If you have any questions or need for the hosts or judges to clarify a rule, leave your question here and we'll get to it ASAP.
We're pretty flexible on the definition in terms of judging. Visual novels are a subset of interactive fiction to us and come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
The big things here are an emphasis on delivering a story via text above all else. Reading should be the primary mode of which the reader interacts with the visual novel. Mini-games and such are allowed, and generally as long as it's apparent that the spirit of a visual novel was attempted, even if it does not fit the strictest of definitions for a visual novel, it'll be counted for the jam. To get at what I think is the heart of the question, we've only ever disqualified two submissions since Spooktober has been running, and neither of them had text beyond a title screen and control instructions.
For anyone that has questions or doubts if their submission would count, feel free to discuss the details with one of the judges.
Many of such instances would be handled on a case by case basis. We got this question a bit last year as well, but in different forms:
A few quick, hard answers on some of the more common things:
Gore itself permitted when it is explicitly warned for.
Depictions of suicide are allowed when it is explicitly warned for. Mentions of suicide are allowed, and we encourage warning for it. Please distinguish between mentions and depictions in your warnings. Encouragement or glorification of suicide is strongly discouraged.
Sexually explicit content is expressly forbidden from the entries as per the rules. Anything as an extension of that would follow as well. You can update your entries at a later point to include it.
Anything that could be constituted as hateful messaging or imagery. Things that encourage racism, sexism or other discrimination against peoples.
Harassment or encouraged harassment of real peoples.
This list is not exhaustive. I would urge entrants to exercise good common sense regarding the content they enter into the contest.
Edit:
And, of course, feel free to ask ahead of time about your project/scene ideas either here or in our Discord.
Hi,
Is there a minimum required length for submissions or minimum number of assets? Is a choice based storyline required or would a linear submission be acceptable? Would it potentially be acceptable for the game to contain a few mini stories rather than a single narrative? I have a vague idea of what I'd like to do but would like to plan a tiny bit ahead to organise if I need a team and what I might need to sort out before the start. Thanks!
> Is there a minimum required length for submissions or minimum number of assets?
There is no minimum or maximum word count or assets. If you want to go minimalistic or all out, that's fine by us.
> Is a choice based storyline required or would a linear submission be acceptable?
Both very acceptable.
>Would it potentially be acceptable for the game to contain a few mini stories rather than a single narrative?
That's a pretty cool idea! Kind of like a 'Campfire Ghost Stories' thing where more than one story gets told. That's acceptable, exciting to think about even!
> I have a vague idea of what I'd like to do but would like to plan a tiny bit ahead to organise if I need a team and what I might need to sort out before the start. Thanks!
Good luck! If you find yourself in need of a team, make sure you join our Discord. We have two big team building events on the 21st and 28th for anyone looking for teams that hasn't found one yet.
In the instance you are making a Halloween DLC style entry of your existing visual novel, you may only use backgrounds and UI elements from the original if they have Spooktober VN Jam themed elements added to them(e.g, Halloween decorations, horror genre props, etc,) if they don't already have them.
You are not permitted to bring over music, sfx, or sprites, or any other unmentioned assets, unless they fall into the realm of publicly available resources rules as listed on the jam page.
For sprites, you're allowed to use the original sprites as a concept for new sprites. In the interest of fairness in the jam, you'll need to recreate them. For purposes of judging, I will say the higher the deviation from the original sprites, while still being recognizable as the characters, the better. New outfits and/or costumes are a good start.
For music, themed remixes of your originals are an acceptable replacement for the original music.
Code, especially for minigames or non-visual novel mechanics, is handled on a case by case basis. If you have code you'd like to bring over, please discuss it with us first. Thus far, we've permitted the use of RPG-like code from a RenPy made original game on the basis that much of its code would be available in another VN-capable engine like RPG Maker out of the box. As a general rule, code that would normally be available out of the box in another engine is most likely okay, but we need to be made aware of it. For judging purposes, I will say entirely new mechanics is favorable to reused ones.
We'll add a link to this question on the page for the rules regarding DLC/Spinoffs.
Technically only the project lead (who I assume would be you) needs an itch account to be able to enter and submit to any game jam. Should your friend make an account themselves, you should be able to add them as a Contributor on the game following these steps:
While we strongly urge all participants to have an itch.io account and join the jam, strictly the jam only needs one person with one, and then everyone who has participated in the submission needs to be credited in the fashion of their choosing both in the submission fields and in the executable itself.
You may! Third party assets are allowed (not just CC, but also paid or otherwise licensable) if they re publicly available to everyone to use or purchase.
Quick note for everyone reading: The spirit of this is a level playing field for participants, so while it's allowable by the letter of the rule, some obvious loop holes are frowned upon. One such example of such a loop hole is making your own assets CC just prior to the jam starting and saying they're publicly available on your own website.
Ah, Thanks for clarifying! <3
We have a bunch of Sci-Fi themed CC assets available for anyone to use, with a few more coming this month. I probably won't be using these for Spooktober, but anyone needing portraits with expressions are welcome to use them.
There is no strict ruling that an incomplete or demo submission counts against any submitting teams, however the trend has been more often than not completed but short VNs have been leaders in terms of judging over the past two years.
As long as what you worked on is submitted before the deadline, it will be counted whether it's a complete experience or not. Many teams make demos as part of this jam to begin work on a product they intend on finishing at a later date, and we love that.
Depictions of suicide are allowed when it is explicitly warned for. Mentions of suicide are allowed, and we encourage warning for it. Please distinguish between mentions and depictions in your warnings. Encouragement or glorification of suicide is strongly discouraged.
I've also added this statement to the above thread where we cover some other sensitive material.
With the "creepypasta version of one of your existing games" option, I'm assuming that it would be okay to reuse assets from that game or would I have to remake them? Is it also okay if there's no Halloween decorations or assets in the creepypasta version? These are probably really strange questions, but I just want to be absolutely sure before I decide on what I want to do.
About VN genre.
There are some VNs like Danganronpa that includes 3D environment for investigation. What exactly are restrictions for an VN? Other that lots of text. How about mixing it with 2D environment like RPG or Platformer for investigation? Would that be considered as VN or not?
I recall Ace Attorney Investigation has 2D RPG-like environment, too. So, what exactly the restriction?
We're open to interpretation on what constitutes a VN. Hybrid games are allowed. We've yet to disqualify anyone who has attempted a hybrid VN.
See also https://itch.io/post/4069397
Hello! I like to stream/record playthroughs and I noticed that it's being encouraged to post a video about this game jam. My question is what sort of content is appropriate? For example, is it more of a general overview about the Spooktober visual novel jam, or can it just be a Let's Play on one of the submissions? Also, would I simply create a new thread here and post the video?
Thank you for your time!