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.

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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 (*)

Game	Author(s)	Genre	Jam
Disappainted: Master of the Invisibrush	dorkulon, cloakednunjas, treslapin	MSPaint	2nd Alakajam! (1st place)
You Can't See Everything at Once	sebastianscaini, EternalStormfire, Supermooper123, coleycaves	Platformer	2nd Alakajam! (4th place)
Lollipop Ninja	DaFluffyPotato	Platformer	2nd Alakajam! (4th place)
Whiteout	euske	Arcade skiing	2nd Alakajam! (9th place)
Spike	sorceress	Arcade labyrinth	2nd Alakajam! (13th place)
Cooperoids: Tournament Edition	toasty	Asteroids	MiniLD 74
Turbo/Glide	rnlf	Arcade transformer	Ludum Dare 35 (86th place)
Drift	Raindrinker	Arcade racing	Private jam hosted in Raindrinker's room and open to Raindrinker only (1st place)

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?!

There's just an hour left to vote! If you haven't already voted, you really should. If you have, though, why not try to improve your score on Prison Breakpoint? :D

To get you motivated, here are the top 5 scores for each level so far ;)

Level 1

Player	Score
Wan	100
Thomas	100
Rain	100
vede	100
kdrnic	100

Level 2

Player	Score
Bubba	100
Wan	98
vede	98
Thomas	96
Ferri	96

Level 3

Player	Score
Bubba	100
Thomas	97
Wan	96
vede	93
Aurel	82

Level 4

Player	Score
Wan	215
Thomas	210
Ferri	206
vede	192
Bubba	142

Level 5

Player	Score
Wan	100
Bubba	100
Ferri	99
Thomas	94
vede	92

Level 6

Player	Score
Bubba	139
Wan	138
Thomas	134

Level 7

Player	Score
Wan	200
Thomas	186
Bubba	144

A remake nobody asked for

I'm planning to submit my MiniLD 74 entry, Cooperoids for the first AKJ tournament. Not happy with the way the game currently looks, though, I'm releasing a brand new edition. Introducing Cooperoids: Tournament Edition (oooOOooh).

In brief, expect (hopefully) fixed audio, better graphics and more intense gameplay (full description here). Enjoy! :)

I just realised the music was not there on the version of BDSM that was uploaded. There is now! It's music generated by a web that uses AI to create background music, so it's as fitting with the theme as it can possibly be.

Maybe you find it useful for your games -> https://www.jukedeck.com/make/tracks/browse

Just wanted to share! :D

And so I have jettisoned my fragile game, Prison Breakpoint, into the internet wilderness, ready to be devoured by a howling mob of people with probably totally valid criticisms.

I'll write a longer reflective post after the voting stage, but these are my initial thoughts on the game.

• I had to crunch pretty hard last night to turn what was a congealed blob of JavaScript spaghetti into something resembling a game, but am happy with the end result. It's definitely basic in some ways (the art styles are mixed and incoherent; there's no SFX or music), but it does have a reasonable level of polish.

• Because I lost a big chunk of time, there's not a whole lot of AI. The whole game is about writing some AI, which is enough to get into the jam, but it still feels like a cop-out. I would have preferred more AI in this game.

• The elephant in the room: I suspect this game is a bit too inaccessible. It's not particularly hard, but… you have to read a manual. Seriously. What the heck was I thinking?

Voting begins! Hooray!

What's next

It's the best part of the jam—where we play the games and most importantly, give each other a well-deserved pat on the back and some delicious constructive feedback. Mmmmm, yummy.

The theme is AI, but remember we're allowing entries where the player writes the AI. Also try to bear in mind that this is a difficult and quite unpredictable thing to code. Most important of all, be nice and constructive in your feedback. Try to imagine the kind of feedback that will help a person grow as a gamedev. Finally, have fun playing all the free games! :)

What to do if you haven't finished

Don't worry: we're leaving submissions open until the end of the jam, i.e. for another week. Do finish as quickly as you can, though, so people can play and vote on your game!

In May, Alakajam! is not hosting a gamedev event. Instead, there's something completely new in the works: we'll play and compete on game jam entries!

How it works

Throughout the month, everyone will get to play on a selection of 8 games (made in any past game jams) on which they'll try to make the highest scores/best times as possible. Using screenshots as proof, players will battle to enter (and remain in) the leaderboards.

Leaderboards points are awarded to all players that enter the top 10 of a game. At the end of the event, on May 31st, the player with the most points wins the tournament!

As usual, there's no prizes to be won other than bragging rights. We're just here to have fun!

Submit your game to the event

The list of 8 jam games to played is still in the works, and should be finalized on April 30th. If your game supports setting a high score or a best time, please submit it below!

Submit your game here

EDIT: List is locked down, and unveiled on Twitter