About

Calling all pygamers!

The long awaited Pygame Community Summer Jam is back for 2023! It's  time to crack open your IDE's, get yourself a team (or go solo if you're up for the challenge) and get ready for a week of pygame jamming fun!

To fully participate, please join the Pygame Community Discord Server.

Attention!

We're trying something new! Seperating themes and challenges. The Jam Theme will now be considered the general aesthetic of the game. This is purely what your game should be based around. The Jam Challenge is the technical aspect, the things you do behind to scenes to twist the idea of the aesthetic. How this will go down in developement? A theme like "Vaporwave" and "Narrative" may have you creating the new Blade Runner...

Chosen Theme:

Waterworld/Water

Chosen Challenge:

Small

Rating Criteria

• Theme: How accurately and creatively does the game follow the theme given for the jam? This should be judged on the pure aesthetic aspect of the game, in contrast to the challenge.

• Challenge: How accurately and creatively does the game follow the challenge given for the jam? This should be judged on technicality and adaptation, in contrast to the theme.

• Artistry: Does the game have incredible sound effect work, music, or visuals? This shouldn't be a harsh judgment, but games with excellent visual and/or audio work sure deserve a high rating here.

• Innovation: How different is this game to other games that have been developed (especially other games developed for this jam in particular)? This should be based on how unique and creative the ideas in the game are, not how well executed said ideas are (that would be reserved for the polish rating).

• Polish: How much extra effort has gone in to make the game just that little bit better? This will be based on things such as programmatical detail (e.g. physics or visual effects), graphic detail, level count/size/detail and easter eggs. Bugs or areas of the game which feel rushed will result in a lower score in this category.

Rules

• All submissions must be created between the start and end of the jam. Games that were started before the start of the jam will not be allowed. Post-jam versions of your game must be clearly marked as such.

• Pygame(-ce) must be the primary tool used for rendering and sound. Using things such as, e.g. modernGL for shaders or pyaudio for sound manipulation is allowed, but pygame must be used for the bulk of the work. This helps to keep things even between participants. (If possible, the pygame-ce fork of pygame should be used)

• You MUST create all assets used in your entry during the jam. No premade assets are allowed, even if you have the rights to them. This includes creative commons works (even CC0). The exceptions to this are things in the public domain that are over ~70 years old (e.g. classical music pieces, old paintings, etc) and fonts (which you must of course still have license to use). Asset generators on the other hand, are perfectly fine to use. Premade splash screens or logos are also allowed, as are pygame assets from https://pyga.me/docs/logos.html exclusively.

• Please be careful with delicate or controversial subject matter. Do not make games with NSFW/18+ content. If you are unsure whether you can include something in your entry, ask a member of staff on the Discord server.

• Teams of 2+ are allowed for this jam. However no more than 2 Discord Nitro awards will be awarded per team.

• Upon submitting your game you will be required to leave a link to your game's source code as well as the Discord #'s of all team members.

• You are not allowed to have fun throughout the creation process. Any team caught enjoying the jam will be disqualified. /s

Prizes

1st Place - 2 Months Discord Nitro

2nd Place - 1 Month Discord Nitro

3rd Place - 1 Month Discord Nitro Basic (Note that for those working in teams, only a maximum of 2 Nitros will be given out for a given entry)