This is a themed Game Jam lasting two weeks for games to be enjoyed with others. The Game Jam runs from August 1st, at 12 AM GMT, to August 14th, at 12 AM GMT with a 3 day voting period.

What's the gist?

The games submitted in this Jam must be a Multiplayer Game, whether it be Couch play or Online if you can swing it. The game can be made in any engine and must follow the given theme in some way. Multiplayer can be a hard thing to implement so feel free to team up in the Community tab to find people with the right skillset to complement your own. It will also be good idea to test and debug with another person. The game you made should satisfy as many of the criteria to have a chance of winning. Game Jams are an amazing place to test out your skills so if you're a developer, why not join.

Theme:

This theme can be interpret by using any of pronunciation or meaning of the word  "Desert" you like. Good luck!!

Rules:

1. The game must be played with more than one person
2. The Game must be made within the 13 day period however code from previous projects can be reused
3. Follow the theme with any interpretation you have whether it be as the setting or part of the gameplay
4. Feel free to team up with others with however many members you want
5. You may use whatever engine you like that has Multiplayer functionality
6. Make sure to export to Windows, Mac and Linux or simply browser to ensure as many players can play your game
7. No harassment of any kind. Have fun

Criteria

There will be a 3 day voting period judged by the community so after the Jam is closed for submission, grab a friend and play some of the submissions and vote for your favourite. The criteria for judging are: How fun it is; How creative it is; How nice it looks; How well it adheres to the theme; How well it implements multiplayer. These criteria are chosen to ensure a diverse selection of quality games even from newer developers. Each criterion can be judged by a number of one to five with the overall score being the average of it.

Although there is no prize, I'll like to see everyone do their best to satisfy all the criteria to the best of your ability.

Discord

By the way, we have a discord now. Here you can ask for help, get play testers, promote your game, and schedule for lobby games. Go ahead and join through this link.

Message for Godot users:

Godot is a 2D and 3D, cross-platform, free and open-source game engine released under the MIT license. It is the engine of my choice for being lightweight and having a simple scripting language. For those of you using it, may I suggest checking out Gotm?

Gotm is a game hosting service specifically for Godot which allows it to be much more optimised than other websites. Using Gotm's plugin allows you to access the API directly from GDScript. One of the functionality is allowing Networked games to be run in the browser with even more functionality than before such as Online lobbies and more upcoming features. For those who find this interesting or useful, I would highly recommend to check them out. Read more in the community.

* This section is part of a collaboration with me and the developers of Gotm. They gave me complete freedom to say whatever I want so all opinions expressed are my own.

Documentation for Online functionality:

Here are some links to documentation for some engines to do online games:

•  Godot:
  • https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/networking/high_level_multiplayer.html
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuRhRhJ2914
• Unity:
  • https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UNet.html
  • https://gamedevacademy.org/how-to-create-a-multiplayer-game-in-unity/ 
•  GameMaker:
  • https://help.yoyogames.com/hc/en-us/articles/216754698-Networking-Overvie
  • https://www.yoyogames.com/blog/446/introduction-to-networking-in-gamemaker-studio-2 
•  Construct:
  • https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/plugin-reference/multiplaye
  • https://www.construct.net/en/courses/online-multiplayer-construct-12 
•  Defold: 
  • https://defold.com/manuals/networking/
  • https://github.com/britzl/defnet 
•  Phaser: 
  • https://www.dynetisgames.com/2017/03/06/how-to-make-a-multiplayer-online-game-with-phaser-socket-io-and-node-js
  • https://socket.io/docs/

*Feel free to experiment before hand to develop a simple prototype