Welcome to the 3rd Alakajam! 8

dollarone • 5 years ago on 3rd Alakajam! 

Do you know what time it is? It is soon time for the 3rd Alakajam!

The 3rd Alakajam will take place the weekend of 22-24th June.

What is an Alakajam you might wonder? Well, the idea is simple: Make a game, from scratch, in just a weekend. You can do this on your own, or in a team, You can be a seasoned pro or a total beginner.

If you like video games and are motivated to create your very own game, keep reading!

The 3rd Alakajam is kicking off very soon! But first we need to decide on a theme, which we do with a process where people can submit their own themes and vote for all other submissions. Once we are closer to the jam, we will crop the list to the top 10 suggested themes, and there will be a final theme voting phase. The final theme will be revealed on stream just as the 3rd Alakajam starts! Excitement!

The full schedule is listed below:

Schedule

Dates Phase Description
June 8-15th Theme submission & voting You can submit theme ideas for the jam and vote for all other submissions.
June 15-21st Theme shortlist Only the best 10 themes are kept. Rank them by order of preference in this final phase of theme voting.
June 22, 6:30 UTC Countdown stream DanaePlays and Aurel300 host an official stream on Twitch to launch the event!
June 22-24th THE JAM!!! From Friday 7pm UTC to Sunday 7pm UTC, make a game solo or as a team!
June 22-25th Unranked jam If you want to go for a relaxed weekend - or need more time - you can create a game in the 72 hours of the unranked jam.
June 24-July 8th Game voting For two weeks all entrants are invited to play, rate and comment on other peoples games.
July 8th Results The results from game voting are released and the winners are crowned!

Rules

There are three divisions:

  • Solo, in which you make a whole game alone in 48 hours
  • Team, in which any number of persons can gather to make a game in 48 hours
  • Unranked, a more open division which grants about 72 hours to finish the game. Useful for those not interested in the competitive aspect of the event, or feel like the rules are too restrictive for them, or simply did not finish their game in time.

See the full rules for the Alakajam.

How to enter

All you need to do to enter is to create an account on this website, and publish your game before the deadline. There are actually two different deadlines: the solo and team competitions ends after 48 hours and the unranked jam ends after 72 hours.

A lot of participants also post an "I am in" blog post presenting yourself or your team at some point before the event. Describe what tools and frameworks and engines you will use to create your awesome game! Which themes do you like? Let us and the community know!

Please spread the word about the 3rd Alakajam - the more we are, the merrier! And of course: good luck - and have fun!

Comments (8)

Oat
(@OatMealPal) • 5 years ago • 

Can't wait! :-)

Rewar
 • 5 years ago • 

"Make a game, from scratch, in just a weekend." does it mean that we cannot take assets from internet et we are forced to use only assets produced DURING the jam ?

dollarone
  • 5 years ago • 

@rewar : yes, that's correct, although you can join the Unranked division if you want to use premade assets!

EdgarVerona
 • 5 years ago • 

Hmm - from the "how to enter" step, it says to describe what tools/frameworks/engines you're going to use. I take it from the combination of that and dollarone's comment that "from scratch" applies to just content and not code? Or are there some limitations on the code side as well?

dollarone
  • 5 years ago • 

From the rules:

  • Code reuse: You are allowed to use/reuse any outside library or personal code made prior to the event, or code bits found from sources like StackOverflow or blogs. You can also prepare your project by initializing the sources in advance. However, you cannot work on a game you started before the event.
BintexStudios
  • 5 years ago • 

Hey! I have to ask, is Kenney Asset Forge allowed? We don't have a 3D artist so we kinda have to use it :(

dollarone
  • 5 years ago • 

Good question. Just looking at KAF now, it looks like it's mainly primitive objects that you can use to create more advanced things, is that correct?

I guess it's kinda borderline - it's derivative but at the same time some of them look good enough to use as-is.

I think my personal advice would be to use it, and then call it out in the game description - from the rules:

… in those cases where you want to do something but it's unclear if you can, or not doing it seems unfair, do it, and mention what you did in your game description. After all, this is a completely informal competition, there's no prizes involved, we're just here to make games and have fun!

thomastc
 • 5 years ago • 

Using these building blocks from Asset Forge is IMHO similar to using an existing font to create text, or using drum and piano samples to create music. So I would be fine with it.

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