This is my first jam, and I posted my three themes: 'Classic Books', 'Children Movies', 'The Life of an AI Virus'!
I will be making my game for Windows with Unity 5.6. It will be 2D and will most likely be 8-bit.

I hope my 'Classic Books' theme wins!

The 4th Alakajam! will start the October 12th at 7pm UTC and last to the October 14th at 7pm UTC. But for now, we have to find a theme!
So you can create an account, go here to submit themes (up to 3 by account) and vote for those you like!

The voting process

• For one week (starting today, September 28th) you can submit up to three theme suggestions. Everyone else will be able to rate your suggestions positively or negatively.
• After one week (at October 5th) suggestions will be closed. The top ten themes will be made public and everybody can vote for them in order of preference.
• The final theme will be announced with the launch of the jam (at Friday October 12th, 7pm UTC) within a stream!

Things you can do

• Create an account to participate in the jam
• Write a "I am in" blog post -- Tell the community who are you, what tools you use or what themes you like!
• Check the detailed rules and the help section
• Join us on Twitter, Reddit or in the IRC chat

It's been over three months since the last Alakajam. The next competition will take place on the 12-14 October weekend!

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 get to be ranked against all the other contestants!

First we need to decide on a theme, which we do by letting people submit their ideas and vote for all other submissions. Once we are closer to the jam, we will crop the list to the top 10 suggested themes, and there will be a second voting phase. The final theme will be revealed on stream just as the 4th Alakajam starts!

The full schedule is listed below:

Schedule

Dates	Phase	Description
September 28 - October 5th	Theme submission & voting	You can submit theme ideas for the jam and vote for all other submissions.
October 5-12nd	Theme shortlist	Only the best 10 themes are kept. Rank them by order of preference in this final phase of theme voting.
October 12, 6:30 UTC	Countdown stream	DanaePlays and Aurel300 host an official stream on Twitch to launch the event!
October 12-14th	THE JAM!!!	From Friday 7pm UTC to Sunday 7pm UTC, make a game solo or as a team, and simply submit it before the deadline!
October 12-15th	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.
October 14-28th	Game voting	For two weeks all entrants are invited to play, rate and comment on other peoples games.
October 28th	Results	The results from game voting are released and the winners are 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! And of course: good luck and have fun ;)

Game over!

We're sad to report that the tournament is now finished. Well done everybody who participated, and special congratulations to the winners, for pwning the rest of us with their awesome skills.

We had a great selection of games, and even though the tournament is over you can still play them! So if you haven't managed to play all (or even any) of the games, you still can (and should)!

What's next, eh?

Get some well-deserved R&R, but make sure you're back in time for the 4th Alakajam! on October 12-14th. It's gonna be magical! :P

If this isn't supposed to be posted here, I blame @toasty. He told me to.

Click for Super Potato Bruh Release Trailer

Heresagif:

Anyway, Super Potato Bruh has been released. It's a platformer with some bullet hell elements!

It's available here (source included!): https://cmlsc.itch.io/super-potato-bruh

Hi there,

During August 2018 I was blessed to work with xXBloodyOrange, Thunraz and Aurvandil on Thyl's Tale. In about two weeks we created a Zelda/Hyper Light Drifter like game. I was really excited when I saw that our game is also featured in the 2nd Alakajam Tournament. In that tournament players fight for the top position in a leaderboard, which takes into account the highscores of 6 games from the Alakajam community.
This post will be a (non-exhaustive) list of tips and tricks to help you with doing a speedrun.

Thyl's Tale Tricks

This is separated into two parts, one that contains spoilers and one that is spoiler free.

NO SPOILERS

The intro is skippable (but doesn't count towards playtime)

If you are tired of watching the intro cutscene for the n-th time, just hit ESC to skip it.

Manage the movement

If you want to get a good time, you need to do precise movement. The normal movement ist done by WASD or Arrow keys and the attack/dash can be used with C/X or J/K. Alternatively: If you enjoy playing with a gamepad, Thyl's Tale also supports gamepads (tested with xBox 360).

Dashing is your friend

You will use the dash to avoid enemies, to pass over cliffs and just to move faster. Therefore get a feeling for the dash and how it works.
Did you notice the timer right above Thyl? That is the dash cooldown. Once the text gets bigger in size and starts to fade, you can dash again. Try to pick the appropriate timing.

