🤔 HOW TO ALAKAJAM? 🤔 4 8

A few people have asked how to actually DO alakajam recently, particularly wanting to know how to submit their game, so here's a basic guide:

1. Sign up for a free account on alakajam.com! That's this website, you're already there 👍!
2. Pick which category you would like to enter. Your choices are:
   • SOLO: 🧑‍ The traditional gamejam where you work ALONE to make a game within 48 hours, creating your assets from scratch.
   • TEAM: 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Identical to SOLO but you can collaborate with teammates to create your masterpiece within 48 hours.
   • UNRANKED: 👽 A whole extra day gives you 72 hours to make your unranked game. Almost anything goes, and you can even continue work on a project you previously started.
     The full details of what's allowed in each category is available on the rules page.
3. 🚦 When the jam starts, the theme will be announced here on the website, in the discord channel, the irc channel and on the alakajam twitter account.
4. Make your game, adhering to the 📜 jam rules 📜 and incorporating the theme into your game in any way you like. If you're entering the SOLO or TEAM categories, your use of the theme will be one of the categories your game will be judged on.
5. Submit your game before the deadline! ⚠️You don't upload your game to alakajam.com ⚠️. Instead, you need to host the game somewhere else, such as dropbox, google drive etc. My recommendation is itch.io, which lets you create a free store page for your game, hosts the game for you and can even accept payments if you decide to charge for your game later on. Once your game is uploaded, you link to it from your game entry page on alakajam.com.
6. Vote! Making a game for alakajam is only 51% of the fun. Once the jams have finished, the voting and feedback phase begins and typically lasts for a couple of weeks. Your game will be played by other entrants and they will be able to rank it on various criteria, such as graphics, audio, etc, as well as leaving feedback comments 👍👎. You can do the same for their games too, and the more games you vote on, the higher your karma score. The higher your karma score, the nearer to the top of the entry list your game will be displayed, which means more people are likely to play it. If you don't vote on other entries, your game is not likely to receive enough votes to get a score in the final step.
7. Ranking results! After the ranking period has ended the votes are all added up and a score is given to your game. If your game places in the top three for any of the category you will receive an amazing 🏆 virtual trophy 🏆 and be the envy of all your friends.