This jam is now over. It ran from 2022-01-29 08:00:00 to 2022-01-31 08:00:00. View results

JOIN THE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/u9wNbbqhNv

Welcome to the first NESn't Jam!

The idea of NESn't jam is for people like me who love the NES' graphics, but don't know how to code in assembly. The solution? Program in whatever the heck you want!

THEME: Escape the Game

RULES:

All assets need to be made by you, but using previously made assets is fair game.

Graphics: Stick to the normal NES graphics rules. NES palette, 4 colors (counting transparency) per sprite or 16x16 tile, 256x240 screen resolution, etc. For probably the biggest rule, you can only have 256 unique tiles in your game. That's a total size of 128 x 128 pixels. When submitting your game, you'll need to put an image of your game's full spritesheet on your game's page. For the one thing that technically breaks the NES' graphics rules, having more than 8 sprites per scanline is TECHNICALLY allowed. Just don't abuse it to have effects that wouldn't be able to be directly ported to the NES. This rule is only really exists because no one wants to spend forever programming their own sprite tearing. Also before I forget, you get 4 sprite palettes and 4 tile palettes


note on this image, the sprite is technically possible using 2 palettes but the point is to say that sprites get 4 colors COUNTING TRANSPARENCY. a lot of people forget that.

(Quick note, a lot of NES games like Battletoads use more advanced mappers to achieve visual effects not normally possible. for this jam, you're allowed to simulate hblank shenanigans freely, not caring about sprite zero hit, but no writing to chr ram! that'd be too easy and ruin the fun of optimizing!)

Input: Keep it to the classic 8 buttons (The 4 D-pad directions, A, B, Start, and Select) however these 8 buttons can be mapped anywhere on the keyboard. I'd advise against doing a multiplayer game (especially if it doesn't have a singleplayer mode) but you are allowed to have more than 8 buttons if you're simulating multiple controllers, just keep it to 8 buttons per player.

Audio: I honestly don't care about the audio, as long as it's pretty much 8-bit, I'll let it pass. just don't be using audio that sounds more like SNES or better.

KEEP IN MIND: Your game will not be disqualified for breaking any rules (unless you just didn't even try) but your game will recieve a lower score, as how well the game follows the limitations will be manually chosen by me as one of the voting criteria.

and, the most important rule of the jam:

HAVE FUN!

because if you're not having fun you're disqualified