Missing Alakajam! already? Fear not! In-between the main competitions we will run longer, more relaxed events. Kajams are month-long jams where the goal is to practice a specific aspect of game making.

The theme of each Kajam will not be elected by votes, but instead chosen by a host picked every month. For this first month I will be that host, announcing the topic on October 13th! (UTC evening). If you're interested in the topic, you'll have a whole month to work on a small game and submit it to the competition.

Detailed Kajam rules

Thanks to everyone who took part in rating and commenting on games, and congratulations to the winners! You can discover the results here:

Solo rankings | Team rankings

We hope you had fun joining this competition, hopefully the first of a long series! Since this is the first time we're running it, we'd love to get your feedback through this 2 minute survey.

Next events

Here's the calendar for the next competitions. While the next Alakajam! will be hosted in February, we'll run smaller events in the mean time, focused more on learning, sharing tips and experimenting. See you then!

1st Kajam > 13 October - 19 November 2017 (what is this?)

2nd Alakajam! > 23-25 February 2018

Behind the scenes…

Despite the appearances, this first Alakajam! was not just the work of wan (ewww, look who's speaking of himself at the 3rd person):

• Hosts: @wan @eremiell @toasty
• Code contributors: @thomastc @toasty @rnlf @aurel300 @pta2002 @dollarone @thrainsa @NiciusB
• IRC Operators: @eremiell @tsjost @toasty @sorceress
• Testing & feedback: @sorceress @adam and various nice people who reported bugs :)

Also, shout out to the various streamers (in particular DanaePlays & Aurel for their hype marathon), who made the event much more lively :)

Our friends DanaePlays and @Aurel300 will host a marathon stream this Sunday: they will try and play all the games from the jam (at least those they didn't try yet)… until the jam results are revealed.

If your game wasn't played yet, make sure to tune in and request it to have it played live! And of course, let's all meet at the stream at 7pm UTC to discover the results together ;)

	What	When	Where
	marathon results hype	12:00 - 19:00 UTC	https://go.twitch.tv/danaeplays

Dear Alchemists,

You have until this Sunday, 7pm UTC to rate and review other games. When the time runs out, the final rankings will immediately be revealed!

If you submitted a Solo/Team entry, make sure you have at least 10 votes, or you will not be featured in the final rankings. To make sure you can reach that goal, you should aim for rating at least 10/15 games.

Rescue mode is on

For the final days, the event's games page features a selection of games nearing 10 votes, go rescue them!

The 1st Alakajam! is now complete! Congratulations to everyone who entered the event, and in particular to those of you who managed for the first time to make a game in 48 hours! It's quite an achievement :) We hope you had fun!

Next step is: the rating phase! You are invited to go play and test each other's game during the next two weeks. On October 8th, we will finally reveal the results of the community votes.

Site issues

We'd also like to acknowledge the little issues we got, from the crazy theme-announcement-mixup-thing, to the server availability issues around submission hour :) We've learnt a lot this week-end, and got reports for various bugs regarding our freshly built site (NB. there's still an annoying one causing occasional crashes). Everyone has been very supportive and understanding, so we'd like to thank everyone who joined, making this a very enjoyable first event.

Hopefully the 2nd Alakajam will be even better! If you want to book the date already, we have chosen the 23-25 February 2018 week-end for that one. But for now, it's time to play some games!

The unranked submissions for the 1st Alakajam are approaching their deadline!

Go submit your game before 10pm UTC to enter the event. There will not be a submission hour after that, and the jam will be closed for good at that time, so make sure to at least create your entry page by then.

Good luck with your polishing and testing! Almost there!

Put your pens down! The competitive jam has just ended, and we are now in the submission hour.

If you haven't already, go submit your game right now, even if you don't have an upload yet! You will always be able to update your page later. Around 8pm, we will officially shut down the competitive submissions, leaving only the Unrated division on.

See you at 8pm for the grand opening of the ratings phase!

As the deadline approaches fast (too fast…?), here's some details about submitting your games:

• As you already know, you have until 7pm UTC to finish coding & playtesting your entries. After that point, stop adding features to your game!
• After 7pm, you will still be able to submit your entry thanks to the submission hour! Until 8pm UTC, you will be able to package, upload and submit your entry. Still, make sure to submit as early as possible, even if the game is not uploaded yet, because after 8pm, the Solo & Team divisions will be locked. Also, I can't promise we won't have traffic issues ;)

To create your entry, browse to the "Games" section of the event, and look for the "Create entry" button.

Game voting will open right after the submission hour. Meanwhile, Unranked jammers can keep jamming until tomorrow evening, where they'll still be able to submit entries.

Good luck with the crunch time!

We made a late start due to a busy Friday evening for all three of us, but @ihnaut, @thrainsa and I are finally on track to make our game. We'll go with a good old shoot'em up, where the hero holds the famous Philosopher's Stone, granting him the power to explode into gold pieces all enemies that get in his way.

I'll try and make the models with MagicaVoxel, and of course set the mood with good old chiptunes.

Current state: Mockup done (pictured), Gameplay roughly in place (though we're still not decided what kind of powers will be used by transmutating elements, it will depend on the time we have), Code initialized. LET'S GO

Due to a last minute change in the votes, we completely messed up our announcement video! Here's the updated version:

The jam has started! From now on, you have exactly 48 hours to make a game from scratch and submit it in the Solo & Team divisions. For Unranked entries, submissions will be left open one more day.

Happy jamming!

Bonus: Cool things to do during the jam

• Share updates: Use either blog posts or the #alakajam hashtag to share progress on your game!
• Livestream/Watch livestreams: Check the Streamers & Reviewers post for more details.
• Rules/How to submit: Check the Rules page for more details.