We're in! I will be entering with teammate @thrainsa with whom I have a long history of jamming together.

During our previous game, made for Ludum Dare 39, I have mostly removed myself from the code part to focus on art & music. This time, because I'd like to spend more time to polish & test the Alakajam! site itself, I think I'll just do music, and either don't do art or go with something super basic.

Unlike most past jams for which I used the Reason sequencer, I'd like to take a shot at trying music trackers! I'm totally not used to their workflow, but I'm really curious to try them and discover the world of chiptunes. For now I'm considering the small tracker shipped with TIC-80 (pictured), depending on how I feel I might explore bigger stuff like FamiTracker.

Bonus: Listen to @wan's previous jam tunes

Allowing anonymous comments

Enabling this option allows all users to post anonymous comments on your entry. Doing so gives them a free hand for posting direct, unfiltered feedback about your game, pleasant or not. If you don't feel comfortable with strong criticism, please keep this option disabled.

If you enable the option, you may change your mind later, but comments posted anonymously will of course remain anonymous.

Commenting anonymously

If the owner of an entry allowed it, you can choose to post a comment anonymously. This allows you to provide honest feedback (even unpleasant) in the safest conditions. Anonymous comments can still be identified by administrators (though only by running database queries), to moderate any form of hateful, offensive or insulting comments.

Anonymous comments do not count towards your feedback score.

Opt-outs

When entering the Solo or Team division, you can opt-out of certain rating categories. This is completely optional and depends on each game and your personal preference.

• Graphics: Opting out can be useful if the game is text-based, or sound only, or if you feel the art is so terrible that it's not worth rating it.
• Audio: Opting out is recommended if the game has no sound. You can also do so if the audio is so terrible you think it's not worth rating it.

People who opt out of a category still have to follow the same rules regarding third-party assets.

The theme submission phase is over! Thanks to all who contributed to it, with about 200 themes and 7000 votes sent throughout the week. A lot of great ideas were suggested!

After one week of voting, only 10 themes have qualified for the final phase of theme selection: the shortlist. Discover the final list and rank the theme ideas by order of preference, so we can have THE best theme for the jam! Feel free to comment to let us know your favorites :)

Preparing for the jam

1. If you'd like to join a team or recruit people, make sure to look into our CrowdForge Jams page ;
2. If you haven't already, introduce yourself with a blog post, letting us know your background and what you plan to use for the jam! Since the event is not too big, it will be fun to know each other a bit and follow other people's progress during the week-end ;
3. And of course, get your tools ready for next Friday :D If you're not sure what to use yet, we have a list of resources you might be interested in.

In-between the main Alakajam! events, we're planning to run smaller, but regular events to help the community practice various aspects of game development. Kajams are month-long events, hosted by community members, where we focus each time on a different, specific aspect of game making!

The topic of the first Kajam will be announced at the start of the event, soon after the 1st Alakajam ends (hint below!).

Until October 13th comes by, feel free to check the detailed event rules, and follow us on Twitter or Reddit to stay tuned.

Alakajam! has just been added to the CrowdForge Jams site, that lets you find teammates for upcoming events.

Find a team for Alakajam!

The 1st Alakajam! is now officially on its way! For the next two weeks, the whole baby-community that is Alakajam! will choose the theme of the first competition. If you don't have an account already, go register to start submitting and rating themes!

Theme voting process

1. Until next Friday, you will be able to submit up to 3 theme ideas, that everyone else will rate positively or negatively.
2. After one week, theme submissions will close, and the 10 highest scoring themes will be made public. You will be able to rate them again, by order of preference.
3. The final winner will be announced at the start of the event.

Useful links

If you have run out of themes to rate, you can:

• Make a blog post for presenting yourself and the techs you plan to use
• Check the detailed rules of the event (*)
• The Help section in general has some useful pages to explore

(*) If you read the rules in the past days, know that we have made a change: it's no longer possible to use 3rd party assets, save a few exceptions, in the Solo & Team divisions. [11/09 update: more rule precisions about 3rd party assets]

****If you're new to game jams, you may be both excited and frightened at the idea of *making a whole game in a week-end*… Here's some tips to keep things under control!

