Our 2025 game design theme is communication. 

If you have a clever idea for a game, submit your pitch by:

March 24th

$10,000 in cash prizes

Finalist games receive critiques by panel of experts

Winning games published online

Finalists receive access to our Publisher's private Discord

Visit Communicating.Games for details and to submit your idea.

Competition is open to everybody age 13+.

From the Gaming Against Violence™ program and presented by the nonprofit charity Jennifer Ann's Group®

Fun / challenging / quirky game.

Great job!

Thank you for playing The Orb of Harmony! 

As we mentioned, this is an early release of the game and we are adding more content. There are also a few bugs that we've found but they are not very consistent.

We'd appreciate your help by letting us know if you find a bug.

• what / where was the bug?
• what browser are you using?
• what is your operating system (e.g. Windows, Mac, Linux)?

Thank you in advance for any assistance!

Our 2024 game design theme is social connectedness and its importance. 

If you have a clever idea for a game, submit your pitch by:

March 17th.

$11,000 in cash prizes

Special student award for middle school or high school student.

Visit www.Connecting.Games for details and to submit your idea.

Competition is open to everybody age 13+.

From the Gaming Against Violence program and presented by the nonprofit charity Jennifer Ann's Group.

We think so too! 🧡

Thank you, we're happy that you liked it. 

It's a unique approach to teaching about consent and we're always excited to hear that it is appreciated!

Feel free to learn about consent from some of the other consent games instead -- you might find one that is a better fit for you. 

Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment.

Thank you for sharing this with us -- we think learning about topics like consent shouldn't be painful.

We are happy to hear that the experience was better than you expected!

Thank you for the information. We will certainly check it out.

Good luck!

Yes, we would encourage you to submit your pitch for the game design challenge.

We will be able to figure out how best to proceed if you are selected as a Finalist. At that time it might be helpful to share more details about your language, compiler, and engine with us so that we could become familiar with them.

One nice aspect of our game design challenge is that several of the judges are usually professors teaching game design or running their university's game design labs.

Feel free to reach out with any other questions. We look forward to seeing your game pitch -- this year's is an especially challenging challenge!

Thank you for your interest in our contest -- and for reaching out with your question.

---
TL;DR: yes and it depends.
---

Yes, if they are selected as a Finalist, the Finalists submit the source code and assets along with their compiled game and a video trailer. This allows us to validate the game before we release it to the judges. We want to be sure that the game works properly for the judges and also need to confirm that the content meets the contest rules.

After judging, the winning game(s) will also undergo some additional work before publishing. These changes are based on the critiques by the judges. The game devs are welcome to do the additional work if they'd prefer or we do it ourselves.

That said, it is not strictly necessary to use a commercially available engine. However we would need to have access to the necessary components to replicate that custom engine in order to fully test the game and then, if it is a winning game, prepare it for publishing. We have done things like this before in a limited way, but it would depend on the difficulty of using that custom engine.

After the game is published we occasionally do have to make updates. Some of them are based on policy requirements at the app stores (currently Apple wants us to update the games we have in their AppStore) or other technical changes (when we were using Google Play they were regularly updating target API level requirements). And sometimes the dialogue includes out-dated cultural references that we'd like to update.

When we began this competition in 2008 most of the games were developed with ActionScript for Flash. Most of those games have not been readily accessible for a few years. Although we've converted one of those games into a downloadable Windows executable (jag.itch.io/graces-diary) and made a few content updates whle doing so, we are trying to avoid running into similar problems as we did with Flash.

We are a very small charity and have very limited resources. But we are open to new ideas and appreciate innovation. We'd be happy to talk further about your custom engine and see if we could find a way to work with it.

Also: entering the contest only requires submitting a game pitch by March 19th. If the pitch is selected then you would become a Finalist and develop that pitch into a game from March 30th until June 30th. 

Please let us know if we can provide further insight. And thank you again for your interest and your question!

About our Annual Game Design Challenge

Since 2008 our nonprofit organization has run an annual game design challenge. Our focus is on prosocial games designed to help young people (ages 11-22) about important issues. We have produced over 60 games through our Gaming Against Violence program. The one rule that we follow every year is: no violence is allowed in the games.

