Anything that is made BEFORE the beginning of the game jam would be considered premade. This doesn't mean you can't use them, this just means that the score for Originality will be greatly reduced if so. We encourage all participants to complete a game how they see fit or comfortable. As for winning a prize, all rules must be followed.
To further explain: The goal of these game jams is to help practice and apply critical thinking, creativity and memory by typing out all code and assets. Anyone can download or copy and paste, but they aren't learning nearly as much doing it that way. These rules are to promote beginners to gain muscle memory and gain skills for their future game dev goals. This isn't a rat race for first, nor is it a place to try and impress anyone. We all start somewhere.
We also offer no rule, optional theme, practice game jams call Practice Circles. These are a ran in-between our monthly Beginners Circle. Without prizes or rules, you could use any assets or plug-ins you want to practice with there. These Beginners Circles are slightly more of a challenge to the promote growth and to gain proper, invaluable game development skills for the future
I understand that as beginners we may lean towards premade content when starting out. This is fine. Just make sure to try and type it out by hand and attempt to actually retain and learn what is happening within that code. If you are watching tutorials, watch the entire tutorial first, then re-watch it and go step by step. You also would need to credit everything properly that isn't made by you.
There is no race or rush to seem like we are further ahead than we are. Already there is also a huge leap in ability and information retention from the beginners learning properly so far, when compared to the beginners blindly following tutorials and copying others without proper understanding
This is generally speaking for the average game engines. Of course there are more complicated processes that would be impossible to do in 2 weeks without premade content, let's stick to game development processes that you are practiced in and familiar with to get the job done in 2 weeks. Otherwise join the Practice Circle's all you want and practice until your heart is content
Hope that answers your question. We are all here to help you out along to way too.
You are entitled to your opinion. We cater to many different methods that fit the time and rule restrictions of game jams. For our time constrained game jams, and if you want to participate in our game jams, we can help you learn more time efficient, universal skills to take into lower level engines. There are plenty of other game jams without such limitations.
Game jams are designed to be fast as you can within a certain time limit. You can also just make projects without any game jam limitations or restrictions and have as much free time as you please to complete what ever you choose... the sky's the limit.
Or you are more than welcome to re-read and see that we have Practice Circles without limits for special exceptions. We would rather positive community members as well.
Good luck to you
