The 5th Kajam took place during the month of August, seing 9 entries submitted around the "Retro" theme. If you want to join the next one, know that it will take place in November, and will be hosted by regular member @DaFluffyPotato!

But what is a Kajam?

Kajams are relaxed competitions taking place over a full month, in which we make a video game focusing on a specific aspect of game making. The rules are pretty open, and don't require you to work throughout the month - even a tiny game made in an evening, or an improvement of an existing game of yours can fit! Kajams are perfect to learn, experiment and improve your gamedev skills. Detailed rules here.

The topic of the next Kajam will be chosen by its host and announced upon the start of the event. Follow us on Twitter or Reddit to stay updated!

EDIT: The Kajam is cancelled - what about we host something different this time? To be announced shortly!

The jam is over

You all did an awesome job! Thanks to all the great devs who took part in this jam, by creating a 'retro' game during August 2018 and especially by playing and rating other games. Telling the creators of a game what you feel, like (and perhaps dislike) on a game is super valuable and will create a huge amount of motivation! We are especially happy that we have a new submission highscore for a Kajam.

Of course we have some shiny medals to show! The games were rated on a single 'retro' score. While createing a game on its own is an awesome achievement and everyone can be super proud of the games, some were worth mentioning far beyond the other games. So without further adue:

Here are the results

Long live the jam

Of course we all get a sort of past-jam-blues after such an awesome event. But fear not! We have some awesome events prepared for you:

2nd Alakajam Tournament September 8 - 23 2018

During the tournamet you can compete in games created for the 3rd Alakajam or the 5th Kajam via our highscore system, either for the fastest speedrun or the highest score.

4th Alakajam October 12 - 14 2018

The next regular Alakajam will take place in October 12-14. This is a big, weekend-long event for you to take part in!

6th Kajam November 2018

The next month-long event will be run in November by @DaFluffyPotato . If you enjoyed doing this Kajam, save the date and clear your calendar as it will be equally awesome!

Here it is, at last: the 2nd AKJ Tournament!

"Hey, why the late starting date?"

We decided to delay slightly, to allow thorough voting on the 5th Kajam (theme: "Retro"). You can view the results here. Congratulations to the winners, and to everybody who participated!

So, what's this tournament all about?

Between the 9th and 23rd of September 2018 we'll be playing and competing at six games submitted to previous competitions. You can see the rules here.

Enough! What are the games already?!

Congratulations to everyone!

During the month of August you managed to create a game! But we have another reason to celebrate: This is the Kajam with the most entries! Keep up the spirit and spread the word!

Voting

During the next week (from 3. September to 9. September) you will have the chance to play and rate all the awesome games, which have been created for this Kajam. There is only one voting category, called "retro". And of course you can give comment on everybody's game and give them a lot of valuable feedback!

"Help, I am late!"

Don't worry! Submissions will stay open until the end of the jam (until Sunday, 9. September). However, it is recommended to submit as soon as possible. This will give other jammers time to give feedback and also give you the time to comment and rate the other entries.

HEEEEEEEEY!

Now that's how you start a blog! :D

…

Okay, but for real now:

I have never posted or even thought about posting anything like a blog before. I started learning how to program games when I was younger, but only about a month ago did I decide that I reeaaaally wanted to do it. But since I had little experience, I decided to pick up an engine, learn what I could, and then start making games!

I found Alakajam off a random page on my twitter @SnowFoxGames. I'd been given advice to join game jams, but I'm not comfortable going to any in person, especially if it meant working with…gulp…other human beings! (Dun dun dun!!!!)

I'm hoping to improve my skills as a developer as well as gain the confidence to finally poke my head out of my safety shell :)

I am certainly not ready for the weekend only challenge. For goodness sakes, it takes a month for me to be able to get anything done around here!

When the next Kajam starts, I will definitely see to it that I enter.

Look out world! This Fox has teeth and is ready to bite!(Or something)

My plans for August were to make a game for Ludum Dare 42 that could also fit this month's Kajam. When the LD came up with the theme "Running out of space", I quickly got the idea of a terminal game where the goal was to free space. I also felt slightly lazy at that time, and not too excited by the idea of writing a fake file system with commands for it, for some reason. When @Aurel300 offered me to join his LD entry as a composer, I was quite quick to accept, and immediately trashed my game idea x)

Fast forward to this morning - after a few days, the scrapped idea had time to grow on me a bit, and I felt I could still explore it for the Kajam. Making working terminal commands was more fun and less work than I expected! After 2 or 3 hours I could eventually add the game contents, and take some time to polish various corner cases (I was sure some players would try obscure things to see what they would do, so I didn't want to disappoint :P)

The end result took about 4 hours to make, it is short but hopefully fun. Let me know what you think!

I've been pottering on an entry over the last two weeks, wasn't sure if I would finish it, but I think I will! A short adventure game in a row boat …

Hello Alakajammers!

Over the last month or so, we have been busy working "behind the scenes", submitting the appropriate applications to make Alakajam an NPO: a non-profit organisation.

Why a non-profit?

I wanted to try to explain why this matters to you all.

Initially, Alakajam was @wan's one-man project to set up a new site for running jams and creating a gamedev community. It was set up to be open source so that anyone can contribute, with a modern design and architecture.

Another goal from the get-go was to make the site in such a way that makes it easy for different people to run a jam, to help moderate and even fix the website when needed. Crucially, we wanted the community to maintain and run the site, with no single keymaster and single point of failure.

And this is where the NPO comes in. Alakajam is now an actual organisation, run by an elected board with transparent processes, finances and activities. Anyone who is interested can help out and contribute in various ways.

The Council of Jamicians

The initial organisation has been set up, and the starting elected officers are (for a period of one year):

• Scribe: @dollarone
• Master of coin, Lead developer: @wan
• Counselor, "Master of designs": @Aurel300
• Counselor, "Lord": @toasty
• Counselor, "Doctor": @Laguna

After a year, there will be a board meeting and an election, where anyone can nominate themselves for a role.

The sole reason for filing all this paperwork is that so Alakajam can be a community-owned site which can survive even if its founder decide to completely remove themselves from the process.

Hopefully Alakajam will continue on for many years and jams to come - as long as its community want it to run!

ALAKAJAM!
Registered in France on 11 August 2018, as an "association loi 1901"
RNA Number W691095617

pixel art platformer in pico-8 hopefully that ticks enough retro boxes

So far going pretty ok for a first time in pico-8, and its easy to export gifs too :D

They do say better late than never!

I wasn't planning on entering this Kajam but I've had a sudden change of heart and an idea.
Hopefully I can get something together in time that's decent enough to get people's interest.

All I have so far is a simple character but it's good to get the ball rolling.

Good luck to everyone else taking part and especially to those latecomers in the same situation as me!