The theme is “Outside the Boundaries!”

Stay up to date by joining the Indie Game Dev Beginners Discord Server! 

Welcome to Indie Game Dev Beginners! We are a community of new game developers looking to encourage each other and facilitate learning. This jam will take place in August 2024 and aims to gather the community of  beginners together to make some great games! The winner gets the coveted "Game Jam Winner" role on our Discord server, as well as their own emote!

The community will rate the games based on three criteria:

• Fun - did you enjoy the game?
• Creativity and Theme - did the creators adhere to the theme, while still bending the idea in a creative way?
• Visuals and Sound - how does the game look? how is the audio?

Basic rules:

• Your team must be composed of beginners.
• Your game MUST be made fully within the time limit of the jam.
  • No gameplay/content updates like new levels, player movement tweaks, adding music, etc. after the deadline.
  • Minor fixes are allowed after the submission window, e.g. usability updates like bug fixes, WebGL support, graphics settings, etc.
• You can use any free assets that you have the proper licensing for.  
  • Please include links to the external assets that you've used in your project page. 
  • Please try to keep the content of your game mostly original. Remember that one of the criteria is "visuals and sound," so if your art or programming skills are lacking, try teaming up with someone on our Discord server!
• You can use any game engine/programming language, as long as you are able to submit a file to itch.io and have it be playable on a PC with a keyboard and mouse.
  • It is highly encouraged (but not required) that your game be submitted as a WebGL project. This makes the rating process easier and safer. Plus, WebGL games tend to get a higher number of ratings, which helps you avoid Itch's low-rating count penalty.
• Keep games appropriate for a general audience. Mild blood and gore is fine. No nudity,  no triggering topics. Use your judgement on this.
• Generative AI is only allowed for text-based content generation (like code, ideas, text dialogue). Audio and visual content generation is not allowed (like music, textures, voiceovers).

Q: What counts as a beginner? A: For the purposes of this jam, the definition of "beginner" is very broad. As a rough guideline, a beginner is someone who hasn't released any commercial game products, has less than 5 years of experience, and is not employed in the game development industry.

Q: How do I form a team? A:  First, you should go to the #looking-for-team channel in the Discord server. Then, after you have found some cool teammates, choose one person to be the submitter. The submitter should include the rest of the team as "contributors" when submitting the project to the jam. This will allow the contributors to participate in the voting. Only the submitter needs to click "join" on the jam page.

Got an idea for the theme? Submit it to this form. A theme will be picked from your suggestions when the jam starts.