Welcome to MelonJam 4!

Jam winners have been announced in the Discord server and a community post! For feedback and rankings, please visit this sheet.

The theme for MelonJam 4 is CORRUPTION!! A loaded word with tons of definitions (scroll down to see some), you are free to interpret this theme to make games ranging from one that slowly “corrupts”/breaks (e.x. There Is No Game) or a visual novel highlighting corruption in society to an idle game about being a corrupt politician who loves stealing money from the poor.

A few notes before you start:

- “Corruption” should be present in your game, but you can choose how you’d like to present it. Keep in mind that you’ll have to explain in a few short sentences how your game relates to the theme, and that your submission will be graded on how innovative its interpretation of the theme is.

- You are required to keep a document tracking all the assets you used that were not made by a member of your team during the jam.

- Please do keep in mind to not actually submit a corrupted file or expect cybersecurity knowledge from anyone – we’d like to protect our judges and other participants to the best of our ability, so please upload a web-playable version or your game may not be judged (contact hosts if this is an issue).

Need more prompting? Here are a few definitions of corruption:

1. The act of changing, or of being changed, for the worse; departure from what is pure, simple, or correct

2. the process of purposely breaking a game

3. dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery.

4. the process by which something, typically a word or expression, is changed from its original use or meaning to one that is regarded as erroneous or debased.

In this game jam, we are inviting both beginners who have little to no major game development experience and more advanced developers.  The theme announcement will mark the start of the game jam, July 21st 12:00 AM UTC, and the game jam will end on July 23rd 11:59 PM UTC for a total of 72 hours.

We recommend visiting our website for a recommended schedule and more information!

We will also be posting most of our updates on our Discord server, so join here: discord.gg/uYmNuZymJ2

Current Total: $24,446

Prize total is calculated based on total cash value of products, gift cards, etc.

Don't know which division you're in? Visit this flowchart!

NOVICE DIVISION

1st Place:

• $100 cash/gift card
• 5-year upgrade to Taskade Pro (worth $1140)
• Wolfram One Personal Edition & Wolfram Alpha Pro per team member (worth $375)
• 1 PyxelEdit key (worth $9)
• 1 Aseprite key (worth $20)
• 1x 1-year International Game Developers Association Membership (worth $30-60)

2nd Place: 

• $60 cash/gift card
• 5-year upgrade to Taskade Pro (worth $1140)
• Wolfram One Personal Edition & Wolfram Alpha Pro per team member (worth $375)
  
• 1x 1-year International Game Developers Association Membership (worth $30-60)

3rd Place: 

• $40 cash/gift card
• 5-year upgrade to Taskade Pro (worth $1140)
• Wolfram One Personal Edition & Wolfram Alpha Pro (limited number based on # of team members of other winning teams)
  
• 1x 1-year International Game Developers Association Membership (worth $30-60)

INTERMEDIATE DIVISION

1st Place:

• $120 cash/gift card
• SwishSwoosh Kickstart Bundle Tier1 (worth $54)
• 5-year upgrade to Taskade Pro (worth $1140)
• Wolfram One Personal Edition & Wolfram Alpha Pro per team member (worth $375)
• 1 PyxelEdit key (worth $9)
• 1 Aseprite key (worth $20)
• 1x 1-year International Game Developers Association Membership (worth $30-60)

2nd Place: 

• $80 cash/gift card
• 5-year upgrade to Taskade Pro (worth $1140)
• 1 Aseprite key (worth $20)
• Wolfram One Personal Edition & Wolfram Alpha Pro per team member (worth $375)
• 1x 1-year International Game Developers Association Membership (worth $30-60)

3rd Place: 

• $50 cash/gift card
• 5-year upgrade to Taskade Pro (worth $1140)
• Wolfram One Personal Edition & Wolfram Alpha Pro (limited number based on # of team members of other winning teams)
  
• 1x 1-year International Game Developers Association Membership (worth $30-60)

ADVANCED DIVISION

1st Place: 

• $140 cash/gift card
• SwishSwoosh Kickstart Bundle Tier1 (worth $54)
• 5-year upgrade to Taskade Pro (worth $1140)
• 1 PyxelEdit key (worth $9)
• 1 Aseprite key (worth $20)
• 1x 1-year Axure RP Team Edition (worth $504)
• Wolfram One Personal Edition & Wolfram Alpha Pro per team member (worth $375)
  
• 1x 1-year International Game Developers Association Membership (worth $30-60)

