Celebrating all things tense, unnerving, haunting, and agonizing!

Guidelines

You can submit a horror game, but do not have to! All genres are accepted as long as your game has prominent gothic or existential elements. Some potential topics:

• A reckoning with wilderness, time, or identity
• Duplication, reproduction, obsession, or cycles
• Isolation, loss, or dissociation
• The body, sensation, or carnality
• Fragility, intelligence, or compulsion
• Emptiness or omnipresence
• The utterly unexplainable
• Anything else confrontational that makes you question what it means to be human

Whether subtle or in-your-face, all submissions that explore that heavy, deep-seated gnawing feeling (rather than anticipation of a specific scary event) are welcome.

Rules

1. All work must be original and completed within the submission window---no borrowed or reused assets (open source assets are allowed but not preferred)
2. Teams can be up to 3 people
3. NSFW is allowed, but you must mark your game as adult content and include content warnings on game page
4. No AI of any kind, altered or not
5. Submissions may be in any language as long as the criteria are met

Judging Criteria

• Gameplay: Is the game well-designed, with compelling mechanics? Does the gameplay enhance the artistic vision of the game?
• Memorability: How novel, unusual, or interesting is the game? What does it change about how we see the gothic or existential?
• Audio: How thoughtful is the sound design? If there is music, how well is it composed and performed?
• Color: Regardless of other visual elements, how masterfully does the game utilize color?
• Sense of Dread (Not Fear): Is the game scary because it presents a philosophical, moral, or existential crisis? How powerfully does it make the player feel trapped in that crisis?

Jam Schedule

Submission period: January 27, 2025 to March 10, 2025

Voting closes March 15, 2025

Discord

Ask questions, discuss, and find a team! https://discord.gg/SeaAzk9z