Burned, bruised, and beaten from our visit to the Dark Haroldverses we take a step back and lean on the only light in a grim world: our friends, our allies,  our brothers and sisters in arms. Therese, Marsha, Lucius, Priscilla, Reid and a host of past RTP heroes - they have long taken the back seat to Harold's orange tinged charisma. This year that changes. Harold's allies will take up the mantle of heroism and finally get their chance to show us what they're made of.

It's time to delve deep into the stories of characters long neglected. Human and the RPG Maker Beta Testers Server invite you to join Harold Jam 2023: Ascent of the Allies.

Rules:

1. Following the jam theme is optional! This year's (remember - it's optional) theme asks you to pick another protagonist from among all the RTP characters across all RPG Maker series and tell their story. This can be a main character like Reid/Priscilla, Eric, Aluxes, or non-protagonists like Therese, Marsha, Lucius.
2. Required elements are non-optional. Must include the character, a line of dialog and location announced at beginning of jam (see required elements below).
3. Judging will be within 6 categories (see Judgment Categories section below).
4. Ratings can be done by anyone, participant or not.
5. Time limit of 1 hour (suggested 5-45 minutes for best results). Judges can play as long as they want, but should only judge the first hour of gameplay.
6. Collaboration is permitted (and any number of submissions is allowed).
   
7. Participants are encouraged to play and rate at least 3 other entries.
   
8. All game engines are allowed. Just remember to follow the EULA for any assets you use (MV Harold assets outside of RPG Maker games are not permitted). The jam community tab includes non-Harold resources you can use outside of RPGM (and we'll all know who they are supposed to be).
9. No pre-existing games! Please do all your devving during the jam time. Pre-existing art work, animations, plugins, music, and other assets are permitted.
10. Custom assets are allowed, including plug-ins and art made by others as long as you credit and have the rights to use them.
    
11. It is recommended that games are playable on PC. Browser versions are also recommended as an option.
    
12. Human reserves the right to disqualify entries at his discretion.

Required Elements:

All games submitted must have all three of these within the game content (so not the menus or the credits).

1. Character: Harold! Look, it's Harold Jam. He has to be in there, even as an NPC.

2. Line of Dialogue: "Go on without me." This must be spoken by a character, exactly as printed. It can be placed anywhere within a sentence.

3. Location: An ascent, defined as "A slope, path, or road that goes up something." The player must go there.

See the required elements forum post for clarification and details.

Judgment Categories:

There will be multiple separate and independent award categories. Participants can gear their game toward any award or combination of awards as they see fit. There is one overall rating, which will determine the overall winner of the jam.

 - Harold Award for Excellence: Overall Rating

 - Therese Award for Technique: Gameplay

- Marsha Award for Melodies: Music

- Lucius Award for Laughs: Comedy

- Hrld Award for Visual Arts: Graphics

- Oldhar Award for Literature: Story

Rating Queue:

We will once again be using the "Rating Queue" system first seen in 2020's GMTK! All raters will be given a random selection of three games to rate before they can rate anything else. After rating the three randomly assigned games, raters can then rate whichever games they choose.

In case of many submissions (>25) the deadline for rating may be extended accordingly.

Prizes:

Winners of each category will be determined by community voting, based on the criteria above.  $100 will go to the winner of the Harold award for excellence category,  and a winner of one of the other five categories will be selected at random for a second $50 prize. The overall winner will receive a "Power of Friendship" role in the server.

The original Harold graphics belong to KADOKAWA. Once again thanks to Nowis for donating the fantastic banner and character art. Give Nowis a follow on Deviant Art and Twitter as well!

Finally, an announcement. . .