Over the years the topics for our contests have included: bystander awareness, consent, culture, gaslighting, healthy relationships, power & control, resilience, and teen dating violence prevention. The topic for the 16th Annual Life. Love. Game Design Challenge is critical thinking: "the ability to analyze information objectively and make a reasoned judgment" (ThoughtCo). To learn more about critical thinking you can visit the contest website which offers more critical thinking definitions and links to many critical thinking resources: CriticalThinker.games

All of the games we have on itch.io come from our Gaming Against Violence program.
You can explore & play the games on our account: jag.itch.io

Several of these games have gone on to receive other awards and recognition. Most recently, the game 'Culture Overlord' was recognized as a 2022 Games for Change Awards finalist for "Best Learning Game" and was featured at the Games for Change Festival in NYC July 2022.

Our program and its games have been featured on Wired, The Hollywood Reporter, NPR, and more.

Currently all games are free and contain no ads.

About the Critical Thinking Game Design Challenge

Theme: critical thinking Prize money: $10,000 (USD) Entry deadline: March 19, 2023 Eligibility: ages 13 and up
Website: https://CriticalThinker.games

The Critical Thinking Game Challenge consists of two rounds. For Round One, contestants will submit a game pitch. Finalists will be selected from those game pitches. For Round Two, the Finalists will have three months to create a video game based on their game pitch.

►Each Finalist who submits an eligible game is guaranteed a prize of at least $100 (USD).
►The Winning Game is guaranteed a prize of at least $3,000 (USD). The total prize pool is $10,000 (USD).

Visit the website for resilience resources, full game rules, FAQs, and to submit your game pitch.

The deadline is March 19, 2023. Good luck!

About our Annual Game Design Challenge

Since 2008 our nonprofit organization has run an annual game design challenge. Our focus is on prosocial games designed to help young people (ages 11-22) about important issues. Over the years we have produced over 60 games through our Gaming Against Violence program. The one rule that we follow every year is: no violence is allowed in the games.

Over the years the topics for our contests have included: bystander awareness, consent, culture, gaslighting, healthy relationships, power & control, and teen dating violence prevention. The topic for the 15th Annual Life. Love. Game Design Challenge is resilience: "an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change" (Merriam-Webster). To learn more about resilience you can visit the contest website which offers more resilience definitions and links to many resilience resources: resilient.games

All of the games that we have on itch.io come from our Gaming Against Violence program. Check it out if you'd like to play some of the published games: jag.itch.io

Several of these games have gone on to receive other awards and recognition. Most recently, the game 'Culture Overlord' was recognized as a 2022 Games for Change Awards finalist for "Best Learning Game" and will be featured at the Games for Change Festival in NYC July 13-16.

Currently all games are free.

About the Resilience Game Design Challenge

Theme: resilience
Prize money: $5,000 (USD)
Entry deadline: July 5, 2022
Eligibility: ages 13 and up
Website: https://resilient.games

The Resilience Game Challenge consists of two rounds. For Round One, contestants will submit a game pitch. For Round Two, Finalists will be selected from those game pitches and those Finalists will then create a video game based on their game pitch.

Each Finalist who submits an eligible game is guaranteed a prize of at least $100 (USD). Each Winning Game is guaranteed a prize of at least $1,000 (USD).

Visit the website for resilience resources, full game rules, FAQs, and to submit your game pitch. The deadline is July 5, 2022. Good luck!

We're sorry to hear that happened to you but really appreciate you taking the time to share your experience with us. We agree that this is behavior that is not acceptable -- and is too often treated in our culture as "okay" or worse.

Like you, were this to happen to us in high school we would likely have dismissed it as not being an "assault." We would think that because that is how we've been raised to think of these issues: our movies, books, and songs have given us those messages for years - and we were never taught otherwise ... so how would we know differently?

Our hope is that young people who play this game will see issues like this in a new light and, as a result, be less likely to be engage in this behavior. We want very much to change the "norms" around what is considered acceptable behavior when it comes to non-consensual activities.

We hope that Stuck in a Dark Place is effective at finding the right balance between informing players while not traumatizing them -- and that at least in some small way is helping to change some of the unhealthy social norms we've grown up with in our culture.

