Hey all! It's approaching the illustrious Winter season. 2020 has been a crazy mess, and mental health is still a huge problem not only for developers but for players worldwide in the gaming community. But it doesn't have to be this way! This game jam hopes to bring together developers, indie creators, and aspiring artists to create and submit a warm game to keep combating the cold, harmful dark. More information below!

About Me:
Hi everyone! My name's Ethan or Dordlebuns on most online platforms. I'm a Senior finishing up school in Film and Media Studies but have been a lifelong gamer. I love creative writing and specialize in that as well as collaboration, communication, and leadership. Within the last year I have been dedicating all my free time to game development, and so far have made a small spoopy single-player level within Unreal Engine as well as two small titles in Unity Engine. I enjoy pumpkin everything, coffee, and anything nerd related. You name it, I probably know and enjoy it! (probably) This will be my first game jam that I am hosting and I can't wait to host more especially in person once the world figures things out. Thanks for reading, now onto the jam! :^)

Summary:
The Warmth in the Dark Game Jam is a week long game jam running from November 13th 12 pm EST to November 20th at midnight EST, made to give notes of warmth, triumph, hope, and any other feelings that illicit a more positive mindset! Anyone is encouraged to join and make a game through any engine you'd like with there only being one rule: the game must have a theme of positivity; whether that be of hope, triumphing through a difficult task, or connecting with NPC friends + bonding, the choice is up to you! There are other elements to this game jam that I highly encourage should anyone want to participate: an optional donation to the CheckPoint charity in Australia that battles mental illness both in the game industry and in the gaming community. They provide tools and informative GDC talks about mental health, the stigma that many still face, and are overall trying to make people's lives better. 

More about them here: https://checkpointorg.com/about-page/

Rules:
As mentioned before, the rules are very limitless! The only rule you have is in regards to the overall theme of the game:

• Must have a theme associated with positivity.
• This can include a variety of things, like NPC bonding, battling foes to overcome difficult trials, and a hopeful protagonist. Options are limitless!
• Game genre can vary as well! Platformers, visual novels, 2D-style games, whatever you would like to make!
• A wide variety of engines are available to any kind of developer out there! Unreal Engine and Unity Engine are very popular, but if you're newer or looking for less programmer heavy options there is Ren'Py and GameMaker Studio. (Ren'Py being more visual novel focused and GameMaker fairing in 2D.) 

Links for some of these tools:

GameMaker: https://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker
Ren'Py: https://www.renpy.org/
Unity: https://unity.com/
Unreal Engine: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/auth?state=https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US...

Optional: Donations!
Mentioned above under Summary, donations are encouraged but obviously not required to make an enlightening game! However! To spread some more joy and to encourage participants to donate, every $5 donated to CheckPoint will enter the participant in a $25 Amazon Gift Card rally! Donate to a great cause and support mental illness while gaining developer experience, meeting new people, and maybe even winning a gift card just in time for the holidays?! Win-win!

Instructions for Optional Donations:
Donate Link: https://checkpointorg.com/donate/ (There is a Custom Amount option below everything else.) Follow the prompts here to donate!

Then, send a screenshot of your donation confirmation (with the amount of how much was donated) to my email: ethanlmabry@gmail.com!
This way, I can track how much donations we've done and keep track of how many rallies to enter each participant in.  

With all of this in mind, the goal of this game jam is to bring people together and to help make people's lives better. While it isn't a ranked jam, I do recommend leaving comments and feedback on each other's entries! Once the jam is over, I will be posting the total amount of funds we were able to raise as well as playing everyone's games of course! Thank you to all who participate and I wish everyone the best of luck on making their game!