Who I Am:

Wanderjahre Games is a game writing and analysis twitch stream and Jam series hosted and run by Cathardigan (or Dylan, as everyone else knows him). Cathardigan (who is me/Dylan/Wanderjahre. I'm typing this right now.) Is a published fiction writer, having landed short stories in prestigious literary magazines such as Fiction International, Hobart Pulp, Juked, Whiskey Paper, Driftwood Press, and Alcyone. He has completed two novels, one of which was very bad and written in highschool, the second is much better and was his Master's Thesis at Southern Illinois University. He (I) knows a great deal about fiction. Its structure, cadence, and why a piece of fiction is moving. He also knows a great deal about games and their history. It is his (my) dream to be a game writer, and to make writing and narratives in games better, so what better way than to help those single or small development teams! Submit your games to my jam, get free narrative feedback, deal? Deal.

The jam will be ranked by the community. At the end of the voting period, the top ten games will be played and streamed by me (Cathardigan/WanderJahre/Dylan) over on https://www.twitch.tv/wanderjahre_games/ the day after voting ends.

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Artist Credit: https://squishypuffdave.itch.io/

Criteria:

Wanderjahre wants games featuring great narratives. 

This jam is open to games playable on desktop, browser, and Gameboy (if you can lend me an emulator). The top ten game as voted by the community will be streamed on Twitch, so factor that into your design if necessary! The community's ten finalist games will be streamed on the official Wanderjahre Games Twitch channel https://www.twitch.tv/wanderjahre_games/ after the voting period has ended. The Wanderjahre Games team (Dylan, me, Cathardigan) will serve as the finalist judge and analyze the narrative structure of the community's top ten favorites.

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THEME

"FINISH IT" YOU CANNOT START A BRAND NEW PROJECT

What do I mean by this? Well, the theme of this Jam is "Finish it." Meaning, finish that project you started and forgot about...or ran out of time...or decided to do something else...whatever the reason may be! But it ought to be that project that you thought "One day, I'll go back and finish that."

AND WHAT DO I MEAN BY "PROJECT" YOU MAY ASK? 

This jam is not restricted to games. They can be any form of digital media. All I mean by digital media is that which is not simply a print fiction story. If you have a short story written in PowerPoint, that's fine. Just no bog-standard Word Doc with characters and scenes and stuff. Got an audio project? Submit that! Got a narrative video series? Submit that! Games, of course, will be happily accepted.

The Restriction(s): STORY

We are a narrative game jam/stream. We want to talk about the Narrative merit of video games. If you're project was simply a test demo of a mechanic you thought was cool, that's great! But not for us. If you want to submit a finished version of that cool test demo, you have to figure out how to jam a story in there. 

Don't know where to start a story? Look no further than our Discord (Link at the bottom) or YouTube/Twitch (Links everywhere). I explain how to write stories all the time in all my videos.

NOW'S YOUR CHANCE.

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Rules:

1. Pre-made assets are fine. Just credit the artists in your submission's description.
2. We are open to submissions containing mature content, just don't do any porn, or gore porn, or racist porn, or sexist porn. Why am I saying porn so much? Because porn is using the explicit content in place of narrative merit. It's fine to have a sexist character in your story, it's not fine to porn-ify it and have the sexism be the story.
3. Don't harass anyone. 
4. Works in Progress only! What I mean by this: Do not take that game you finished two years ago and are looking for free advertising via a game jam. Really fast FAQ: "Does that mean I can't finish my game during the jam? I have to stop before it's done?" Answer: NO, you can absolutely finish your game during the Jam. In fact, I will be amazed if you can start, develop, and finish an entire game so that it is publisher ready in the span of 7-14 days, you would be a prodigal developer, and more power to you in that regard. All I am trying to prevent is the flood of games looking for free advertising. Games which were published before the Jam started will be disqualified and removed.
5. I say again: Games which are considered "Complete," and you are simply using the Jam for free advertising will be removed.
6. Do NOT submit a game with a price. Rule #4 should mostly take care of this, but just to be clear, if you intend to charge for your game, please make a free version (it can be a demo (or a demo of a demo)) available to the Jam participants. If the game has a price, we will disregard the entry completely and ruthlessly.

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Voting:

As soon as the Jam ends, the voting begins! Everyone will have one week to play each game, vote on them individually, so as to determine a "winner" in the various categories. Each game will be voted on in the following categories (in no particular order):

1. Most Compelling Narrative 
2. Most Innovative Use of Ludonarrative
3. Most Compelling Character
4. Most "Complete" Project

The four highest voted games from Most Compelling Narrative as well as the two highest voted game from the following categories will be qualify as our ten finalists.

After Joining the Jam:

Come over to our Discord, watch our Twitch stream, and catch up on old Twitch streams on our YouTube channel! We'll be discussing submissions and finalists all the while. So, come say hi!