Thank you again for sharing your experience and thoughts.

We'd love to see more conversations about this game also!

We know that the game covers many difficult topics and that might discourage much conversation. We are happy to hear any thoughts you, or anybody else, has about the game.

Thank you for taking the time to write something and to share your thoughts. We appreciate that.

Thank you Eunoia. We agree that ATC (A Thousand Cuts) is a compelling and important game to experience.

Our hope is that by engaging people - especially at a young age - about these issues that it will help to change their mindset. If young people grow up with unhealthy beliefs and attitudes it is more likely that they will behave in, or be willing to accept, unhealthy behaviors. When they get older, their children are more likely to grow up learning the same unhealthy lessons -- and the cycle of abuse will continue.

ATC is one of three "culture" games we have published to-date; we have several more that are not ready to publish yet. These culture games all examine the role and impact of culture on young people.

We are creating a Patreon account to allow people to help fund our work so that we can continue working on these games. Culture Overlord, Sea of Roses, and ATC will all be updated when we have the resources to do so. We will also be able to publish the other culture games when we have the funding.

We will be sure and share your kind words with Elizabeth Ballou, the developer and writer of ATC.

Thank you again for taking the time to write about our games. These messages help us know what players want. They also encourage us to keep working!

Thank you for your review and kind words!

We believe that some abusers don't know that what they are doing is wrong, especially if they are young and do not have much experience with dating. Young people often learn about relationships by witnessing their parents' relationship or the relationships of their older siblings. If those relationships are unhealthy then those young people might believe that abusive behavior is normal or acceptable. Of course, just because an abuser does not realize that they are being abusive that does not make it acceptable. But it does help us to have a better understanding about how to prevent future abuse.

We have never had any of our games translated into Armenian but we will add that to our list of possible projects. Thank you for letting us know about your interest in an Armenian version of HONEYMOON.

And thank you again for taking the time to write a review and share your thoughts and ideas. We are so glad to know that HONEYMOON has been helpful to you.

Thank you for taking the time to write a review.

We should point out that Dan's over-the-top reaction to media items in the game is deliberate.

This is a central conceit of the game.

The goal here is not to convince players that watching a movie about being a gentleman leads to one's wearing a monocle. Instead, we are trying to encourage discussions about real-world impacts which are much more subtle. But, since they are subtle, we would have to include thousands of such interactions to show their impact.

Here we are not using the conventional "how will Dan respond?" approach as used in the choose-your-own-adventure books. Instead, the player decides how Dan responds by selecting the media items to which Dan is exposed. The central conceit used here is intended to comically direct the narrative, while allowing the player to experience one of many versions of Dan's story in 20 minutes or so.

We are looking at making some changes to the game, including making it more clear that unique approach requires a suspension of disbelief. Your review will help inform how we will accomplish that. Thanks again.

Hi -- we can't figure out how to respond to your review of the crossword puzzle but wanted to reach out to you!

You're the only person who has responded to DV Crossword so first of all: thank you for that. If you'd like we can send you all of the answers if you'd like to use the puzzles in your classroom.

Generally, the "easiest" should be the 10x10 then the 14x14 and then 15x15 puzzles. But since we've not had any feedback it's been very difficult to know how hard the puzzles are. Let us know if you'd like the answers and we'll figure out how to make them available for your use. 

***SPOILERS***
(here are a few clues for the 10x10 puzzle)
12across = permission
25across = resilience
3down = unreversed
5down = saintdenis

- Jennifer Ann's Group

P.S. It has been a while since we created this and it was NOT EASY to try and recall some of these answers. This is harder than we remembered it being! We will probably revamp this game so that at least some hints are available before we share it again next October.  :-)

Thank you for playing and for leaving a comment. We're glad you enjoyed Grace's Diary and hope it will help more young people learn about the dangers of dating abuse!

Thank you for playing Grace's Diary & sharing your thoughts. We agree dating violence is sad and hope that Grace's Diary will continue to help people learn more about it!

Hi Natalie -- we hope your friends are as great as Grace!

