Invitation

We hereby announce PunyJam #2. Anyone can enter. We’re all in it for the fun, and the focus is on learning, sharing and creating. There will also be a competition element to it, but you can choose whether you want your game to be judged and voted on or not (See "Participating outside competition" below.)

What it is

A jam where you write a text adventure using the PunyInform library. If you haven't heard of PunyInform before, the fastest way to get started is probably by reading the articles and tutorials which are linked on the PunyInform page.

Games are in Z-code format, playable with any Z-code interpreter, like Gargoyle, Zoom or Ozmoo.

Schedule

29 October: The theme is announced

21 November: Last day to submit games

22 November - 5 December: Voting

6 December: Winners are announced

All times are CET (GMT + 1). (To be precise, the theme announcement happens when we have DST, meaning it's GMT + 2 for that date).

Voting

Anyone can be a judge. Authors are not allowed to vote on their own games. Voting is done using itch.io's voting system . A judge can vote on any number of games.

At the end of 5 December, CET, voting ends.

Rules

• The game must be free to play.
• The game must be new.
• The game must use the PunyInform library.
• The game must be in English.
• The game content must adhere to the rules added by the theme announcement.
• The game may not contain any copyrighted material that you don't have the rights to use.
• Entrants may share their source code or compiled versions of their game with other people during the entire jam. They may not publish compiled versions of the game publicly before voting starts.
• Entrants must be respectful to the jam organizers, other participants, people voting and discussing the games etc.
• Entrants may not in any way try to make other people vote on their game specifically.
• No hateful, racist, misogynist or homophobic content, or any content that’s meant to make any group of people feel bad about themselves. 
• The jam organizers reserve the right to remove a game from the jam or require the entrant to remove certain content.
• Judges will be asked to rate the overall enjoyment they got out of the game. This determines the final ranking.
• Entrants can be judges, but can’t vote on their own game.
• An entrant can choose to submit a game to the jam but outside the competition, meaning it won’t be possible to vote on that entry.  See "Participating outside competition" below.
  
• The jam organizers may enter their own games in the jam, but not in the competition.
  

Participating outside competition

We also welcome participants who want to join the jam, develop a game, but not have it judged. Unfortunately, itch.io doen't really provide support for this, so do not use itch.io's mechanism for submitting the game to the jam, but contact the organizers and we will list the entry on the jam page, with a link to the game's page.

Theme

The game must contain a player character (PC) who has some kind of phobia, and this proves a challenge on one or more occasions in the game. It could be a common or not so common phobia, or just a trace of some traumatic event in the PC’s life (there doesn’t have to be a name for this condition). The PC could even have more than one type of phobia.

Note that the PC’s phobia(s) must affect gameplay. There must be at least one situation/obstacle in the game that the player will have to overcome in order to complete the game, where the most obvious course of action isn’t possible due to the phobia(s).

As an example, the PC might have arachnophobia, and when they need a tool in the back of a cupboard where there are also spiders, they can't just reach in and grab the tool - they'll need to think of a way to retrieve the tool while keeping a safe distance from the spiders.

Apart from this, the theme imposes no rules regarding the game contents.

Recommendations

We strongly encourage entrants to:

• aim to make a game that's small, complete and well tested
• think carefully if they want to have their game judged - if getting a low score would ruin all the fun for them, they'd better join outside the competition instead!
• cooperate, share code, help each other out with design, programming, testing etc
• publish their source code so others can see how everything is done
• use the time before the jam starts to learn PunyInform

Again, we can't stress this enough: You need to have your game thoroughly tested by others who have previous experience of text adventures. Listen to their feedback and use it to make the game better. If the testers can't figure out how to solve a puzzle, maybe you need to make it easier. If the testers think it makes sense to use a certain verb in a situation, consider adding it, either as a new way to solve a puzzle, or to get a clue how to solve the puzzle, or just get a tailor-made response to show that you've thought of it and recognize it's a sensible thing to try.

We strongly encourage judges to:

• Play at least three of the games before submitting their votes
• Write down some comments about each game they play - something they liked, something they think can be improved etc - and send it to the author.  

Resources

Intfiction.org has a lively forum with lots of skilled and helpful people. We (the organizers of the jam and creators of PunyInform) also hang out there and will try to help answer any questions you may have, technical or otherwise. For any questions related to PunyInform (how does *this* work, how do I achieve *this* effect, is this a bug etc) post in the "Inform 6" category and add the tag "punyinform": https://intfiction.org/c/authoring/inform-6/66

There is also a PunyInform Discord server you can join at https://discord.com/invite/y9anzKJTBa . You can expect several jam participants to hang out there.

If you'd like to find someone to cooperate with on writing a game, or you're looking for beta-testers, the Discord server or the intfiction.org forum are probably the best places to post about this.

The PunyInform page has links to  articles and tutorials. as well as the manual for PunyInform.

Prizes

The prize pool currently contains:

• A retail (physical) copy of the PunyInform game Hibernated 1 Director's Cut for the platform of your choice, including shipping (Warm thanks to PolyPlay / Puddle / Stefan Vogt!)
• A new paperback copy of the book Twisty Little Passages by Nick Montfort, signed by the author . Donated by Nick Montfort.

We welcome further prize donations. Please email punyjam.prize.donations@microheaven.com if you want to donate.

Organizers

The organizers of this jam are Fredrik Ramsberg and Johan Berntsson. You can reach us at punyjam.organizers@microheaven.com