• Managing time and scope
• Skills
  • Being bad at graphics
  • Being bad at sound & music
  • Being bad at code
  • "I'm bad, I'm bad, really really bad"

Managing time and scope

Especially the first time, it's easy to get lost in the enthusiasm of game jams. Here's some general advice to maximize your chances of finishing your game:

• Take breaks, sleep well. The biggest trap you could fall in is to spend as much time as humanly possible on your game. Except that sleep deprived people are just not as productive! Taking breaks regularly also helps keep an eye on the bigger picture.
• Make a small game, and make it playable as fast as possible. If you're aiming for a polished game, it's best to have a playable version fast, ideally leaving the final day to smooth things out, replace placeholders, add contents, and actually test the game.
• Cut scope when needed. Don't be afraid to cut features or even change the goal of your game as you realize things take longer than expected. Maintaining a todo-list is a good way to appreciate how much work you have left.
• Use techs you already know. This is not mandatory, because jams are also an opportunity to discover tech. But don't expect to be as productive if you're using, say, an engine or graphics software you've never tried before.
• Prepare your week-end. It is allowed to set up your project & tools before the jam starts. Making sure you have all your software & files ready can help you gain a few hours. Playing with the engine a little bit before the event can help you warm up as well.
• Have fun! Even if the week-end doesn't go as expected, you will certainly learn a lot during the week-end. And if you manage to finish a game, congratulations you did it! :D

Skills

Not everyone is proficient is all aspects of game making… But if you don't have a team to complement your skills, jams are a chance to try your hand at something new! Let's just figure out some accessible options.

Being bad at graphics

You don't know how to draw? No problem.

One option is to just deal with it, and make a game that doesn't require pretty art. Games like Thomas Was Alone and 140 were successful commercial games built with basic shapes of various colors. This is what we call programmer art, and it's perfectly acceptable! West of Loathing, featuring stickmen and Dwarf Fortress with its ascii art are other examples. Of course it may not get you 10/10 ratings in Graphics, but simple graphics can still be super fun. Even in 3D.

Another popular option is to go for pixel art. It can be super fast to make, and with some effort it's easy enough to make something presentable. Realm of the Mad God is an example of successful game that has pretty simple (one could even say average) pixel art. Look through a couple tutorials to understand the basics, and don't be afraid to borrow the style or choice of colors from references.

Finally, you can just grab third-party art and submit your entry in the Unranked division.

Check the Resources page for a list of graphics software you can use.

Being bad at sound & music

I have good news: there's several, super easy ways to include sounds effects in your games. Making music is more involved, but still doable!

Regarding sounds, the Resources page has multiple tools for you to try. Your first option is to go down the sound generation route, using the super-easy bfxr software and the likes to produce cool, often-arcadey effects. You could also record sounds yourself with Audacity, assuming you have a decent microphone. Finally, you could just grab existing sounds, which is allowed even in rated competitions, as long as the assets you use have a permissive license.

Now for music, if you don't have any experience but still want to start making music, you can look around the Resources page and give a try to software like Bosca Ceoil. If this is new for you, it will definitely take some time to get comfortable with the tool and not cringe at your music too much, but it's not that hard to get something acceptable for a jam game.

Alternately, you can just grab existing music submit your entry in the Unranked division. Or, you now, not have music, maybe even no sound at all, which is also acceptable.

Being bad at code

Without knowledge of code, there's still plenty of options nowadays for making games! An option is to use genre-specific engines (e.g. for text adventures or RPGs) which are just point-and-click interfaces that let you build your game. More recently, great general purpose engines that still don't require code have started appearing, letting you build any type of (usually 2D) game.

Check the Resources page for a wide range of engines to try, and find the one that suits you best. Discovering an engine during a jam can be frustrating, so it is probably best to at least do some tutorials before the event starts.

"I'm bad, I'm bad, really really bad" *

If you're just new to all aspects of game development, you still have no excuses! Engines like Twine (text adventures) and Scratch (2D) are literally accessible for everyone. You can even enter without making the art or sounds yourself, by choosing the Unranked division.

