What can be accomplished in our favorite medium when story takes center stage?

Welcome to the FIFTH game jam hosted by Neophyte Studios! If you make games with strong, innovative narratives, we encourage you to submit. This jam is open to creators who dabble in ALL GAME GENRES and who are at ALL SKILL LEVELS. 

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Who We Are:

Neophyte Studios is the publishing arm of Southern Illinois University's Digital Xpressions Lab. The undergraduates, graduates, and professors of our department have worked tirelessly to innovate in multimodal realms narrative. Now, we're looking to see what the incredible community of itch.io can do!

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Criteria:

We are looking for games featuring great narratives. Whether they be highly authored or systems based, we hope to see innovation and impact on a narrative level. Narrative must be at the forefront of the experience. We are accepting submissions featuring all gameplay and thematic genres.

This jam is open to games playable on desktop, browser, OR IN VR. Remember, the top ten game as voted by the community will be streamed on Twitch, so factor that into your design, maybe? 

That's right, the community's favorite ten games will be our finalists streamed on the official Neophyte Studios Twitch channel after voting closes! The Neophyte Studios team will act as the finalist's judges and analyze the narrative structure of the community's top ten favorites!

In order to showcase work from all of our finalists, we ask that you submit a game that demonstrates its narrative inclinations within the first 10-15 minutes of gameplay. However, submitted games LONGER than 10-15 minutes ARE NOT at a disadvantage. If your game is a 100 hour long epic saga, that's fine! Just be sure that whatever you submit has an observable narrative impact within the first 10-15 minutes. If you only have a short demo, a tease, or a taste of a larger project, that's fine as well! Just remember: A good narrative hooks its audience from the first word, image, or sound. 

One more note on the criteria for this jam. Please do not submit what you would consider to be a "finished game." This jam is for "in-development" and new work only.

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OPTIONAL THEME

For this Jam, we decided to introduce an Optional Theme. This can act as a little bit of inspiration for those who may feel stuck on their stories since hitting that dreaded narrative wall. We have an entire voting criteria for "Best Use of Theme." This is serious stuff.

This month's Optional Theme is: Multimodality. Games are already multimodal by nature; how will you embrace this as a part of your ludonarrative harmony? We can't wait to see!

https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110810105437336

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Rules:

1. We accept games made by solo creators or teams!
2. Pre-made assets are allowed. Just be sure to credit the appropriate artists in your submission's description.
3. We are open to submissions containing mature content, however aggressively nsfw submissions, at least in the literary world, are often lacking in substantial narrative impact.
4. No harassment by, or directed towards, any creators or voters will be tolerated.
5. CURRENT WORK ONLY! Don't grab the game you finished last year and submit it. The jam is designed to give feedback to creators on their narrative innovation, not for you to place an ad for your indie game. We notice when our theme isn't present. Vertical slices or demos for still-in-development work are welcome. 
6. All entries must be FREE. If you intend to one day charge for the full version of your submission, please make a free version (it can be a demo (or a demo of a demo)) available for jam participants. If the game has a price, we will disregard the entry.

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Voting:

Our jam will be ranked by the community. At the end of the voting period, the top ten games will be played on stream by our panel of judges over on twitch.tv/neophytestudios.

Our voting categories are:

1. Most Compelling Narrative 
2. Best Use of Ludic Elements (Game Mechanics) to Deliver Story
3. Most Compelling Character
4. Most Innovative Narrative
5. Best Use of the (optional) Theme

The top six Most Compelling Narratives will join the top voted entrants in our remaining categories to make The Narrative Game Jam's Top Ten List. The Top Ten List will be put to a final evaluation by our panel of judges live on stream!

After Joining the Jam:

Come over to our Discord, watch our Twitch stream, and catch up on past streams on our YouTube. We'll be discussing submissions and finalists all the while. So, come say hi!