You can access the games i've created here: https://sunbeam6.itch.io/

I'm going back to my 12yo self's roots and started with the main menu. As one should do!

But I guess this Kajam is a good reason to get started!

Let's see how far I can take this in the remaining time.

Cool kajam! I've picked the following limitations:

Esoteric: My entry targets Windows 3.11. Exactly how I'm going to distribute this in a way that anyone can play it remains to be seen
Illustrator: Hand drawing all the art. I do a fair amount of amateur art for fun, but almost never using physical media. I'm hand pencilling, then inking, and finally scanning all the graphics for my entry. Not being able to repeatedly hit 'undo' each time a line is slightly off has been the biggest challenge in the jam for me
Window dressing: Game windows are part of the gameplay. For one, the game needs 'Windows' 3.1(1) to run, but also involves popping up multiple views, each in its own window. Managing these is part of the gameplay, though not particularly complicated.

Instead of my usual cross-compilation shenanigans I'm making the game from inside a Windows 3.11 virtual machine, hosted on a raspberry pi (my main desktop pc at the moment). The screen redraw in the VM is pretty slow, which means that sometimes moving a window, of which I have many, triggers a ten second or so screen refresh. It's pretty painful but is all part of the fun (I keep telling myself).

I'm using Visual Basic 3.0, which I thought would save me some time being designed primarily for interface design, but having to learn such an old version of Visual Basic might be taking longer than drawing the scribbles illustrations.

Let the limitations begin!

The task: make a game by 9th of June, using one or more of these limitations. Pick as many or as few as you like - if you're feeling brave, you could even take one from each category. They're intended to be flexible, as we have a wonderfully mixed community creating games in lots of different ways.

Good luck, and let us know your limitations!

Demoscene

• Cramped: Executable is at most N bytes/pieces/whatever. Choose N appropriate for your platform/engine.
• Esoteric: Game works on $obscure_platform.
• Art attack: No assets; procgen only.

Graphics

• Geometron: Lines and shapes only: no images.
• Seeing double: Use exactly two sprites.
• Illustrator: Draw all your art by hand.

Audio

• Orator: Make audio only using your mouth.
• Bleep bloop: Music, generated by gameplay.
• In the field: All audio comes from a single field recording.

Wildcard

• Over-sensitive: Must use as many inputs (keys, buttons, devices, whatever) as possible.
• Vestige: The past must leave a trace.
• Window dressing: Game windows are part of the gameplay.

Note: if you need something more specific for the Demoscene limitations, I suggest looking at the Revision PC events.

The 15th Kajam is nearly here!

Get your spellbooks ready folks, because we'll be jamming again in May. The 15th Kajam will run from 3rd May, 20:00 UTC to 9th June. (That's this weekend!)

The theme will be: Limitations.

Back in the day, game creators had to work hard to squeeze the most performance out of their processors and limited hard disks, the best art out of their palettes, and the most fun out of their printers. This is rarely a problem for indies nowadays, but it can still be inspiring to work within limits.

On Friday at 20:00 UTC we'll announce a list of limitations - some like the above, but others, too. When you enter the jam, we want you to choose a set of limitations that inspire you, and then see what you can create over the month.

Rules

• The Kajam rules are very relaxed. The limitations in this jam will be flexible enough to accommodate different styles of gamedev (e.g. using an engine; creating a ZX Spectrum game; inventing a board game). You're also free to change your selected limitations mid-jam - they're here for fun and inspiration, after all.
• We do ask that you refrain from relying on "AI" to make parts of your game, though. We want to see what you can create, not what ChatRPG regurgitates! If you really really must use AI, make it clear you did, and how.

Looking forward to another Kajam, thought I'd sign up a little early and make sure it's in my calendar. Bummed I was unable to join the most recent alakajam, so now I have to wait in jam-jail until May.

Hopefully the theme will be something retro-friendly, I haven't done any 'modern' gamedev in a few months now - old consoles and computers are better (and people will say 'wow this runs on DOS? so cool!' and ignore the fact that the game is awful).

Also I'm hoping we maintain a no-AI or 'all AI content must be declared so voxel can downvote it' stance on jam submissions. I'm only interested in playing things made by the alakajam community, not content fever-dreamed by water and energy guzzling ML platforms trained on stolen content, thanks!

Got this puzzle platformer going. Feels like a decent base to build on in day 2. Just gotta add levels, polish and audio until the time's up.

Floating tech islands in the sky will be the backdrop for my take on the classic lunar lander/space taxi concept.

Let's see how this works out…

After a few stumbles, the 19th Alakajam is now open! Make your games! You have until February 25th until sometime in your local time zone (I can't handle time zones) to write your game and submit it! If this is not enough time, or you just don't want to stress, or you want to follow the unranked rules instead of the jam rules, you can go until February 26th!

There are several bits of advice that are traditionally given to game jammers. Advice I like:

• Don't forget to sleep
• Drink enough water
• Have fun!

Advice I recognize as necessary but I don't like:

• Know your tools
• Keep the scope small

On the topic of keeping your scope small, I recently watched a TED talk featuring OK GO about why you might want to keep your scope small. They even do the math! It starts out with a song too.

Advice that is sometimes given but I think should be given more:

• Learn things! Just remember that learning takes time, and you don't have a lot of time in a jam
• Let your inner creative monster out! If you can fit your crazy ideas in to 48 (or 72) hours, do it!

In any case that was much more of an introduction post than I had intended, I probably forgot to write all the important things, welcome to the 19th AKJ, and have fun everyone!