2nd Place:

• $100 cash/gift card
• 5-year upgrade to Taskade Pro (worth $1140)
• Wolfram One Personal Edition & Wolfram Alpha Pro per team member (worth $375)
• 1 PyxelEdit key (worth $9)
• 1 Aseprite key (worth $20)
• 1x 1-year International Game Developers Association Membership (worth $30-60)

3rd Place:

• $60 cash/gift card
• 5-year upgrade to Taskade Pro (worth $1140)
• Wolfram One Personal Edition & Wolfram Alpha Pro per team member (worth $375)
• 1 Aseprite key (worth $20)
• 1x 1-year International Game Developers Association Membership (worth $30-60)

PARTICIPANT PRIZES -- guaranteed as long as you participate in the jam!

• 1-year upgrade to Taskade Pro (worth $228)
• 30-day Interview Cake pass (worth $83)
• 1-month access to Premium plan for Echo3D (worth $99)

RAFFLE PRIZES -- anyone who participates in the jam & fills out the feedback form is eligible to win any of these!

• 2x Aseprite key (worth $20 each)
• 1x Construct Personal Edition 1 year (worth $130)
• 1x 1-year Axure RP Team Edition (worth $504)
• 1x PyxelEdit key (worth $9)
• 1x $45 Desmos gift card (worth $45)
• 1x 1-year International Game Developers Association Membership (worth $30-60)
• 1x $10 Amazon gift card

1. In order to be eligible for each division's prize, you must fulfill the requirements for those divisions (can be found in our website).
2. To be eligible for a prize, you must provide an adequate explanation for how your game fits the theme when submitting your game.
3. Any digital project that is not malware may be submitted. Keep in mind, however, that the judging criteria may limit your success if you do not submit a game that fits the theme announced at the beginning of the jam. 
4. All submissions must be developed during the allotted time slot. However, you are free to use any assets (music, 3d models, etc.) and tools (game engines, graphic design programs, etc.) that you made yourself or are given permission to use by the creators, such as through a creative commons license, an open-source license, or a purchase. If you choose to do so, you must mention this in your submission. Judges may take points off or award points based on pre-made assets.
5. All games submitted to MelonJam are uploaded under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Creative Commons license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). Participants retain ownership of any projects they submit, though the Cupertino Game Development Club reserves the right record media of those projects and to publish said media. 
6. Participants may work alone, or form teams of up to 4 members in order to work on their submission. Participants can unofficially be in multiple teams, but cannot win prizes more than once per jam-- participants must choose one team to sign on with.
7. The Cupertino Game Development Club reserves the right to not consider any uploaded games for prizes if the content does not follow the theme or is offensive or unsuitable. This includes but is not limited to: games with harmful or prejudicial themes related to gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, appearance, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, or religion.
8. You may use any engines or tools at your disposal except for generative AI. No AI art, code, music, or any other assets is allowed.
9. Participants who do not adhere to the rules above may have their submission canceled, or even banned from all future game jams hosted by the Cupertino Game Development Club.

Your game will be judged by professionals under the following criteria:

• Gameplay, or how well the game squeezes out value from its mechanics/how appropriate and appealing the controls feel (snappy platforming, impactful heavy attacks, or the like). This may differ depending on the genre of game.
• Graphics, or how impressive the project looks, sounds, etc. 
• Innovation, or how “new” a concept in the game is (new graphics, new gameplay, new interpretations of old concepts, etc.)
• Theme, or how interesting the game's interpretation of the game jam's theme is.
• Polish, or overall polish/how complete the game feels.

Our judges this year are:

1. Patrick Wang, SWE at Roblox and Cupertino Game Development Club co-founder
2. Ethan Soo, AR & VR Developer and Cupertino Game Development Club co-founder
3. Manu Bhat, former Cupertino Game Development Club president
4. Ryan Lee, former Cupertino Game Development Club president
5. Anooj Vadodkar, Webmaster at SGDA
6. Meghna Anil, 3D Modeler/Game Designer and grad student at Carnegie Mellon
7. Guest judges from International Game Developers Association
8. Tyler Glawitsch, former Cupertino Game Development Club webmaster/mentor
9. Jeremy Boetticher, Protocol Engineer at Moonsong Labs
10. Host judges: Rohan Naphade, Faye Yu, Winfred Lin, Jemian Lam, Arnav Gupta, Lydia Lei, Laurier Ke, Jolie Han

All games are judged by as many judges as possible to ensure fairness.