What is this?

It's Big Boy Season y'all! This is a game jam created by, and for, the Waypoint community. It's a casual, unranked jam, and we encourage anyone to participate, even if you don't have any experience with game jams or game dev. In fact there's a nice list of resources/tools you can use to help you along further down on this page! 

How do I Participate?

Firstly create an Itch.io account if you haven't already, and then simple press the "Join Jam" button at the top of this page. When creating your game please follow the rules listed in the section below. You have from midnight 7/1 until 8:00 AM EST 8/1 to finish and submit your game. We chose a longer period than many other jams to discourage people from overworking themselves or stressing about deadlines, so please take your time and stay healthy! Entries will not be ranked, but please play others' entries and leave your (positive) thoughts.

Rules

• Your game’s title should be a title from Waypoint Radio (all episodes are valid, not just ones from the past year) OR a Waypoint Forum thread title.
• Forum user futuretuesday made an awesome tool that randomly selects both episode titles, and forum post titles, and can list both in their entirety.
• You may work alone or with a team, simply credit all members in the game and/or on the game submission page
• Your game should not feature Waypoint logos, art, or other content
• All content in your game should be original, or used with permission from the creator(s) and proper credit given. This can be in the game itself and/or on the Itch page for your submission
• Follow the Rules and Code of Conduct outlined on the Waypoint community forum
• No NSFW games. With episode titles like “Don’t Kinkshame Grandma” this might be tempting but we want developers from all ages to be able to participate, so please err on the side of caution with this one.
• Respect the Waypoint staff, and Waypoint extended family. Avoid including members of the staff or personalities related to Waypoint in your game in ways that are disrespectful, or might make them uncomfortable. This is another one I’d ask you to be careful with. When in doubt don’t do it.
• When giving criticism make sure to highlight something you like as well, and consider asking a question about a choice or a bug rather than offering advice. Remember that all the entries were made in limited time and developers probably know about any bugs/things they could have done better, but just didn’t have time to fix/improve things.
• Submissions can be non-video games, like card or board games. Don’t let lack of programming knowledge or development resources hold you back.
• Stay healthy, the jam is a month long so that no one should need to crunch or overwork themselves. Remember to take care of yourself 

How do I find people to work with?

The Waypoint moderators have been kind enough to create a game jam channel in the Waypoint Community Discord for us, and you're also welcome to post in the announcement thread about finding partners. The best way to group up though is probably to use the forum functionality here on the Itch jam's page to post about your skillset, or your game idea and what kind of partners you're in need of. Then you have an entire thread to discuss your idea :D!

New Developers/First time Jammers

Getting started making games is easier than ever with a huge variety of game engines, and tons of tutorials available. The first step is to pick a game engine. Here are some of the most common choices, but there are many, many more. Also check out this rad site Wazanator put together for information on useful jam tools

• Unity: A powerful engine with a large user base that means it's easy to find tutorials on anything you can imagine. Capable of building 3D and 2D games of any scale. There are many things you can do in Unity without coding, but realistically you'll need to do a good bit of programming to get things done. Download Unity: Personal Edition for free here
• Unreal Engine 4: Unreal is used everywhere from Indie to AAA. The latest iteration is usable for free and makes money by charging 5% of game sales (which for a jam game is nothing :D ). Like Unity there's a huge community with lots of resources available. If you're not comfortable with programming there's even a drag and drop blueprint system which can be used instead or in addition Download link
• Game Maker: Game Maker is a great tool for beginning game devs who are looking to make 2D games. Unless things have changed drastically since the last time I used it, its drag-n-drop interface allows you to get quite a bit done without touching GML, its propriety JavaScript like programming language. The free version is quite limited however, restricting you to creating development builds of Windows games, and limiting your total resources. Game Maker can be found here
• Twine: Twine is an open source engine for creating non-linear stories. This is an excellent choice for those who would rather spend time writing, and storytelling than programming. Find the download link on the Twine homepage here
• Construct 2: A 2D game engine for creating HTML5 games. Construct is another decent choice for beginners alongside Game Maker, but unfortunately it also has a fairly limiting free version that'll force you to keep  your game quite small (which  jam game should be anyways). Download Construct here. BONUS: You can watch the Giant Bomb East crew learn how to make games using Construct 2 from the wonderful Alex Zandra Van Chestein here
• RenPy: Generally used for creating visual novels, RenPy is ideal for those with some knowledge of Python. It's a truly versatile system that can even create mobile visual novels. Download RenPy here
• PuzzleScript: An open-source HTML 5 puzzle game engine. You can make your game online and then download it to share on itch. To access PuzzleScript go here
• Phaser: An HTML5 framework for creating browser based games using Canvas or WebGL. Knowledge of HTML, CSS and Javascript make this a viable game creation method. It can be downloaded here

As said before, There are many more options, but these are the ones that first came to mind. Unity is the engine I personally have the most experience with and it's a good all-rounder, and makes almost all tools available without limit to free tier users. If you're scared of the programming don't be. There are lots of tutorials you can follow along with and just make thematic modifications to fit the jam. 

Good luck Jammers! If you have any questions feel free to DM Onarru, Wazanator, or OneGameDad on the Waypoint community forums