What is the Mushroom Jam?

A jam dedicated to story focused works featuring mushrooms hosted from September to  the end of November [+/- a few hours to start at 1st of September UTC+14 and end at 31st UTC-12]. And since the topic of fungi is enormous, any kind of mushroom featured counts as long as it's important to the story.

Rules

1. The work must be a game [visual novels, text adventures and so on also count!] and feature mushrooms [actually just fungi is fine, they don't need to form mushrooms] in some way, be it text, art, some extras and so on.
2. Your game should be free at least for a few weeks after the jam ends so everyone who took part can play it. You're free to make it paid later on, though.
3. You can start working before the jam starts or finish older projects, the goal is to have something playable by the time the jam ends.
4. Demos are fine, narrative based games are encouraged [please make the story take at least half of the playtime if you want to add some other gameplay elements].
5. You're free to make the game 18+ for whatever reason but always add appropriate warnings.
6. Projects made using AI are heavily discouraged and its use should be directly mentioned on the page.
7. Any project reported to be using stolen assets will be removed from the jam.
8. There are no prizes nor rankings. Everyone who finished their project is a winner.
9. Have fun :D

How much is fungi enough?

Depends entirely on your project. Due to the fact fungi are present basically everywhere and in different forms, limiting the way you can present them would completely miss the point. And so: A diary of your small mushroom log cultivation with real time photos? Of course. A story of veteran Boletus pickers? Sure. The tragic tale of a sentient mushroom kingdom that barely avoided destruction and decided to take over the world? Why not. The life cycle of corpse fungus? Why, yes. Anthropomorphised mushrooms evolved to observe different solar systems? Naturally. A master baker and their yeast using recipes adventures? Umm... Yeah, technically if it focuses on yeast...

It's all very broad so you're basically limited only by your imagination.

What engines to use?

Whichever you want, honestly. Though considering most of the submissions would have some kind of story to tell, here are some recommendations:

Ren'Py - Basically the go to program for English language visual novel creators. Moderately simple and very easy to learn if you want a basic game. Just a bit complicated if you want something good looking or fancy and if you know what you're doing, you could honestly even make an RPG there since it's based on python; point&click games are easier, though. 

Unity - very versatile, has a big community and if you're stuck, looking for help shouldn't be hard. Can be used for both visual novels, text adventures [there are also way simpler and lighter programs for that, though] and something complicated.

Twine - want to write some interactive fiction instead? Twine is a very intuitive option that also allows its users to insert pictures or music to their stories [that requires easy to find plugins]. No GUI customisation needed, just write your story.

 Quest - prefer text adventures? Look no more. Another very simple program, also offers to make your game online and post it on the site. You can also try Squiffy from the same creators [interactive fiction only].

 Ink - another simple way to create interactive fiction. The end result is very light-weight since if you want, you honestly can pack the whole story into a single html file.

LÖVE - a bit more complicated  since it requires some programming knowledge. Uses Lua and is a framework for 2D games. Quick to learn. The only downside is that you have no basic art assets and need to prepare everything yourself. And if you want to create using both code and a graphic interface, you can always try Defold.

Godot - scripting using C++ or GDScript, Godot supports many platforms and allows for the creation of both 2D and 3D games. Open source with a pretty big community around it and many tutorials to use.

Additional info

DevTalk - while not directly related to the creation nor hosting of this jam, it's a helpful community [on Discord] for visual novel creators that also makes finding group members for future jams easier.