I'm in for my 5th AKJ and my 14th game jam! (13 of which were 48 hour solo)

Here's what I'm using:

• Python - code
• Pygame - graphics library
• Px Editor - artwork
• SFXR or foley - sound effects
• Bosca Ceoil or LMMS - music
• 3x6 pixel art font - font
• entities.py - pygame 2D framework

I made both the font and the entities.py script. Feel free to use them both for anything. No credit needed.

My last AKJ entry (Spike Dungeon):

If you're interested in my other work (source available too), check out my itch.io page.

I missed the last Ludum Dare because I got pretty sick the day of so I haven't done a game jam since the last AKJ. I'm really looking forward to this one! \o/

Good luck everyone!

psst… pygame is viable

First jam ever. I'm excited about it. I'm looking forward to learning and see what everyone brings to the table. Attempting solo to get my feet wet. Curious what engines people will be using and what quality of polish they can get done in such a short time.

The new Alakajam! is finally approaching and will start on February 22nd!

The goal of the event 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 opt-in to the competition, you will be ranked against every other contestant!

Full schedule

Dates	Phase	Description
Feb. 8	Theme submission & voting	You can submit theme ideas for the jam and vote for all other submissions.
Feb. 15	Theme shortlist	Only the best 10 themes are kept. Rank them by order of preference in this final phase of theme voting.
Feb. 22 6:30pm UTC	Countdown stream	DanaePlays and Aurel300 host an official stream on Twitch to launch the event!
Feb. 22 7pm UTC	THE JAM!!!	Until Sunday 7pm UTC, make a game solo or as a team, and simply submit it before the deadline!
Feb. 25	Unranked jam	If you want to go for a relaxed weekend - or need more time - you can create a game in the 72 hours of the unranked jam.
March 10	Results	After two weeks during which all entrants are invited to play, rate and comment on other peoples games… The results are released and the winners crowned!

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, want to work on an existing project of theirs, or simply did not finish their game in time.

See the full rules for the Alakajam.

How to enter

All you need to do is:

1. Create an account on this website
2. Publish your game before the deadline

A lot of participants also post an "I am in" blog post presenting themselves or their team 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!

If you can, feel free to spread the word about the jam - the more we are, the merrier! glhf ;)

In March will be held the 3rd AKJ Tournament, where the community is invited like last time to play & compete on existing jam games! The event will be run right after the end of the 5th Alakajam, around March 10th.

If you want to submit your own game to the event, follow this link :)

Run for your life is a Fantasy Endless runner plateformer.
The basic idea came from the movie the Hobbit with the goblin chase

I wanted to create an endless runner where you have a party of adventurer that need to create their path through a lot of monsters and plateforms. The have to use magics and the environment to defeat their enemies.

To get there, I started with a smaller version where you only have one character with a fireball and that will need to avoid Ogres or destroy them to get further. This version is also inspired by "Jetpack joy" another endless runner ;)

I would be happy if you can try it and give me your feedbacks and/or ideas to get closer to my first idea.
Have fun ;)

The 6th Kajam now has ratings open! You are free to play, review and rate these hyper-casual games according to how addictive you feel they are. Also, most of you are already aware but due to popular demand, there is a last minute change to allow 4 more days for submitting late entries. Here's the final schedule:

• Submissions close: Thursday 31st January, 7pm UTC
• Ratings close/Results out: Tuesday 5th February, 7pm UTC

We're not extending the ratings phase until the end of the week because… Guess what? It will be time for the 5th Alakajam already, with theme submissions opening on the following Friday :D

Congrats to everyone who already entered the jam, and good luck to those still polishing their work!

So I really wanted to take part in this jam but I've just been way too busy.
The thing is I started working on a game that fits the hyper casual bill around xmas last year and I'm just finishing it now?

Is it cool if I submit it unranked? Would love to take part but I've just not had time to work on a whole new project as well as everything else.

The Attack of the Aliens
Available on Google Play!

Try it out! Free! No Ads!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.MatchaMaze.TheAttackOfTheAliens

"The Earth is under attack! - The army is out of money!

Luckily the aliens attack only one soldier at a time…
Giving time for the army to raise some money via a tv show…
More show, more money…
Upgrade your soldiers to survive!
Or the aliens for more money…"

A small action game with pixel graphics and music to go with it.
Upgrades and achievements are included!

Slowly working on my little platformer. Trying to tweak the difficulty is a bit tough, but I think I have enough hazards to keep the player busy. If I have time I might work on powerups before the deadline!
https://twitter.com/SnowFoxGames/status/1084336785780400130

I've been making good progress with my jumping game, with the core mechanic now mostly done (…although physics were harder than expected to set up).

The next steps will be to draw final art… and more importantly, balance the difficulty. That difficulty part is quite tricky, as a good level design should be able to avoid "impossible situations" where deaths are forced. How could we do that yet keep the game hard, and even make it get harder with time? I see two main approaches:

1. Keep the levels procedurally generated, and do some clever coding to make level generation harder & harder without being unfair ;
2. Use pre-made "level chunks" of various difficulties, that would be playtested by hand.

Solution 2 would be too time consuming & unexciting, not mentioning I'd need to playtest again from scratch if I decide to tweak physics constants… So yeah I'll stick with fully procedural levels. To quickly get something I can ship, I've wanted to avoid being too concerned about imperfect levels: a trick was to introduce an "oxygen management" mechanic. The way it helps with level design is that it lets players do (limited) air jumps, which means that even if there's a huge hole in the level it still leaves a chance to survive.

Now, for the ideal solution…

The main idea I've had for "100% solvable" level generation is to place an AI player below the screen, before rockets are even spawned, that "plays" exactly like the player would. It would randomly decide to swap sides & jump, the trick being that the AI also decides when it lands: When reaching one of the 3 "rocket lanes", he'd be able to trigger rocket generation. A rocket would then magically appear right where the AI is, so we're 100% sure that the game is playable :)

We could then adjust the difficulty in various ways:

• Especially in early phases of the game, filling voids with some additional rockets would help make things easy and the "AI path" not too obvious
• The AI could play with increasingly tight timing
• The rockets could be made shorter, or positioned so that there's little margin for error

I'm not sure how widespread this technique of using an AI is, but it may be fun to try. To be continued…