Hi, everybody! I'm your host, Grim; I'm an interactive fiction creator, classicist, and really excited about the first World MytholoJam! I'm passionate about ancient history and making it accessible, and when I started these jams I figured they would be fun ways to get people engaging with antiquity. Now that the jam is about to officially begin, here are some resources, tips, and links that might be helpful!
🏺 Getting Started
If you need a hand deciding where to begin, sortingh.at is an interactive tool that can give you a personalized idea of which engines to explore with breakdowns of each tool. It can also give you suggestions on where to locate art and audio assets, and advice about design and distribution. It contains plenty of links leading you to sites where you can find the tools and assets it describes.
🏺 Inspiration
For this jam, I'll be staying in my lane a bit. My main area of study is Mediterranean and Near Eastern antiquity, and though I'm interested in a lot of history outside of those regions, I can't give comprehensive info about every culture or myth that jammers might be interested in. So while there won't be a big table of ideas in this thread as there has been for previous jams, here are some resources I can recommend for those who need a bit of help finding inspiration!
- ✨ If you want to get more familiar with any concepts, locations, or figures you’re interested in working with, I recommend the Ancient History Encyclopedia, which has an especially handy search function and a useful index. ✨
- For artwork, objects, and images, you might want to check out the Met collection or the public collections on Artstor.
- The images used in this jam's banner are from a wide variety of cultures and time periods, and might be intriguing to look into! More information about each piece can be found in a collection of links at the very bottom of the jam overview page.
- Remember that you don't have to pull inspiration from myth alone — you could work with actual historical events (like battles), historical figures, or specific artifacts and objects.
- Google and Wikipedia are fine places to start — just be wary of misinformation.
- For those interested in Greek or Roman mythology, check out previous Getting Started threads:
🏺 Advice
- Don’t take on too much — you have two months to work, which is a while, but it’s going to fly by. I wouldn’t suggest trying to cram a full retelling of an epic poem into this jam. Focus on creating something manageable, and don’t feel like you can’t scale your initial idea back if it’s proving too much to wrangle. Sometimes that can save a project.
- Manage your time. It’s okay and very normal if you can’t work on your project every day of the jam, but try making yourself a timeline to help stay on track so that you know what you need to work on day by day and can avoid getting overwhelmed or crunching.
- Use placeholder assets and playtest often! It helps to get everything working and functional before worrying about how it looks.
- Save your work often! Ctrl+s!!!
- Even if you don’t finish your project, you can still submit your work! Be proud of what you make. It may not be up to your own expectations, but it’s still something worthwhile.
🏺 Time Management
Important enough to have its own little subsection. Because MytholoJams have become a lot longer in the interest of accessibility, a jam-wide extension this time around is very unlikely, and I encourage careful time management even more than before.
The longer you have, the more likely you are to bite off more than you can chew. Organize your days and weeks clearly to maximize your working hours and your time off. Being well-rested and avoiding crunch will make things easier and more fun.
🏺 Rules
- Submissions irrelevant to the theme will be removed, and blank submissions risk being removed. State your project’s relevance to the theme in its description to set it apart from potential spam; a single sentence like "This is a game for World MytholoJam about X and Y" is enough.
- Spam submissions will be removed.
- Hatred and bigotry will not be tolerated. Treat your fellow jammers as well as the cultures and material you engage with for the jam with respect.
- Any critique of your fellow jammers must be constructive.
- Similarly, be nice on Discord, and please keep conversation relevant to the jam.
- You may revisit a prototype created before the jam began, but projects that were finished before the jam began are not allowed.
- Have fun! If you’re not enjoying yourself, take a break and de-stress. If there’s something specific that I can do to improve your experience, please get in touch.
🏺 Team-Building
You can work solo or with others. If you're looking for team members, check out the jam page on CrowdForge, join the Discord chat, or make a topic here in the jam community to look for likeminded folks!
🏺 Devlogs
You’re also more than welcome to use the community for devlogs if you feel so inclined. I’d love to see your progress, and it can be nice to interact with and inspire other jammers. It can also help you stay organized!
🏺 Questions?
Refer to the jam overview for a list of Frequently Asked Questions.
If you have other questions about the jam or need help with something, you’re welcome to create a topic in the community or send me an email (to: grimoirtua[@]gmail[.]com).