Got the weekend schedule all cleared.

Last time was my first game using Godot, and it was a good experience so I'll probably use Godot again.

Other tooling: Inkscape? Gimp? Krita? jfxr? Audacity? Tiled? Whatever it takes, I suppose.

With @thrainsa we are going to join our forces once again! Here's our past Alakajam! entries:

We're going for Unity (C#) as usual. I'll be using, again as usual, Reason & Photoshop for music and art respectively, plus Blender if we end up making a 3D game.

Not sure what we'll want to make this time, but hopefully something not too ambitious so we can have enough time for contents & polish. Maybe an MMORPG.

Well I am definitely in! Might try joining forces and do a team game this time…. or just solo it? hmm

My second project as an independent interactive-digital-media developer is out and has been for a week.

Try the demo here!

Haven't been able to take part in Kajams due to work, work, work. The Artificial Intelligence one would have been fun, but alas. At least I had time to play through the entries now.

Looking forward to the 3rd Alakajam! Not skipping it for any reason.

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

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!

I made a guideline image using the easel and background so I could tell where to draw in the game. Also, if you look hard enough, you can see the lines from any color. My 77% was the second of 2 tries after I made the guideline image. ^-^

Spike was probably my favorite game to play for the tournament. At first it seemed like luck, but eventually you figure out there are some rules to the map gen (or possibly hand made maps?).

First off, there's the obvious tip of figuring out where the walls are so you don't hit them from two sides.

Starting with this:

You can already tell where two blocks are, which leaves only one path through:

One of the "rules" I was talking about was the fact that (I don't think) the end is ever in a straight line from the starting point. I don't think I've ever seen a case where there was only one turn either.

You may be tempted to do this:

But going off of the previously stated rule, you can assume those routes are blocked, which leaves only a few paths:

Now let's take an example of another level. In this level, you start 2 blocks away from the spawn. Since it would only take two turns (not counting turning on the starting point) to get the the end, we can assume there are blocks there. Typically (not always the case), the levels don't make you walk through the entire area, so two paths are immediately obvious here:

Which as you can see, one of the paths I assumed was correct and led to the end without any deaths:

One more rule I'd like to point out is that the pathways are never 2 tiles wide. Which can help you guess even more block locations/likely paths farther on.

The "rules" for Spike are only coming from my experiences, so they may not be true. However, the "rules" still seem to be accurate, so they definitely helped me get a good score. :D

After a full month of competition, the 1st AKJ Tournament is finally closed. Congratulations to @CMLSC for the well-deserved win! Nice job as well to @dollarone and @toasty who managed to get in the podium, and to all of the participants.

If you liked the event, know that we intend to make it a regular thing, the next occurrence being planned for the month of September. Some questions for next time:

• What do you think of the number of games? Was 8 a good number or would you have preferred less? More?
• Should we have prizes next time? (If so, it would be probably Steam games and/or Alakajam! goodies)
• Did you mind the games being mostly for Windows only?

Any other thought or suggestion is welcome.

As for the next event… The 3rd Alakajam is finally approaching! It will be hosted in th 22-24th June week-end, which means the detailed schedule will be published next Monday. See you then :)

Lollipop Ninja is probably the hardest game to post a score on, as it seems to take around 30' for most people to beat the first time. After finishing it twice I finally feel like I have the hang of it. So, a couple tips:

• The cooldown for Smoke bombs is super low, so use them A LOT. Since they can both be used on enemies and on yourself, you can basically advance through levels hiding behind smoke. The more confident you'll get, the less you'll have to use that.

• Going invisible is mostly useful to advance tricky sections with lots of jumps/wall jumps, until you can finally reach either a safe spot, or a flat place to hide behind smoke again. The cooldown is quite high here, so if you run into trouble try to hide in smoke waiting for the skill to ready. Again, with more confidence you'll realize some enemies can be passed without using the skill at all, by just rushing through.

• Sometimes it's hard to figure out where to go next, leading you to get lost a bit or end up in a hole. Some guy did a video speedrun of the game, so if you're getting too frustrated with the trial and error feel free to check that.

• The very final jump of the game requires a specific wall jump technique. It took me a lot of practice so just smoke the guy below the jump before each attempt and you'll be able to try for as long as you need. Basically the idea is to hold Left after the ninja has jumped, and then immediately switch to Right to reach the opposite wall. Again when at the right wall, keep holding Right when you jump, then immediately switch to Left. After a couple back and forths you'll be on that sweet lollipop.

EDIT: Some more tips courtesy of @Raindrinker

• You can walljump on top of a non-smoked enemy for a looong time because the sight line collides with the wall or something.
• Also vertical shafts are super safe, so waiting there for your invisibility cooldown to restore is quite useful.
• Going invisible resets your alert rate, so sometimes just running towards an enemy and pressing the skill in the last moment possible is enought to escape his gaze.

Bonus: On Disappainted, use white paint to leave a slightly visible mark on the canvas. It can help you put down the contour of your drawing before you fill it with actual paint.

The 1st AKJ Tournament has begun! For the whole month of May, you will get to prove not your gamedev skills, but your gaming skills :) More rules info here

You'll find below the final selection of 8 games made by Alakajam! members. From arcade games to hardcore platformers to UFOs, you'll have plenty of material to test your skills. Have fun playing them and try your best to climb the leaderboard! A quick warning though: some games are Windows only. We'll aim for a fully cross-platform event next time, promised ;)

May the best player win!

The time has come
To prove you are the best
To crush your enemies
To win the Tournament (*)

The 4th Kajam is done!

I know, I know. I'm sad too. But put away those tissues, because we've got some great stuff coming right up!

First of all, don't forget to

Check out those winners

Second, cast your eyes to the month of May (hint: it's tomorrow) for the first

Alakajam Tournament

All month we'll be not just playing, but competing in the shortlisted games, posting our scores using the new scoring system built by @wan. Great stuff, huh? Huh?!