This event will give you 9 days to create games using GDevelop, the free and open-source game engine. Once the submission period is over, your game will get rated by other participants, and you will also get to rate other games.
The GDevelop Game Jam will be a fun, diverse, and inclusive event in which you'll get to put your skills to the test. There will be participants from all over the world, and you will have the opportunity to chat with other developers, discuss each other's games and of course, create a game from start to finish!
You need to register for the event right here on itch.io in order to participate. Please also join our Discord server for all information and notifications regarding the jam, and to meet the other participants.
Whether you finish your game or not, you'll have an amazing experience, learn tons and meet cool people from around the world!
Here are the rules for participating in this event:
- You must use the GDevelop game engine to make your game. The engine is free and open-source. You can find it on our official website.
- The games must not include offensive, discriminatory, or NSFW content of any kind. This is an event for anyone and everyone! So don’t be rude.
- Games must be submitted through itch.io for rating as well as gd.games (see videos below for instructions).
- Games must be published to be played on browsers (bonus thumbs up for mobile compatibility!), without requiring extra hardware.
- Any text must be in English.
- You may team up! And we encourage it. You can find teammates on our Discord server. The maximum number of team members allowed is 4.
- The game itself must be made within the jam time period, and you may not submit any work or updates during the voting period.
- You may use pre-made, publicly available, and purchased assets, as well as GDevelop's built-in asset library, or other assets you have the legal rights to use. Just remember to credit properly.
- You can use pre-existing code, extensions, functions. But do not write code specifically for this jam, ahead of time.
Example cases for pre-existing code use
Acceptable use of pre-existing code:
-Reuse of UI
-Reuse of private extensions
-Reuse of short snippets of events (Juice effects, for example)
Not acceptable use of pre-existing code:
-Reuse of an existing project with changed art assets
-Reuse of an existing project with minimal changes
-Submission of a project worked on prior to the jam (We can check)
Creating games with other people is a fantastic experience and is also very helpful to reach the end of the jam with a finished game, so do think about teaming up if you haven't. And if you're new to making games, we've created a page to help with best practices.
If a game is not published on itch.io and gd.games (see video below for instructions), participation in the jam will be considered invalid.
All games will be rated in the following categories:
- Fun & Game Design: Do you want to continue playing? How enjoyable is the game? Is the interface usable?
- Audio: How nice does the game sound? Does it implement cool music and sound effects?
- Graphics: How nice does the game look? Is the art nice to look at?
- Originality & Innovation: How often did you say "Wow! That's unexpected and clever" when playing?
- Theme: How relevant is the game to the jam's theme?
Don’t worry about this too much, though. The most important thing is that you participate, have fun, and stick to the jam’s theme! Once the submission period is closed, you will have one week to rate other people’s games.
We'll look at the community's highest rated games to decide the winner - though if there is a hidden gem in the rest, we might pick it to be in our winner list!
The 10 games with the highest overall scores will be declared Community Winners.
All developers involved in creating these games will get the opportunity to be considered for the Judges’ Awards.
Community Winners
- 6 Month gold GDevelop memberships for top 10 community winners
- Special discord role for top 10 community winners
The Judges’ Awards
1st Place:
- $150 USD goodies store credit
- A copy of Zorin OS Pro
- A voucher for a game event of your choice (courtesy of Poki)
- Poki Goodies Bag
- A $50 voucher for any game or software on Fanatical
- GDevelop's Mega Bundle - 3 Worlds
2nd Place:
- $100 USD goodies store credit
- Poki Goodies Bag
- A $25 voucher for any game or software on Fanatical
- Sci-Fi Bundle
3rd Place:
- $50 USD goodies store credit
- Poki Goodies Bag
- A $25 voucher for any game or software on Fanatical
- Cyberpunk Bundle
4th Place:
- $30 USD goodies store credit
- Pixel Dark Fantasy Bundle
5th place prize:
- $30 USD goodies store credit
This jam is sponsored in part by Zorin OS, Poki, Fanatical!
Zorin is an easy-to-use Windows alternative operating system. GDevelop is part of Zorin OS Education.
Poki has the best free online games selection and offers the most fun experience to play alone or with friends.
Fanatical is the go-to place to buy PC games and software at great prices, including our very own Easy No-Code Game Design Bundle.
Payment Details
If a game made by a team of developers is picked for a Judges' Award, the prize will be given to the developer who submitted the game, and they will be responsible for splitting the prize among their team.
FAQ
- Do we need to make the game playable on itch.io & gd.games?
Yes, you need to upload your game to itch.io for scoring to take place, and we also ask everyone to publish on GD.games (as this is the recommended place for GDevelop games and get feedback from the community in the future). Publishing on itch.io and gd.games is a requirement for this jam. Note, you can add the genre "Game-jam-4" when you export your game on gd.games to retreive it on the Game Jams categorie!
- How long will we have the Winner role on Discord for?
You'll get "latest jam winner" for a few weeks and then "Past jam(s) winner" for life!