Posts

Two weeks to play and rate games! 0

Wan • 1 year ago on 17th Alakajam! 

That's it, all the games are in - well done everyone! Now it's time to play and rate each other's games!

Constructive feedback is one of the best ways to learn and improve your game design skills, so please dish it out in buckets. If you haven't submitted a game yourself, you can still play games and leave feedback, the only thing you'll miss is the ability to rate games - so please do play and comment everyone!

The voting phase lasts until March 12th, when the ratings will be counted and the top 3 of the solo and team categories will be crowned!

Go go go! Play and rate games!

We're in... and ChatGPT may join the team 5

Wan • 1 year ago on 17th Alakajam! entry  River on Venus

@thrainsa and I will be back for the upcoming jam! We'll make our game with Unity as usual. Heres our last few entries:

   

Regarding the ChatGPT thing, I've been experimenting a bit with it to see how it could work as our creative director of the jam. Honestly it could be fun to leave the AI in charge of all big decisions while we do the dirty work :,-) I have pasted below my current version of a prompt, feel free to play with it! Here's an example exchange I managed to get. Not sure if we'll actually use it during the week-end but it's tempting.

We are going to role play a team trying to create a video game from scratch in a week-end for an Alakajam event. You will be GPT, the team leader and creative director of the project. The echange format will be as follows:

Wan or Thrainsa: <a question>

GPT: <your answer>

You will only write GPT's answers and their eventual followup questions, while I will write messages from team members Thrainsa & Wan. GPT will offer good advice taking in account the skills of Thrainsa & Wan, the limitations of making a video game in a week-end, the current progress and obstacles, and the remaining available time. GPT will make sure the game scope remains reasonable. GPT may ask relevant and pragmatic questions (but only one at a time) to gain better insight on the situation, and will take decisions accordingly. GPT is full of imagination and has creative ideas to share about game ideas & game design.

Wan: The Alakajam has just started, and the theme is "XXX". Any idea what kind of game we should make?

Results of the 16th Alakajam! 0

Wan • 1 year ago on 16th Alakajam! 

This is it, the results for the 16th Alakajam! are finally out! Thank you everyone for playing the game of reviewing and rating each other's entries. You can find the full rankings below.

Solo winners | Team winners | Unranked games

Big congratulations to all the winners!

Dates of the next Alakajam

The 17th Alakajam! will be held 24-26 February 2023, so make sure to book the date. Hope to see you then :)

The theme of the jam is Islands 0

Wan • 1 year ago on 16th Alakajam! 

With the theme now revealed, the 16th Alakajam! has started. Let's make games :)

If you're entering the competitive, ranked jam, and are unsure what you're allowed to do, please check this page for the detailed rules of the jam (in particular the "What is allowed?" section).

Submission times

The end of the jam is depending on whether you pick ranked or unranked. You can create your game page at any time during the jam (and update it any time after it's created):

  • Ranked: September 11th 7:00pm UTC, which means you have 48 hours (+1 hour for late entries to create their page).
  • Unranked: September 12th 10:00pm UTC, which means you have a bit more than 72 hours.

Big thanks to @DanaePlays and @Aurel300 for hosting the launch stream! If you missed it, you can still find it on her Twitch channel.

Cool things to do during the jam

  • Write a blog post: Share your thoughts on the theme, post your progress, images of food or gifs of cute animals. You can also free to use posts for advertising live jam streams.
  • Tweet about #alakajam and follow the alakajam Twitter account
  • Initialize your game page early!

Have a nice week-end all of you, and see you on the other side!

Schedule of the 16th Alakajam! 0

Wan • 1 year ago on 16th Alakajam! 

The 16th edition of our 48 hour game jam starts on Friday September 9th!

The event is about making a game, from nothing, in a weekend. Teams or solo devs, beginners and professionals are all welcome to participate. If you opt-in to the competition, you will get to be ranked against every other contestant! Or if you prefer a more relaxed setting, maybe even work on your current hobby project, the unranked jam will still give you an opportunity to get plays and comments.

Schedule

Dates Phase Description
August 26, 7pm UTC Theme submission and voting You can submit theme ideas for the jam and vote for all other submissions.
September 4, 7pm UTC Theme shortlist Only the best 10 themes are kept. Rank them by order of preference in this final phase of theme voting.
September 9, 6:30pm UTC Kickoff stream Final vote elimination, chat, and games on the DanaePlays channel.
September 9, 7pm UTC THE JAM!!! Start making a game solo or as a team, and simply submit it before the deadline!
September 11, 7pm UTC End of ranked jam The main competition ends here, exactly 48 hours after the start time. Submissions will remain open for an additional hour after the deadline.
September 12,10pm UTC End of 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.
September 25, 7pm UTC 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 ;)

Results of the 15th Alakajam! 0

Wan • 1 year ago on 15th Alakajam! 