Depending on what you want to learn, the suggestions above are still valid for advice on each aspect of game making.

This page compiles a list of free resources for making games, especially for beginners. If you have suggestions to add please let us know!

Graphics software

Name	Description
Gimp	Popular general purpose software for drawing and manipulating images. Open Source.
Inkscape	Popular vector graphics software. Open Source.
Blender	Popular 3D modeling & animation software. Open Source.
Paint.NET	Intuitive image editing, like Paint but enhanced with layers, transparency, etc. (Windows only).
MagicaVoxel	Voxel editor, which is a cool way to make original assets, either in 2D or 3D.
Piskel	Editor for animated sprites, has an online version. Ad-supported.
GraphicsGale	Old-school looking but powerful sprite editor, supports animations.

Audio software

Name	Description
sfxr	Excellent and accessible tool for creating sounds effects. Online variants have been made since: bfxr (Flash) and jfxr (JavaScript).
Chiptone	Visual, powerful, online sound generator.
Audacity	Simple and popular audio recording, mixing & conversion software. Perfect for turning WAVs into lighter formats.
Beepbox	The easiest music making tool you could find. Online and Open Source.
Bosca Ceoil	Easy music editor, great for beginners. Misses an undo button. Open Source.
TIC-80	While a full-featured fantasy console, you could just use its accessible music tracker. Open Source.
Audiotool	Online, knobs-and-cables music editor. Exporting requires a free account.
LMMS	Full featured, cross-platform music creation software inspired by FL Studio. Open Source.

Game engines/frameworks

Name	Description
Unity	Popular and feature-rich engine, both for 3D and 2D games. Requires programming in either JS or C#. Free version has few limitations and plenty to work with.
Godot Engine	Powerful engine for 3D and 2D games. Uses a Python-like language. Open Source.
GDevelop	2D game engine letting you write logic without knowledge of coding. Open Source.
Stencyl	2D game engine that uses visual blocks instead of code. Free version lets you publish for the web.
Scratch	Very accessible, and even kid-friendly engine for creating visual stories, animations and games.
Löve2D	Popular 2D game framework built to be easy to use. Uses the accessible Lua language. Open source.
TIC-80	Fantasy console, similar to the popular but paid Pico-8. Customizable palette. Open Source.
PhaserJS	JavaScript framework to make 2D games for the browser. Open source.
Twine	Engine for writing interactive stories with no code at all. Open Source.
RPGBoss	RPG Maker clone, for creating RPGs without code. Open source.

Free assets

Name	Description
Open Game Art	The main reference for finding graphics & audio to reuse with permissive licenses.
Free Music Archive	A large database of permissive music (mostly Creative Commons), featuring a wide range of styles.
FreeSound	A huge database of sound effects.

Miscellaneous

Name	Description
TilEd	Powerful editor for 2D maps (platformers, RPGs, etc.), which can then be exported in either its own TFX format or simple JSON. Open Source.
Open Broadcaster Software	Lets you record your desktop to either videos or streaming platforms.
ScreenToGif	Powerful tool for recording short sequences from your screen, editing them and exporting them as gifs (Windows only).

Kajam are month-long competitions in which people make a video game from scratch, focusing each time on a different, specific aspect of game making. They are perfect to learn, experiment and improve your gamedev skills.

Divisions

Anyone can enter in any of the following divisions:

• Solo, in which you make a whole game alone ;
• Team, in which any number of persons can gather to make a game ;
• Unranked, for those not interested in the competitive aspect of the event.

Everyone has around three weeks to submit their games.

Rankings

After the jam, Solo and Team divisions will be ranked separately through community voting: any person who entered the event will be able to play, rate and comment other people's games for one week, until the final results are released. On each game you play, you will get to rate a single aspect of game development, which is different every time!

Unranked games won't get ratings but can expect as much plays & feedback as the others.

What is allowed/not allowed?

