🔞 Adults only, please!  Sexual content ahoy. 🔞

It's February!  The month of love, according to my grocery store's seasonal aisle.  Bees are buzzing, flowers are blooming, and all the cute little forest animals are twitterpated — which, I'm starting to think, really means horny.

So let's make some horny games!

For the third time!!

We've already seen Strawberry Jam and Strawberry Jam 2 come and go, which incredibly makes this the third annual Strawberry Jam!  I have never stuck with anything for so long before, probably.

The gist is the same as always: you have one month (all of February) to make a horny game, and then two weeks to vote on everyone else's horny games.  If you're rated the best in a category, you might just win nothing!  It's very exciting.

My motive is to expand what "horny game" brings to mind for everyone!  A lot of horny games are clickers, visual novels, or arcade games where progression gradually removes someone's clothing, and those are fine — but I believe there's a lot more potential in the genre, and I'm hoping that this jam will inspire some new ideas!  (Of course, feel free to make something more traditional if you want, too!  There's a reason "novelty" is only one category out of many, and I even worked on a VN for last year's jam.)

Feel free to mingle in the jam community or on Discord, where you can share your progress or ask for advice from experts!  Advice on games, I mean; not horny.  But maybe they're also experts on horny?  I guess you could ask!

I'll probably be tweeting about the jam on my Twitter, @eevee, and possibly also on my smut-laden alt, @squishfox.

Rules

This jam is judged, but there are no prizes, so don't take it too seriously.  New games are preferred — but that said, if you're finishing up something on the backburner or continuing a previous jam game or whatever, please leave a comment on your own jam submission page (remember, it's possible to play a game without visiting the actual game page!) letting everyone know what you started with, so we can adjust accordingly.

Your game should be horny, but "horny" can mean whatever you want, and does not have to include sex at all!  One of the best-received entries last year was inch by inch, a game about navigating a laboratory to concoct an antidote while constantly shrinking — perfectly innocuous, unless that's your thing.  Resurrection Bloom was more overtly kinky, but still non-sexual.  And then there was our own game, the Alice's Day Off demo, which had big ol' pictures of folks putting their whatsits in each other, so that's fine too.

If at all possible, please try to release for all three major platforms — Linux, Mac, and that other one.  Or both Android and iOS.  Something that runs in a browser is great too.  Folks can't enjoy (or rate) your game if they can't play it!

All that said, you don't have to make a video game at all; anything even remotely interactive is fine!  Make a horny board game, horny card game, or horny chore wheel.

Finally, the most important rule: don't get me (or itch) in trouble.  We're all adults here, so I leave that to your impeccable judgement.

Voting

Voting lasts for two weeks after the end of the jam, i.e. the first half of March.  Anyone who submits a game or contributes to a submitted game can vote.  Please reserve some time to play the other entries, vote on them, and let the authors know what you think!  It's not so much fun making a game that no one plays.

The voting categories are fairly arbitrary, but I have included some sample interpretations.

• Play — Was this a good use of your time?  When you did things to it, did it do enjoyable things to you?
• Aesthetic —Does it look nice?  Would you hang it on your wall and forget to hide it when company came over?
• Sound — Are the noises it makes a nice reprieve from the harsh omnipresent buzz of reality?
• Narrative — Does it obey the laws of causality?  Do multiple related things happen in a connected sequence?
• Horny —Is it horny?  Do you suspect horny was involved in its creation?  Could it induce horny in someone, definitely not you?
• Kink —Has it expanded your horizons in new and vaguely unsettling ways?  Did you learn something about the author you can never un-know?
• Stealth — Would you play this with your boss or grandpa watching?  Could it air pre-watershed without batting an eye?
• Harmony —Do the "horny" and "game" parts blend seamlessly, or are they awkwardly fused together, both of which are kind of hot?
• Novelty —Is there something here you haven't seen before, didn't expect, and are now kicking yourself for not thinking of first?

I am horny but have never made a game

Deep breaths!  I'm here for you.

You can ask around on Discord, and/or try one of the following game making gizmos, which all ⓐ work on any computer, ⓑ don't require programming experience, ⓒ don't focus too much on custom artwork, ⓓ are well-known enough that you can easily get help with them, and ⓔ produce things that can be played online.

bitsy is a teeny tiny game editor for making little stories with a very-low-res pixel art aesthetic.  It's best at exploration and conversation.  No programming required, and in fact programming it is nearly impossible.

Twine makes choose-your-own-adventures with simple links between pages, and often has no artwork at all — though you can certainly add some, and do all manner of other shenanigans if you're dedicated enough.

Inform 7 is an English-like programming language for making those old-school text adventures where you GO NORTH and GO SOUTH and then give up and buy the hint manual.  It is programming, but making a small world with some simple interactions is shockingly straightforward.

If you're a programmer and have just never tried making a game, you could try LÖVE (an unopinionated 2D Lua engine that I like a lot), the PICO-8 (a retro-styled "fantasy console" with built-in tools for making art, sounds, music, and levels), or of course Unity which I hear is popular in some obscure circles.  Fair warning: some fundamental things that most games need early on (like collision detection) can be kind of a pain in the ass, so don't be afraid to reach out to the Discord!

If you're an artist and have a very strong aversion to computers (rightfully so), you could try Flick, a sort of art-based alternative to Twine where the player makes choices by clicking on particular colors in an image.

Other lists of possible game-making tools for beginners:

• itch's own list of game dev tools for Ludum Dare
• sortingh.at for interactive advice
• kool.tools
• a list of tools for making narrative games

FAQ

Q: I don't know what kind of game to make!
A: Pick a thing that's horny to you — uniquely to you, if possible! — and make a game about it!  Think about the types of games and game mechanics you like, and how they might blend well with the stuff you're into.  You can always look at previous years' entries and shamelessly rip them off — after all, part of the point of this jam is to fill the world with more kinds of horny games!

Q: Can I start early?
A: It is not within my powers to stop you.  But as mentioned above: please leave a comment on the jam submission letting us know what your progress was when the jam started, so we can maintain a thin façade of fairness.

Q: Why is there a picture of a rabbit and a pink blob?
A: I… am not sure this is the right jam for you.