One of the goals of this jam is to give the incredible annual My Famicase Exhibition the attention it deserves. Unfortunately, their website is a little slow, and can be hard to navigate. Here are a couple of ways to help you choose a cart to base your game on:

#1: Browse famicase.com

This is the obvious one. Of course, their site is a little slow and I'm a little worried we might eat up their entire bandwidth quota and their webhost might take it down or something (hence #1 above). It isn't immediately obvious, and they don't seem to link them anywhere, but you can browse prior years all the way back to 2008 by changing the year in the URL. For example, to check out the 2010 collection, change the 22 in http://famicase.com/23/index.html to a 10, like so: http://famicase.com/10/index.html.

Years prior to 2008 and later can be found here. Warning it takes some time to load and can be a bit heavy depending on your machine with its animation

Pro-Tip: You can also right-click a famicase you like and open it in a new tab. There you can also change the cart by chaniging the last number in the URL http://famicase.com/22/softs/083.html (Here the 83 to some other number below 255).

#2: Let RANDOM FAMICASE decide for you

Pyrofoux made this neat little tool (updated to 2023) to randomly browse through the Famicase collection. This one is helpful if you have trouble picking a cart out of the hundreds and hundreds of great designs. Warning: Right now this tool hotlinks images from famicase.com, which makes it just as slow as browsing the site directly. If you want to help with the development of this tool here is the repo

#3 Famicase Finder

Baku made a little neat project with a high-res view of all the previous years. You can find it on their personal website here: https://bakufreak.gitlab.io/famicase_finder/

You are totally free to make whatever you want, inspired by the My Famicase Exhibition.

If you want to take a quick look what other people made in the years before 2022 take a look under these links!

A Game By Its Cover 2015

A Game By Its Cover 2016

A Game By Its Cover 2017

A Game By Its Cover 2018

A Game By Its Cover 2019

A Game By Its Cover 2020

A Game By Its Cover 2021

A Game By Its Cover 2022

A Game By Its Cover 2023

You need the explicit consent of the famicase artist to use their design as inspiration for your game.

I picked a famicase what now?

Congrats! You managed to scroll through the famicase website or used another way to see some famicases and found a design you liked or that inspired you. That’s great! But before you start making anything, there is one important step still ahead of you.

Why should I contact the famicase artist?

Unless you're only using a cart as vague inspiration (that is: changing it up to make it your own, with its own name and style), you're going to end up using elements and ideas that someone else came up with. So the right thing to do is asking them for permission to do so.

Asking for consent from the artist

You have to contact the artist. The earlier, the better.

When you want to submit the game to the jam, we require you to contact the designer of the original famicase. The designer must consent to you using their design as inspiration. We can and will remove entries from this jam if any problems with the original artist are brought to our attention. Most of the artist are really happy you picked their case and may even help you (more on that later). If they refuse to give you the right to use their case as inspiration, then you have to choose a different case. You can pick one with a similar theme where the artist allows you to use it or just come up with a different idea to a complete different famicase. That decision is up to you. 

How to find the artist?

That’s the part where you can feel like a detective 🔎. There are a couple of ways you can get in touch with the original creators:

• Google the information under the famicase (there is name of the artist, their occupation and their country of origin) + you can use the title of the famicase. You will probably find their socials or their website this way.
• Meteor has also tweeted all famicases on their Twitter account and linked the original artist if they given Meteor their twitter handle. Here is the advanced search to find them, you may want to add the number of your wanted famicase:” famicase.com  [the number of your cartridge] (from:meteor_club)”
• Meteor also has a dedicated Instagram account where they post the cases and link the artist profiles that you can find here. This is also only possible if the artist gives them their Instagram account

But how to get in touch with the creators?

Most of them have one of the following:

• On a social platform the artist may have their direct messages open,
• If that’s not possible send them a tweet starting with their Twitter handle their way
• It’s also possible to retweet and write your message to them that way, while also showing your followers their cool case
• If that’s not possible (Instagram) just comment under their famicase post or their latest post
• If they have an email, send them an email. :)

Just don’t spam them on every channel. If they don’t immediately respond remember that sometimes people aren’t always online.

What should I ask them

Tell them what you want to do:

• You want to make something (a game?) based off their famicase for A Game by Its Cover and ask if you are allowed to do that.
• If they agree, you may also ask the following if you want:
  • If and how you can credit them on your itch page/in the game
  • If you can use the famciase name as the name for your game,
  • If you can use their design as your cover
  • If your game can have a similar style
  • If you may use some design elements like fonts and logos

Remember: be nice and treat people the way you want to get treated.

Good luck detective!

Short version:

Question: Can I-

Answer: Yes.

But: Be nice and respectful. Don't be hurtful or harmful. Breaking this rule will get you banned.

Long version:

Do I need permission from the original artist?

