Look it's my "I'm In!" post. Anyways, I'm looking forward to jamming with all of you again. Bring it on!

If you want a sneak peek at what I'll be making (once the jam starts) you can follow me on Twitter to see progress updates and GIFs.

The 3rd Alakajam is happening from June 22nd to 24th. But first we have to find a theme! You can now submit themes you like and vote for the themes of other participants. All you have to do is to create an account and start to submit and rate themes.

The voting process

For one week (starting June 8th) you can submit up to three theme suggestions and rate theme suggestions from others either positively or negatively. After one week, on June 15th, theme submission will be closed. The top ten themes will then be made public and everybody can rank them in order of preference

The final theme will be announced with the launch of the jam (at Friday June 22nd, 7pm UTC), live on stream.

Things to do right now

• Create an account if you don't already have one
• Write an "I am in" blog post - tell us who you are, what tools you use or what themes you like!
• Check the detailed rules and the support thread
• Join us on Twitter, Reddit or on IRC

Count me in! I'm teaming up with @dollarone and possibly others. We're currently looking for a pixel miner and a sound crafter in case you're interested! :D

I hope to be able to join for the third time!!
Even if my games weren't too good the last two alakajams, I hope to have learned enough to make something better this time!

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