Game Off is our annual game jam, where participants spend the month of November creating games based on a secret theme.
This year’s theme is LEAPS AND BOUNDS.
You’re welcome to interpret the theme however you wish, but if you need some ideas to kickstart your creativity, maybe your game could:
- Make your character evolve to overcome challenges
- Add obstacles to test your hero’s ability to leap into action
- Deduct points for anything going out of bounds
- Duck, dip, dive, and dodge an enemy that’s changing or moving rapidly
- Take place in the year 2020, the next leap year
Maybe the year 2020 will lead you to think about hindsight being 20/20, and that’ll inspire even more ideas around time travel, decision-making, or something else.
Let your imagination run wild and create a game loosely-based or inspired by that theme using whatever game engines, libraries or languages you prefer before December 1st, 13:37 PT.
Good luck and have fun!
🕹 How to participate
- Create a game based on the theme over the next month.
- Sign up for a free GitHub account if you don't already have one. It's free!
- Join the Game Off on itch.io. If you don’t already have an itch.io account, log in with your GitHub account.
- Create a new public GitHub repository to store the source code and any assets you’re able to share for your entry and push your changes before December 1 13:37 PDT.
- Submit your game through itch.io.
🕹 Help—I’ve never created a game before!
With so many free, open source game engines and tutorials available online, there’s never been an easier (or more exciting!) time to try out game development.
Are you…
- Into JavaScript? You might be interested in Phaser.
- Comfortable with C++ or C#? Look at Godot, Unity and Unreal Engine.
- Proficient with Python? Check out Pygame or Godot (Godot uses GDScript, which is similar to Python).
- Dangerous with Java? Take a look at libGDX.
- In love with Lua? Check out LÖVE or Defold. Like retro games too? Drop everything and check out LIKO-12!
- Experienced with Ruby? You might like DragonRuby Game Tookit - free for all Game Off participants (details).
Do you really like retro games? Maybe you can…
- Hack on a Roguelike dungeon crawler in JavaScript or Haskell.
- Crank out a text adventure in or some interactive fiction with Clojure or Ink (similar to Markdown).
- Craft that 8-bit console game you always fantasized about with PICO-8, Pixel Vision 8, TIC-80 (Lua), BASIC8 (Basic), or Pyxel (Python).
Participate yourself or as a team. Looking for a team, or want to start one? Check out the Crowdforge page to find people to jam with.
🕹 Help—I’ve never used version control, Git, or GitHub before!
- Git Documentation: everything you need to know about version control and how to get started with Git
- GitHub Help: everything you need to know about GitHub
- Any questions about GitHub? Visit the GitHub Community Forum.
