I couldn't find anything about it but I just would like to be sure that there are no rules about when we make our games visible on itch.io, as long as it happens after the start date? Personally, I plan to make my game visible about 48 hours before the submission deadline 1st of May. Are there any rules about this? Thanks.
Thanks for considering joining the jam!
I have added a rule that states that you are allowed to show your game on the end date of the jam.
As it may be beginner developers joining the jam, it may dishearten them if they see games that perhaps look very professional. In the end it's just about having fun.
this leads me to a problem, and would mean that I cannot participate and follow rule 13 at the same time.
I stream my participation in jams on twitch, which would certainly count as a "public social media" platform.
additionally, my work flow is: create a git repo, make a non-public itch page, develop game and upload versions each day until it just barely meets the requirement of the theme, then make the itch page public and submit to the jam, and continue updating until the end of the jam.
so rule 13 is a non-starter for me.
if it helps, my game won't look very professional at all.
@kenpad - By a strict reading of the rule: "13.) Games must not be shown publicly (on social media or or otherwise) until the end date of the jam. Providing to beta testers is ok, as long as it is in private." that appears to be the case, but I would definitely get @Adventuron to chime in to be sure.
The order of posts here on itch confused me a bit, as it depends on whether you reply to someone or not. Thus I will here try to make my question more clear:
I don't know if the displayed deadlines adjust to the time zone of the viewer but here in Denmark the text is this:
"Submissions open from March 21st 2022 at 10:00 AM to May 1st 2022 at 12:59 AM"
Thus, if I take rule 13 literally, I can only make my game public within one hour (1st of May 12:01 AM to 12:59 AM). Or it could mean, that as long as it is the 1st of May somewhere in the world, i.e. 12 hours before it becomes the 1st of May in the UK. Or it could be, that the text in the UK is:
"Submissions open from March 21st 2022 at 9:00 AM to April 30th 2022 at 11:59 PM" and that we can reveal our game all day on the 30th of April.
It would just be good to know so we don't get disqualified for that .
The times shown on the jam's home page are local time. If you're using a computer with a mouse and hover over the closing time, it will show you the time in UTC. It doesn't matter whether you use local time or UTC, so long as you submit your entry before that closing time and make it public so that it is visible to everyone as soon as submissions close. The only unknown factor here is how long before submissions close is acceptable to make it public. This is just my opinion, but I think 24 hours before the submission deadline is reasonable to account for people living in different time zones.
Whatever you do, don't leave it until the last minute in case you have internet issues. I had internet troubles one time and ended up submitting just minutes after the deadline. Fortunately for me, the deadline had been extended and I didn't realise it.
I'm not going to be mean and disqualify anyone that accidentally falls foul of some arbitrary rule, so don't worry too much about timezones - but of course get your game submitted before the end date.
The reason for keeping submissions private (which doesn't mean you can't share with testers) is so that very polished games don't overwhelm and demotivate amateur authors. In addition, revealing lots of hype about a game means that games developed earlier can campaign for more votes.
I would need to put my game in the IF-archive for the images to display correctly in a play online link. When can I submit it to the archive? I think submitting it there would count as releasing it, but I also know it takes some time for submitted games to become available there. So I'm not sure what to do about that.
