It's 4/20 again, that very special time of the year! This year, in honor of launching our Millennial Heroes monthly webcomic that focuses specifically on the overlap between nostalgia, pop culture, and that sweet Mary Jane, we thought... why not make it a party?

The THEME IS & WILL ALWAYS BE: POP CULTURE, MARIJUANA, & NOSTALGIA

That's it. As long as it fits one or more of those categories, you're in. Let's all agree to give extra points to those that exceed that mandate, though, and hit and overlap of those categories...

And what will you win?? Exposure. The top three games will be the first to be featured on our website, https://www.andyrobpresents.com/, for a full year, in the upcoming "'N Friends" section! It can be whatever format you choose, if it's a web build game we will feature it for play right there on our site and link back to itch.io, if it's for download, we'll just link back to itch for them to retrieve it from your page so can take the analytics. 

That's why it has to be that theme, otherwise it won't fit the overall sort of deal on our website. BUT, we're pretty relaxed dudes. So here's the deal... if you have a game that you think you can fit into those categories but maybe doesn't do so in an overt way... make a case for it to us and we'll take a look at it. Again, you're dealing with a handful of weedheads over here, it's a low bar.

IF THIS GOES WELL WE MAY MOVE TO A MONTHLY STRUCTURE WITH A YEARLY SORT OF "BEST OF THE BEST" JAM AT THE END. We're planning for this to be a thing with actual cash prizes (among other things), so let us know you want to do this by submitting and participating!

When ranking, we encourage people to use critical thinking. Remember that visual quality and sound quality are, to a huge extent, subjective. For instance, when assessing "visual quality", sometimes gamemakers choose not to make a game look aesthetically pleasing on purpose. Does the look of the game reflect the overall theme and tone? Does it fit in it's genre, consider how it makes you feel and if that feeling is intended. Ditto for the sound, we encourage you to consider if the sound/music is used in a thoughtful and intelligent way to cause emotion, not just if it's "good" or not.

We understanding "storytelling" is vague, but generally it's how expertly does the creator weaves the other two elements together along with the techniques used to tell the story effectively in whatever genre the game is set in. Consider if the creator is able to "transcend" the limits of their genre (all of them have limits) through their technique, because this is the art of the storyteller. Things like pacing, atmosphere, dialogue choices, all that nerdy writing shit your high school english teacher really tried to press home with you, they all matter most here. Generally speaking, you should at least kind of have an idea what's going on and a feeling the story is being propelled forward in a coherent and intriguing way. Some genres will naturally score higher in this as a matter of course, for instance RPG's will probably score higher here than side scrollers for obvious reasons. There's no realistic way to account for that without limiting it to a genre-by-genre submission structure, so to counterbalance that we have...

Fun! Just rank the game on how much fun you had playing it. That's it, that's the most important thing, and that's why this is the primary score. If you like visual novels (like us), and you just read a visual novel and it hit all your buttons, give it a max score and let the creator know how much fun you had playing it. We love that shit, I promise. Conversely, if you don't really like side scrollers but just played one and had a blast doing it, that game deserves a max score for being the exception to the rule? You see? This is a wildcard sort of field. 

The "rules", such as they are, are as chill are they are simple:

• NSFW is cool (obviously), just make sure it's clearly staked out ahead of time, and if you'd be so kind let us know what about it makes it NSFW (violence, nudity, etc) since everyone has a different idea what that means and has different tolerances to different things. You will get more people trying your games if they feel more secure with the specific content rather than a generalized ("stay away, thar b dragonz"-type) message.

• Previous games are cool, this isn't that kind of jam. We just want your best content that fits the theme. If it doesn't at first blush but you're still wanting to submit, make a case. We welcome a discussion and want to include as many as possible.

• Remember that we're all friends and this needs to stay chill. We will not abide negative behavior of any kind. While we've found constructive criticism is generally welcome, keep it respectful and kind. Remember, most people doing this are hobbyists and we want to encourage each other in our shared hobby first and foremost. 

• This time out, in the interest of aggregating content, we're not capping the number of submissions per studio/user. 
• There's no discord server right now, we'll need to see if anyone even cares about this. If it generates interest, we'll set one up
• As is the case in many jams, you'll have to play a few games in order to rank anything specific, in this case "2". This is to prevent people with ton of contributors or a larger studio from coming in and just flooding the rankings for their game. Besides, the point of a jam is to play other peoples' games, so have fun!