A jam about exploring unseen territory of game design.

THEME IS TINY MACHINES- UNEXPECTED MECHANICS 

Hi, it's Grunk Grunk here. For past 5 years, I have been into coding and game development and the first itch.io release helped me to improve my rusty game development skills. Today it marks the day of my 5 year game development anniversary and I continue on and on. As a present from my side, I hosting my very first game jam internationally for everyone to take part in.

Just as the last times, I'll try to pick a crazy and unconventional topic, pushing you to the limits of your creativity. Note, that the topic is meant for those who want to challenge their design skills. Following the topic is not a requirement!

You. Must. Join.

• You'll challenge your creativity and expand your skill sets.
• Meet new people from the community and make new friends.
• Get and give feedback to grow as a developer. Get your game seen and played.
• For the best 25 games: A good chance to appear in a YT video on my channel.
• An additional shout-out and bragging rights if you win one of the top spots.
• For the Winner(s): 

1st Place: A book on Web Development which is Learning Web Design, Fourth Edition or a PythonLearn book to help you out in writing a set of Python Programs or a set of STEAM keys for your friends for A Glitched Ball when it comes out.

2nd Place: Raspberry Pi Zero W with 32GB SanDisk microSD Card 

3rd Place: 32GB SanDisk microSD Card and merch domain from Shoplify

Honourable Mentions- A Book on Arduino Development with a custom 3D printed badge of your choice

All Participants- If you have submitted your game correctly and followed the rules properly, you will receive a free 3 month Hacker Plan for free from Replit.com after the jam ends as they are the sponsors for the jam.

B.T.W- Sorry for the lame prizes, once the first edition ends, I will add more better prizes.

Almost No Rules!

1. You can work alone or in a team of any size.
2. Recycling code and assets is allowed. No need to write everything from scratch.
3. You can use everything you're legally allowed to use. Give appropriate credits where required. Don't use any resources you don't have the rights to!!!
4. Please warn players about mature or disturbing content in your game (if there is any).
5. The game you submit has to be created during the jam.

How Much Time?

The jam starts Sunday, March the 15th. You'll have roughly 7 Days to make your entry.  Simplicity is highly encouraged (and even one of the ranking factors) so spending just a couple of hours on your game should work as well. Go as hard or easy on it as you want.

Score Points!

Every participant will be able to rate other games on:

• Fun
• Simplicity
• Visuals
• Sound
• Creativity
• Topic
• game blows the roof (<- This is the Number 1 Ranking Factor)

JOIN US for Extra Fun!

We have an awesome creative game dev community on Discord so if you're looking for a team, technical support or feedback, this is the place to look. I want you to create something amazing which is why I'll hang out on Discord for the entire weekend doing my best to support you with whatever you need. 

• Join our Game Dev Discord:https://discord.gg/6FJjRk2dh2

My Winning Tips

In my experience, here is what you need to do if you want to win one of the top spots:

• Make your game easy to understand for new players. This is a super common trap a lot of game jam games fall into.  Start thinking about your tutorial or how you want to teach your mechanics right from the beginning!
• Usually it's a good idea to make your game not too hard to win. People spend roughly five to fifteen minutes on each game. In most cases they won't have enough time to reach a super high level of mastery. Keep that in mind when balancing the difficulty.
• Quality over quantity. Keep your game super simple! This is even more important in this jam as simplicity is one of the main ranking factors, but even besides that, every bit of extra polish can really make your game stand out in a short jam like this.
• Take risk. The winning games are usually those who were brave enough to try something completely new and crazy (while also following the other three tips above). 

Obviously there are exceptions to all rules but still, I hope it helps. :)

Resources

Note: You don't need to use any of the provided resources if you don't want to.  I'm just trying my best to support you wherever I can so I've put together an asset pack with free music and sound effects  you can use to speed up your process. Yes, you can also use them outside of the jam. 

• Kenney Asset Pack: Kenney • Assets

More Sound Resources

Here are some more useful sites you can use to get your sounds if you want:

Freesound.org: https://freesound.org Freesound.org License: https://freesound.org/help/faq/#wait-this-is-all-free

8bit Sound Generator: https://www.bfxr.net/ 8bit Sound Generator License: You have full rights to all sounds made with bfxr, and are free to use them for any purposes, commercial or otherwise.

More Awesome Resources

Colors matter quite a lot for nice visuals. I find this to be quite a useful tool:  Color Scheme Generator: http://colormind.io/

Open Game Art: https://opengameart.org Open Game Art License: https://opengameart.org/content/faq#q-how-to-credit

Milestone Suggestions

You can use these rough milestone suggestions to make sure you stay on track if you want. Remember to keep it simple!

• After 5% of your time budget: You came up with multiple game ideas on paper and picked the most interesting one.
• After 25% of your time budget: You experimented with your idea a bit and the basic game loop is done.
• After 50% of your time budget: The most important visuals and sounds are implemented. Your game is fully playable.
• After 75% of your time budget: The game looks, sounds and plays even better. It might also have a short tutorial now.
• After 100% of your time budget: Final bugs are fixed,  game is uploaded to a decent looking itch.io page.

Good luck, have fun. :)

Sponsors 

A big thank you to our amazing team at Replit.com for sponsoring this game jam. They have worked hard in their way to provide us a participation gift as 3 month Hacker Plan for free. They even have done it all expense paid. So when you join this jam, follow the rules and submit correctly, you will still receive a Replit.com Hacker Plan free for 3 months from my side(again all expense paid) even if you lost the jam. The link for the plan will be shared in the Discord Server(mentioned above), once the jam ends. Till then game on and make on! Thanks once again for sponsoring my game jam, Replit.com.