also be used?
We request that you please abide by an honor code and do not submit a game or game content you were working on ahead of the jam as it isn't fair to the other jammers working from scratch. This rule does not include fair-use content from non-team sources, nor does it include any third-party or custom-built engines that you wish to use in the jam, but it does include any artwork, audio, gameplay code, or designs you or anyone on your team produced before July 14th. Content released commercially is not considered acceptable to include without explicit permission from the original author. Submissions will require a list of all pre-made or licensed content and a link to a license for each item, and will be accepted under the assumption this request has been respected. Any submissions with plagiarized or otherwise prepared resources from before the jam will not be considered during judging.
What platform should the game be made for? PC, Web, Phone/Tablets, Consoles?
If you want your submission to be eligible for judging, the judges will need to be able to run it on their machine. If your game runs on Windows/Mac/Linux and is able to launch without throwing off an antivirus software, you're probably fine. Same deal goes for web games, though if there is a specific browser requirement, it should be noted in the submission details. Mobile games should also make note of their preferred platform, environment (screen size, OS version, etc), and any additionally required information needed to run in the details.
On what OS are you going to play the games? Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS or something else?
See the above. If we end up receiving a lot of solutions, it may be difficult to devote more than a few minutes per game (as much as we want to keep playing!), so if your game runs well on the platform it was meant to run on, or the submission details provide enough information to get it running without issue, your submission has a better chance of not getting passed over.
Is there any restriction on game engines? Are games in something like Scratch allowed as well or does it have to use something more "professional"?
For this jam, there will be no restrictions on creation tools. Game jams are the perfect setting to learn a ton of new things in a safe environment, so feel free to work with the tools you're comfortable with, some new feature you've been meaning to learn more about, or even a totally new game engine!
——————
Alright, that's it. Enjoy, good luck, and have fun. Happy jamming!