Jam Rules

These rules are laid down to allow a fun, entertaining and fair event for everyone. They are subject for iteration and improvement. We appreciate your feedback!
 
The orga team may remove games if they do not conform to these regulations.

Safe Space Policy

Before continuing, please read and follow our Safe Space Policy.

Procedure

Procedure

Every game jam can be divided into the following stages:

  • Announcement
    The theme is announced
  • Idea pitch
    After some minutes the stage is yours. You can pitch your idea and search for team members.
  • Programming
    Start to work with your team and get things done.
  • Packaging
    About 1 hour before the deadline you should start package your game, upload screens etc. to the page and be ready to present the game to the audience
  • Voting
    After the jam has ended, the official voting phase starts. The participants play and rate the other games based on chosen criteria.
  • Finished
    We hope you had an awesome weekend and we wish you to come home safely. See you next time!
Artwork

Artwork

Freely available, external artwork may be used as long as a source is provided in the posted game.
The artwork authors should be credited. This applies to sounds and graphics likewise.

Crossplatform

Cross-platform

Making a cross-platform game is strongly encouraged. However, you are not required to make your game cross-platform in order to participate. Be aware that the community does not consist only of Windows users. A user may downvote your game if it can't run on the user's platform.

Theme

Theme

The theme will be randomly chosen from suggestions from the previous jams, from you and from the committee. It will be announced at the beginning of the contest. Everyone may suggest a theme.
 
Participants who have registered with the option to receive email notifications will also receive the theme by email.
 
All games must have something to do with the theme. We won't be fussy about that, though, so it's ok if the theme is not the main thing of your project, but it has to be visible. Browse the list of jams to see what has been chosen as theme previously.

Engines

Libraries/Engines

Any freely available external libraries may be used for your game. The library doesn't need to be FOSS. Proprietary engines like UDK and Unity are alright.

Procedure

Snippets/personal Code

If you want to reuse pre-existing code of yours, it must have been available in source form for the public to see a fair amount of time prior to the start of the contest. The same goes for random snippets of code.

Sourcecontrol

Source control

Use of a publicly accessible source control system is encouraged but not required. Github is recommended. To make this clear, you are not required to share your source but again, you are encouraged to do so.

Teamsize

Team size

You can work in teams. The team size is unlimited. Your team can include coders, artists, game designers, composers, anyone.

Timeline

Time limit

The time limit is stated in the jam details. It starts with the announcement of the theme. Any work after the deadline is packaging only. Nothing else allowed. Please ensure that you already started packaging your game before the deadline because we start directly after the deadline with the game presentations.