THE BASICS:
- Starts on Monday 22nd January, 2024
- 1 month long
- Submission must be a playable level
- Any engine / game / tools allowed (Source and Unreal recommended, as they're popular with people in our Discord)
- If the theme doesn't suit you, then don't worry about it too much and make whatever you like. Also, feel free to return to an old project, and spend the jam making it better!
- You can watch videos about our previous jams here

THE THEME:
The theme is... "A Surprise".

For this jam, I want everyone to think about what you can do to give your level an interesting element of surprise. Get creative, play with expectations, do something silly if you need to. Don't stress over it, it doesn't have to be anything huge. It can be subtle or simple, it can be clever or silly, it can be a gameplay thing or a story thing or a layout / scripting / atmosphere thing - anything you like.

You're just not allowed to make a typical level with all the typical stuff in it, that plays out exactly as people would expect. Because good level design shouldn't just follow the rules, it should be creative and surprising too.

MISC:
- As always, try and get it to a rough, playtestable state as early as you can in the jam (ideally halfway), get feedback on it, and spend the rest of your time making it better before you submit!
- This jam is open to anyone and is all hosted here on Itch, but our community will be talking and sharing progress / tips etc on on our level design discord here: https://discord.gg/geFkdZW5vp.  The discord is a private server that you can access by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/stevelee_gamedev