YES! Find a way to contact the original Famicase artist and ask for permission. If they deny it, feel free to choose a different cart.

Will there be voting/judging/ranking/prizes?

None of the sort. Just people making games and stuff :)

This jam is 100% non-competitive. There is enough crunch in the world already, and we believe prizes and competition are terrible motivators. Taking part and making something is a reward in itself.

Wait, what's Famicase anyway?

It's the annual My Famicase Exhibition, organized and hosted by Super Meteor in Japan. They accept submissions for fictional famicom-style game cartridge designs and descriptions every year and then display them in their shop and on their website. This jam is meant to a) bring attention to this amazing little thing and b) to turn these fictional cartridge designs into real little videogames! 

Can I start early?

Yes! Feel free to start early if you like. This is supposed to be a very relaxed jam with very few restrictions.

Is there a deadline?

Submissions are open between July 1 and July 31. Maybe longer, we'll see .;) Take care of yourself.

Can I work on an old project?

Yes!

You can work on anything even if you didn't start it during the jam.

Are multiple entries allowed?

There is no magic number when it comes to a limit. We obviously wouldn't want anyone flooding the page with hundreds of submissions. Making multiple projects is totally fine, just don't spam. Maybe just make a collection of your games if they are short and fit together (like me)

Does my game have to follow the Famicase entry's description?

No! You're free to adhere to the provided description, but you don't have to.

Do I have to name my game after its inspirational Famicase entry?

Nope.

Do I have to pick a cart from 2024?

No, you're free to pick any Famicase design regardless of year.

Can I call dibs on a design?

No reservations. And yes, there can be multiple games based on the same cart. There have been some in the past, and it was always super interesting to see different interpretations of the same theme.

Do I have to work solo or can I work as a team?

You can work however you want to!

If you're looking for collaborators, check out the Teams part of the jam community or the #teamfinding channel of our discord server.

Where can I share my progress?

Feel free to post it here in the community section. If forums are not your thing, you can also join our discord and post in the #progress channel.

You're welcome to share your progress anywhere else as well. If you're on Twitter, use the #AGBIC hashtag so people can find it.

What about copyright? / Is it legal to use these covers as inspiration? / Can I use parts of the graphic in my game? / Can I turn this into a commercial project?

Copyright unfortunately is A Thing and there is something called Fair Use (at least in the US) but, if a famicase designer does not want you to turn it into a game, please respect their wishes and choose another cart. This jam is all about a relaxed atmosphere, and there's nothing chill about legal issues.

If you got any questions about the will of the original author concerning for example copying the art style, then ask them about it. We may disqualify you if there are any hassles with the original author, so ask them before you start working on your game.

super cool!

Cute af!

I played through the steam version and its great!

I would love to know the answer as well :) but sadly no idea

Beautifu! Also a very great moment its like when you notice that you can upload things to the internet.

Thanks for your comment! Yes when you move into such a space you just feel wierd. 

I mean I dont mind the centralisation as it makes sense from a logistic, loudness and from a historic standpoint (St. Pauli was outside the city gates thats why the rules werent so harsh and it war near the harbour so you could sail you vessel in and get beers. But it should work for people still living culture and not tourist who have zero connections to this place.

I think you really got the spot that autumn has in my heart

very windy! 

it means what you read into it ;)
*starts playing the internationale*

This was great! I loved the visuals so much (and the words too ;) )

odd I thought I hit save

Cute as fuck! 

Sure thing! Its fixed also on my blog https://proudmorning.neocities.org/posts/2024-07-19-Rusty-Blade-is-queer now. It was in plaintext before that but just to be safe. Thanks!

sweet!

Thank you for making this bundle happen even though it wasn’t smooth as planned (but I didn’t mind)! 

That was FUN!

wonderful for my favorite season :)

Really cute <3

The nemesis fight was tough as nails... it took me 1:53h to beat this "small" game. Really well done with great visuals

I wish mine was better but it looks really good :)

Neat!

such a great work in worldbuilding but its grim :)

great to have a fourth engine <3

thanks for playing it :) 

I wondered that you played such an old game (2016) from me. It’s been my sixth game and the second one where I did the programming too and by that I mean it would have been the default unity controller. I hope I have improved :D

Its pretty cool. I just wish it wouldnt be a time loop

that was excellent and wonderfully drawn too!

If this isnt the cherry on top of the cheesecake. LOVED IT

Great short piece!

Loved the ending!

I just thought of your wonderful post and needed a deep dive in all the posts anyone I followed published. I am more in awe than ever about this

loved reading it

I always see my Mac and Linux builds as experimental: report to me if complete broken so I can google why it might be that way. But yeah requiring sends mixed signals 

lol thats great!

the music really underlines the best part of the internet well. I hope this package reaches you well :)

wonderful interpretation 

than it worked perfectly :)