Know when to fight … and when to run

There are only some specific places where you really have to fight to proceed. In dev speak we call them "arenas". Those are the levels where you enter a certain region and wall emerge, blocking your movement. The first time this happens in the third level after leaving the city, when entering the ruins and at the boss fight.
In all other cases you can easily run through the levels and not bother with the enemies.
Also see: "Learn the levels" below.

Get some healing

The shrines can heal Thyl if he gets beaten up by the enemies. Just walk near a shrine to trigger that effect. There are some shrine on the way which you can use to refill your health.

Teleport back to the city

When you are low on health you can also teleport back to the city and use the shrine there.

Take a look at the stats

When pressing F you can see your stats. Try to get items which maximize your walking speed and dash range and also minimize the dash cooldown. Good items are the Katana, and the leather armor.

---

---

---

---

SPOILER ALERT

---

---

---

---

SPOILER ALERT

---

---

---

---

SPOILER ALERT

---

---

---

---

SPOILER ALERT

---

---

---

---

SPOILER ALERT

Know your enemies

There are three different enemy types (plus the boss) and all of them require a different way of fighting:

• Slimes: They perform a random walk until they see you. Then they move towards you and if they are in charging distance, they will charge towards you. This is the only time when touching them will hurt you. After the charge hey are exhausted and need to rest a bit. This is the best time to attack them as they don't move.
• Smasher: This big grumpy ork will do a random walk until he sees Thyl. Then he will walk towards you and start his smash attack. Try to deal as much damage as possible before the attack comes down. Shortly before that you should dash out of the white "danger zone".
• Shooter: This cultist attacks you with a magic bullet over a mid-range distance. As he does not deal that much damage it is advisable to just dash towards him and kill him. Luckily he just takes one hit even with the starting weapon.

Of course all enemies can also be killed with the bow and arrow from a safe distance.

Easing the bossfight

The boss (called Raon) has three stages:

• In the first stage Raon shoots 6 magic bullets in a counter-clockwise order.
• in the second stage Raon fires three rounds of 20 magic bullets at a time
• In the third stage Raon summons some minions and goes into invincible mode until you kill them off. Additionally he will shoot an occasional magib bullet towards the player's position.
• The three stages loop in that order.

If possible, try to avoid the third stage as this will take a lot of time. If you bought a good weapon, Thyl should be able to defeat Raon way before that.

Learn the levels (and the world)

Knowing the progession of levels is really helpful as you can plan ahead. This image (created during development time) shows all the maps. They don't show the final version of the maps but a basic, blocked version. It might help you find your way through this adventure.

Know the puzzles

There are two puzzles levels in the game, just before the bossfight.

• The first puzzle level is easy: just activate the first trigger (best: shoot it with an arrow so you don't have to walk there) then walk up the bridge towards the second lever and activate that one. Then go back towards the first platform (the one in the south west with the wall) which is now reachable through a second bridge. Activate that third lever and continue to the north of the level.
• The second puzzle follows right after that but requires some tinkering. The combination is as follows: Left Trigger, Right Trigger, move towards the (now reachable) platform, activate that trigger, go back to the south and activate the middle trigger. Then move towards the top platform and fight with the boss.

Maybe the trickiest game of the tournament is Whirling Blades, a mouse-only game where all items are used automatically. It can be difficult to understand exactly how things works in the fast-paced action, yet there is a lot of depth to uncover. Let's figure things out together!

Please share in the comments section any info or correction you have, I'll update this post accordingly.

---

Items

Item	Dropped	Triggers	Action
Blueberry	Bushes with visible fruits	When the energy bar is depleted	Refills the energy bar
Apple	Trees with visible fruits	When the health bar goes below a certain level	Refills the health bar
Seeds	Fruitless trees & bushes	When walking on a corrupted tile	Reverts the tile to normal grass
Gel	All enemies	When item count reaches a certain value	Upgrades the weapon - First upgrade = 60 gel - Second upgrade = 150 gel - Third upgrade???

Enemies

Enemy	Properties
White insect	Simply runs towards you. May randomly transform into Double spike creatures. If you're cornered, they can deal massive damage due to no attack cooldown.
Double spike	Does not move. Fires artillery strikes that corrupt tiles.
White mask	Moves slowly, shooting purple boomerangs at you.