Solo/Team divisions

Unless a particular Kajam states otherwise, the following rules apply:

• Tools: All software is allowed without restriction. It is recommended though that your game engine supports targetting either HTML5, Windows or Linux, to make sure most contestants can play it.
• 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.
• Audio/Graphical asset reuse: You are free to reuse any assets as long as you respect their licenses.
• Post-jam changes: During the game rating phase, you are not allowed to add any features, assets or contents to your game. While you're supposed to have properly tested your game, stuff happens, so we do allow to:
  • Package or improve the packaging of your game ;
  • Port your game to other platforms ;
  • Fix bugs ;
  • Fix balance issues or annoyances but only if they're so terrible that people can't properly finish your game.

Unranked division

Since there is no ratings involved, the rules are much more relaxed. The only rules are:

• You cannot work on a game you started before the event.
• Make sure to respect the licenses of the assets you grab.

For best feedback, it is advised to let people know what you did/did not make during the jam.

In case of doubts…

In those cases where you really want to do something, but it's unclear whether you can, or not doing it just 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!

The Alakajam! competitions let people make a video game from scratch in a week-end, then play and rate each other! All games are made around a theme chosen by the community.

Divisions

Anyone can enter in any of the following 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 restrictve for them, or simply did not finish their game in time.

The jam always starts on a Friday, 7pm UTC.

Rankings

After the jam, Solo and Team divisions will be ranked separately through community voting: any person who entered the event will be able to play, rate and comment other people's games for two weeks, until the final results are released. On each game you play, you will get to rate six aspects of game making:

Rating category	Description
Overall	How much you liked the game in general.
Graphics	Your appreciation of all the visual aspects of the game. This can be opted-out if you want to (e.g. text-based game).
Audio	Your appreciation of all the sound-related aspects of the game. This can be opted-out if you want to (e.g. silent game).
Gameplay	Your appreciation of the gameplay, contents & balancing.
Originality	How original you found the game, its art and sound.
Theme	How well and how interestingly the game fit to the theme.

Unranked games won't get ratings but can expect as much plays & feedback as the others.

Submitting games

In order to join the event, all you need is to have an account and create your entry page when your game is done. Go to the Games tab of the event, and look for the Create entry button to get started. After creating your entry, you will be able to edit it, even after the end of the event.

Important: You must submit your game before the end of the jam! We leave an extra hour after the 48 hour deadline for everyone to submit their Solo/Team games, but after that the options lock down, and only the Unranked division remains available. Creating entries is completely disabled when the Unranked jam ends.

Note: Sharing the sources is not mandatory but appreciated.

What is allowed?

Solo/Team divisions

• Tools: All software is allowed without restriction. It is recommended though that your game engine supports targetting either HTML5, Windows or Linux, to make sure most contestants can play it.
• 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.
• Graphical asset reuse: You must make all your graphical assets during the event. Creative use of existing assets ("derivative work") is acceptable, as long as you list the original assets in your entry page, for the raters to appreciate. You are also allowed to use:
  • Third-party fonts and brushes ;
  • Procedurally generated assets ;
  • Your engine's default appearance for UI elements ;
  • Pre-made game author & engine splash screens.
• Audio asset reuse: You must make all your audio assets during the event. However, you are allowed to use:
  • Any existing sounds for SFX or as short samples for music, including drums and other sampled instruments ;
  • Assets created from sound generation or speech synthesis tools.
• Post-jam changes: From the minute the jam ends, you are not allowed to add any features, assets or contents to your game. While you're supposed to have properly tested your game, stuff happens, so we do allow to:
  • Package or improve the packaging of your game ;
  • Port your game to other platforms ;
  • Fix bugs ;
  • Fix balance issues or annoyances but only if they're so terrible that people can't properly finish your game.

All third-party assets listed above are allowed as long as you have the license to use them. Check the licensing terms and in doubt, consult the author.

Unranked division

Since there is no ratings involved, the rules are much more relaxed. While the ranked divisions are only made for video games, card & board games are allowed here. The only rules are:

• You cannot work on a game you started before the event. You can however use any assets you made beforehand.
• All third-party assets are allowed as long as you have the license to use them.

Note: For best feedback, it is advised to let people know what you did/did not make during the jam.

In case of doubts…

Obviously, those rules don't cover every scenario (for instance you may realize the music volume is super low, or in-game instructions are wrong, etc.).

…So 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!