Our entry A.G. Hope has been updated! The original jam version has been patched with a couple major bugfixes, but we also took the time to make a post-compo of the game.

This new version is still far from our the original, way too ambitious goals, but brings the game on par with how we pictured it on the Sunday morning after refining the game design:

• Restored a fourth level (which got lost by mixing > and >=)
• Ships are powered off by default, requiring an EVA to dock them
• Fixed enemy spawn issues, making them more dangerous
• Some level balancing
• Minor tweaks eg. randomizing the ship rotations

Big thanks in passing to all who already reviewed our game! We're super happy with the game reception so far, and would love to hear thoughts on the new version.

Good news everyone! After a calm month of July (which was actually quite busy behind the scenes, but that's another story), we are now preparing the launch of the 5th Kajam!

But what is a Kajam?

Good question!

Kajam competitions are month-long events in which people make a small video game focusing on a specific aspect of game making. For instance the previous jam, hosted by @toasty was about Artificial Intelligence. Kajams are perfect to learn, experiment and improve your gamedev skills! Detailed rules here.

The topic of the 5th Kajam will be chosen by its host @laguna and announced upon the start of the event.

Follow us on Twitter or Reddit to stay updated!

The next full-scale Alakajam! competition will take place on the October 12-14 week-end. We will post the detailed schedule early on that month. Book the date, and see you then!

Note that before then we will still host smaller events. Here's our current plans:

• A Kajam (in August) where you have a whole month to practice a specific aspect of game development.
• A Tournament (in September) where we'll just compete for high scores on Alakajam! games (like this!).

To make sure not to miss the next events, you can also follow us either on Twitter or Reddit.

Congratulations everyone for joining the jam :) You just made a game in 48 hours, which is an impressive achievement in itself!

And if any one is left unsatisfied, or even could not finish their game, I'm sure it helped you improve your game making skills, meet some people, or just have a fun week-end so there's always something positive to take away from it. We're always growing after all B-)

Submissions are still open for unranked submissions: while those won't be officially ranked, they can expect as many people to play & comment on them. So, if you haven't finished your game in time, it's actually not too late to complete something! Game submissions will completely close Monday at 9pm UTC.

We will post more details about the voting phase tomorrow evening, but you can already go play & review games right now!

The time to work on your game ends tonight at 7pm UTC for ranked entries. After that time, you have one additional "submission hour" to build your game and submit it to the site. Be careful, because so the submission of ranked entries will be effectively closed at 8pm UTC.

Voting will start right after the submission hour, so if you are looking forward to play some games, you can do so right away.
Unranked jammers have additional 24 hours ( + submission hour) so for them the doors close on Monday at 9pm UTC.

Yesterday we were really unsure where the game was going, due to it being vastly overscoped. Given what we had done yesterday, we started this morning by detailed thinking about the gameplay, and how to scope things down while keeping the game fun.

We now have a detailed task list, and despite the removal of combat we are think we can have something fun by the end of the jam. With the most tricky parts of the code already completed by @Thrainsa, we are now building various systems at light speed! Today has been super satisfying so far. Let's hope it stays so until the end :)

Not only we're clearly overscoping gameplay-wise, but I'm spending waaay too much time on art - which I usually procrastinate, but for some reason I'm having fun this time,

The game is about building a ships out of modular pieces by doing EVAs in space. The goal is to save as many people as you can and leave the galaxy before a race of ever-expanding Replicants consumes it. No pressure :)

Concept art/color palette

Characters

This Saturday, members of Alakajam! will join the One Hour Game Jam held at 8pm UTC! Let's join our neighbor community for a fun evening of jamming, and so we can sharpen our tools before the Alakajam.

Who's in

@wan
@laguna
@puarsliburf
@akselmo
@dollarone
@sebastianscaini
@aurel300
@kdrnic
@sorceress

Also in but not 100% sure because they have a life (reportedly)

@voxel
@toasty
@raindrinker
@timbeaudet
@thrainsa
@euske

You? Let me know in the comments!

How it works

When	What
Before 8pm UTC	Prepare your dev environment before the jam starts, and join the fun on IRC or Discord
8pm UTC	The theme is announced, try to make a super small game in an hour!
9pm UTC	If all goes to plan (tip: it never happens), submit your game by the deadline. In practice most submit 30mn to a hour late, to finish something playable and publish it. Submissions are not closed until the next jam anyway!
9:30pm… ish	@aurel300 and maybe @danaeplays will play your games on stream!

No competition here, everyone is a winner for completing the crazy task of making a game in one hour-ish!

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

1st Alakajam!	2nd Alakajam
Theme: Alchemy	Theme: You can't see everything
Philosopher's Strike (4th place overall)	Sword of Sight (3rd place overall)

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.

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 :)