It's official: the results for the 15th Alakajam! are finally out! You can find the results below.

Solo winners | Team winners | Unranked games

Big congratulations to all the winners!

We hope you had fun during this game jam as well as during the review phase! This summer event was a bit peculiar as our smallest Alakajam yet, which I hope wasn't too disappointing in terms of competition. Hopefully you still got a satisfying amount of feedback too!

Upcoming events

  • The next event will be the Feedback Fortnight 2022, which will start on July 15th. It will be a chance for you to share any game project you've been working on, and exchange feedback.
  • The 15th Alakajam! will be held September 9-11, so make sure to book the date!

The theme of the jam is BOOKS 0

Wan • 1 year ago on 15th Alakajam! 

With the theme now revealed, the 15th Alakajam! has started. Let's make games :)

If you're entering the competitive, ranked jam, and are unsure what you're allowed to do, please check this page for the detailed rules of the jam (in particular the "What is allowed?" section).

Submission times

The end of the jam is depending on whether you pick ranked or unranked. You can create your game page at any time during the jam (and update it any time after it's created):

  • Ranked: June 19th 7:00pm UTC, which means you have 48 hours (+1 hour for late entries to create their page).
  • Unranked: June 20th 10:00pm UTC, which means you have a bit more than 72 hours.

Big thanks to @DanaePlays and @Aurel300 for hosting the launch stream! If you missed it, you can still find it on her Twitch channel.

Cool things to do during the jam

  • Write a blog post: Share your thoughts on the theme, post your progress, images of food or gifs of cute animals. You can also free to use posts for advertising live jam streams.
  • Tweet about #alakajam and follow the alakajam Twitter account
  • Initialize your game page early!

Have a nice week-end all of you, and see you on the other side!

Schedule of the 15th Alakajam! 0

Wan • 2 years ago on 15th Alakajam! 

The 15th edition of our 48 hour game jam starts on Friday June 17th.

The event is about making a game, from nothing, in a weekend. Teams or solo devs, beginners and professionals are all welcome to participate. If you opt-in to the competition, you will get to be ranked against every other contestant! Or if you prefer a more relaxed setting, maybe even work on your current hobby project, the unranked jam will still give you an opportunity to get plays and comments.

Schedule

Dates Phase Description
June 3 , 7pm UTC Theme submission and voting You can submit theme ideas for the jam and vote for all other submissions.
June 10, 7pm UTC Theme shortlist Only the best 10 themes are kept. Rank them by order of preference in this final phase of theme voting.
June 16, 6:30pm UTC Kickoff stream Stream hosted by @Aurel300 and @DanaePlays.
June 17, 7pm UTC THE JAM!!! Start making a game solo or as a team, and simply submit it before the deadline!
June 19, 7pm UTC End of ranked jam The main competition ends here, exactly 48 hours after the start time. Submissions will remain open for an additional hour after the deadline.
June 20,10pm UTC End of 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.
July 3, 7pm UTC 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 ;)

The theme of the jam is FUNGI! 0

Wan • 2 years ago on 14th Alakajam! 

With the theme now revealed, the 14th Alakajam! has started. Let's make games :)

If you're entering the competitive, ranked jam, and are unsure what you're allowed to do, please check this page for the detailed rules of the jam (in particular the "What is allowed?" section).

Submission times

The end of the jam is depending on whether you pick ranked or unranked. You can create your game page at any time during the jam (and update it any time after it's created):

  • Ranked: Sunday 7:00pm UTC, which means you have 48 hours (+1 hour for late entries to create their page).
  • Unranked: Monday 10:00pm UTC, which means you have a bit more than 72 hours.

Big thanks to @DanaePlays and @Aurel300 for hosting the awesome launch stream! If you missed it, you can still find it on her Twitch channel.

Cool things to do during the jam

  • Write a blog post: Share your thoughts on the theme, post your progress, images of food or gifs of cute animals. You can also free to use posts for advertising live jam streams.
  • Tweet about #alakajam and follow the alakajam Twitter account
  • Initialize your game page early!

Have a nice week-end all of you, and see you on the other side!

We're in! 0

Wan • 2 years ago on 14th Alakajam! entry  Escape Shroom

@BalBoom, @Thrainsa and I will be back this week-end for a small 3D game! We'll be making our entry using Unity & Blender, and hopefully I can find enough time to work on sound & music using Reason.

Here's our last couple entries from 2020 in case anyone remembers playing them :)