Let us know what OS you have and we will try to build a downloadable version that will run locally on your system. Right now the only downloadable is for Windows but we'll gladly add them for another OS if there is enough interest (and we can figure out how to do it!).

Thanks for reaching out & for your kind words!

Yea! Thank you so much for the update -- we're really happy to hear that you're able to explore the world of Lamplight Hollow!

Hmm... well at least we've confirmed that it's doing this consistently for you!

If you wouldn't mind could you try accessing this game on GameJolt? Although at this point it seems likely you'll have the same problem it would help if we could confirm this. We're sorry for the difficulty but this is not a problem we've ever seen and it might take a little time to figure out. Here's Lamplight Hollow's game page on GameJolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/lamplight-hollow/461639

If you can let us know how this goes either here or on our GameJolt page we would appreciate it!

As you can see below, Wilbur is confused too:

Also, the font is Thinking.woff2 but it's not clear if that would matter. If this is another language we haven't been able to identify it. Let us know if you have any luck!

Wow. We haven't seen that before! We just checked and the below image is how it is appearing for us.

Could you click on HOW TO PLAY (aka HNV SN OAX) to see if you still get this "language" once you've proceeded and then let us know?

It's probably a character set or font issue but it would help narrow it down if you could try the above. 

Thanks!

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your comments with us! We're very glad that you liked HONEYMOON and its message.

This year's winning games have been announced:

• $10,000 First Place Winner: 'Culture Overlord' from Lucas Vially, France
• $2,000 Second Place Winner: 'Sea of Roses' from Midnight Moon of Tea, Portugal
• $500 Third Place Winner: 'A Thousand Cuts' from Elizabeth Ballou, USA

More details including links to game trailers in the press release!

Winners Announced: Video Games Exploring Culture’s Influence on Dating (October 15, 2020 Press Release)

We agree -- thank you for your comment & kind words!

Thanks for the Let's Play of Lamplight Hollow! Now that Wilbur & Dreamer have made it Outdoors we'd love to see what happens next . . . !

We're so glad to hear that - we hope you enjoy exploring Lamplight Hollow!!!

Take care.

Hi - we're sorry to hear that. The HTML5 save files should be stored in local storage and retrieved automatically. The Key for the default save file is:

RPG Lamplight Hollow File9

Maybe check if a different browser was used? Good luck!

Well, we can definitely say that the title screen is not supposed to look like that!

Lamplight Hollow is also on our GameJolt page -- give it a try there and let us know how it goes.

https://gamejolt.com/games/lamplight-hollow/461639

No -- what's not working?

The only problem we saw early in testing was issues with audio files when using Chrome but that was resolved. Please let us know what we can do to help.

Thank you so much for playing and sharing Grace's Diary!

One of the great things about these video games is that they are a safe way of experiencing an otherwise dangerous situation. Please do not feel guilty about what happened in the game! As you suggested might be the case, you experienced just one of the possible endings in the game - there are a total of three endings (one of which is considered the 'good' ending).

Now that you've experienced one of the 'bad' endings you have more information about what does - and sometimes doesn't - work when talking to a peer about dating abuse. (Having more examples of instances where Grace witnessed unhealthy behavior would have helped Grace keep Natalie on the phone.) This game experience was obviously meaningful to you - and having impactful experiences by playing games like this makes it less likely that those people will ignore a situation like this if they see it IRL.

We strongly believe that video games are the best way to explore, share, and discuss these difficult and sensitive topics.

Thank you again for your kind comments and interest in this game. Feel free to check out our other games as well --- all of them are free, several are available for iOS/Android --- and although all are related to the mission of our charity (prevention of teen dating violence) they include different themes like consent and gaslighting. Since 2008 we've produced more than 50 short, but impactful, games!

HINT: if you decide to play again remember that some items should be looked at more than once ;-)

For the 13th Annual Life. Love. Game Design Challenge we selected 13 Finalists!

We were blown away by the clever & thoughtful game pitches submitted. The Finalists now have from now until July 1st to develop the games based on their game pitches. We can't wait to see what they create!

Thank you everybody who participated & Congrats to the Finalists!

#indiedev #gamedev

Thank you for playing Grace's Diary -- and for sharing your very kind words!