Tips

• Corrupted tiles: They slow you down, and destroy any living plant on them. Corruption spreads with time to neighbor tiles. In the early game, you can delay the spread of corruption a bit by restoring grass as soon as you can with your seeds. More generally, clear the spike enemies early to prevent them from firing their corrupting attacks.
• Dashing: Useful not only for escaping monsters but also as an attack. Actually seems more powerful than the basic attack.
• Item gathering: It doesn't seem like plants or fruits grow/spread, so gather everything you find as fast as possible.
• Saving blueberries: Technically your energy bar resplenishes automatically, so if you're careful with your clicking, you can save blueberries for later… But to be honest the blueberries rarely empty, so click away!!!

There's no way I'll be able to win this one.

They're all from genres I tend to be bad at aside from MAD SEED and Whirling Blades (mine). It doesn't help that I'm also on a really tight schedule for the Super Potato Bruh development. Looks like @voxel will get an easy first place. :P

The 5th Kajam is over, the long awaited results are in, and sadly I must graciously accept the honour of last place. It may not be your first impression to think of it as an honour, but just as every cloud has a silver lining even last place is itself a prize dependant on how you look at it.
By coming in last I therefore made the most mistakes, and by making the most mistakes I then have the most to learn and gain from taking part in this Kajam. I'm going to attempt to reflect on my own submission and work out what I could have done better. If you have any further constructive feedback I'd love to hear it.

I would like to quickly take this opportunity to thank every single person who played, rated and provided feedback on Street Bots. I appreciate every one of you.

Issue 1 - Inspiration: I chose to make a retro game inspired by Pokémon, a high standard to set the bar by. I did so because I love Pokémon and I've never made an adventure rpg so I wanted to challenge myself. An important step I missed was to look at what gave Pokémon its spark, why people loved the games and what drew them in. I think a big part of Pokémon is the depth of the world; the spreading map that you gradually explore, the chance to encounter new creatues in each place, growing your team and forming an attachment to them over time as they help you overcome various challenges. I dont think a lot of these features translate well to a smaller, shorter game which is of course what I would be making when taking part in a timed event (and starting 3 weeks late!).

Issue 2 - Flare (or lack thereof): Not being an artist this is probably something I am often guilty of. A game doesnt have to be flashy to be good but the lifeless, unanimated battles of Street Bots certainly didnt add to the immersion. The battles lacked both SFX and animation and I think this detracted from the "fall in love factor" which can draw people into games. Another example would be the player movement. I struggled at first to get the movement to feel how I wanted and decided to opt for the "good enough" approach and move on. This was a mistake because movement was such a huge part of the game. The first thing you do is move, the majority of time playing the game is probably spent moving around. I tested the game many many times and got used to the clunky movement, however to someone just downloading and trying the game the awkwardness would detract heavily from the rest of the experience.

Issue 3 - Scope: The game was just too much for me to handle in only just over a week. Add in that I got suddenly sick and didn't do any dev for 2 or 3 days and there's just not enough time. If I'd had the time I would've added a lot more to some of the existing mechanics; multiple bot battles using teams, some sort of effectiveness system in battles,  a mechanic similar to wild Pokémon for training your bots and full keyboard controls! No more cheap UI and mouse elements. Some of these features could've added more variety and life to the game. In it's current state it feels linear and stale.

Despite the bad things I've said about it I'm very proud of Street Bots. I love the game and learned a lot from creating it.
If you've actually read this entire post then thank you for reading my internal monologue brain dump. I hope you too can learn something from it.
Another huge thanks to everyone who played Street Bots, everyone who took part in Kajam 5 and the fantastic organisers of Alakajam. I look forward to the next one!

Wildfire is a game that you probably didn't play for the 5th Kajam, mainly because I completely failed to get it done in time.

The main reason for that was that I was busy working on a killer feature that I wanted to have available before people played (and forgot about) the game.

The new feature I've added to the game is the ability to create levels. This is pretty cool (IMHO) because it's adding "cloud saves" to a PICO-8 game. The way it's done is by exploiting the GPIO flags that were added to PICO-8 presumably to be able to control simple lights on your Raspberry Pi or similar. Since the data needed to store a level is pretty light, I save it in these GPIO controls, which can then be read by the HTML5 app serving the PICO-8 cart. The data is then stored on my own server via a REST interface.

This means that any level you create is available to play for all players via the "challenges" list! I can't wait to see what kind of crazy challenges will appear!

Have a play here: Wildfire