After a long discussion it was discovered that many Americans do not know the term "Fortnight" and confused it with the name of a popular video game. I have a confused background and had just assumed everyone knew the word, but I thought it was archaic and only used in books like "Lord of the Rings" or other situations where you want to sound like the old times. Other people told me that the word "fortnight" was a perfectly normal word in perfectly normal usage.

For those who don't know, fortnight is a word that means two weeks.

Where does that leave us? Well, we intend to keep providing an event where you can submit anything you are working on, whether from a game jam or your own deep dark secret project that will only be released when absolutely perfect, and have this event so that the community can comment on and critique games. We won't even be strict about the two weeks part, which might be additional reason to drop the "fortnight" moniker. However, what ever the name, the idea will continue.

But, in the interest of community feedback, what do you think? If you have an account on mastodon, go over and vote what you think about the name change! Comments on this will be read! https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@alakajam/112197934222212646

Or you can leave a comment on this post if you wish!

The Feedback F…… will start on April 12th and continue for two weeks until April 26th. We will open the submissions before this time, and you can even submit feedback before (or after!) this time, but those are the official dates. Be polite, be nice, be critical, and we'll provide some resources on how do that effectively. You are welcome to submit anything that still fits in to the alakajam rules. If you are submitting a commercial project, please allow for a way for alakajammers to play for free, whether by temporarily setting the price to zero or giving out keys or however you can.

Get your projects ready for public consumption! This is coming soon!

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!

Dear game developers,

It is with great sorrow that we see the modding Kajam come to an end. While there were… not quite a lot of great mods created, let's give a big cheer to everyone who participated! 🎉🎉

We are thrilled to announce that Alakajam is coming back bigger and better than ever! We are excited to announce that the next Alakajam will be happening on February 23rd-25th.

What is Alakajam?
Alakajam is a game jam where gamers come together to create unique games in just one weekend. The competition is fierce, and the games are amazing!

Theme submission will be opened up soon, as soon as I figure out the correct buttons to press!

Theme submission: now. Don't forget to submit themes that you don't hate!
Theme selection: Feb 20th-23rd. Don't forget to vote for the themes you hate the least!
Jam start: February 23rd
Jam end: February 25th
Extra day for unranked jams: Feb 26th. If you didn't finish on Sunday, take an extra day!
Play and rate games: Feb 26th-March 11th.
Where: this website, also our discord channel
Who: everyone
Why: for the glory!

So, mark your calendars and get ready to join the fun. We can't wait to see what you create!

If you have any questions or need more information, please feel free to contact us at the email, but really we respond better on the discord channel. Let's make some amazing games together!

All good things must come to an end, and tonight the 11th Alakajam Tournament is finished! Congratulations to Juutis for getting the most high scores!

If you want your game considered for the next tournament, please check the box indicating such when you submit a game to an Alakajam event!

Coming next on 5 January 2024 will be the 14th Kajam! So enjoy the winter break and we will back in the new year!

Your poor tournament is stressed and has lots going on, but I played lots of games looking for the most fun games for this tournament! These games may have flaws but at least they are fun. We've only got three but I could only dedicate so much time to finding them. I apologize to those that when I tried to play your game it promptly crashed, because I know it worked on your computer.

In any case, we are off! Go get that high score! Don't let the higher scores intimidate you!

If all goes well then in about 3 days, maybe some extra because AKJ admins are slow, but we will start the tournament soon! What happens in a tournament is that we look through Alakajam submissions, and other games that you specifically request of us, put them up on display, and compete for high scores!

How does it work? If you just want the high scores, then play the games, take screenshots of your high scores, and submit them.

If you want your game played, it must have some sort of score, with no max score, and come to the discord and ask Laaph or Laguna to feature your game. You might want to do this quick.

There is also a button in the Alakajam submission process for games submitted to jams to automatically considered for inclusion in the tournament. We will be looking through these games. We expect to feature 4 games for the tournament, but in the past there have been more or less.

We will be playing games together soon!

I hope everyone had fun playing all the games, and I hope people making the games learned some useful insights! But unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. But it's not too much of an end, you can still play the games and leave feedback if you haven't done so yet!

We will have our regular meeting this Wednesday! Don't forget! At 21:00UTC in everyone's favorite Discord server! If you don't know where that is, you can find it at https://discord.gg/yZPBpTn

Next up will be the 18th Alakajam, at October 27, 2023. See you then!

We will be having a meeting to discuss next year's plans, to determine if we have enough manpower to provide additional events, and everything else we need to talk about! The meeting time has been official set to Wednesday, October 4, 2023 at 21:00UTC! It will take place on the Alakajam official Discord channel which, you aren't yet a part of, you can join here. https://discord.gg/yZPBpTn

See you there! (Or maybe we will just hear you there, there will be no cameras…)

We all love to meet, so let's have a meeting! This meeting will discuss events and plans for 2024. If you want to help with AKJ, or if you don't want to help but you want us to know what kind of events you would like to see, or if you just want to hang out with the cool kids, you should attend! We are looking for volunteers to give us new energy and ideas, so if you have lots of energy and ideas please attend! Everyone is welcome!

The day and time will be set according to the poll linked here. I tried to include all sorts of strange times so as to accomodate you if you are in the Americans, Europe, or East Asia. The bulk of Alakajammers are in Europe, so if you are not, let us know what kinds of times work for you. Further, this website does not seem to translate the time zone for you, so you will have to figure that out on your own.

https://framadate.org/EYZsmVma3mNjS9Kr

On the day that the Feedback Fortnight ends, I will look at the poll and determine when the most popular time and date is. I hope that you can find some time that fits your particular time zone!

I hope to see (I mean hear) every one at the meeting!

Welcome to the 2023 edition of Feedback Fortnight! If you aren't familar with FF, take your project that you've been working on, that is ready to show to people, that you want to show to people, and show us! Then, go play the games and projects that other people have posted, and let us know what you think! Look for bugs, look for what is fun, what is not fun, what you like, what you don't like, try them all out, and give us your feedback!

As always, remember there is a person who is showing thier artwork and may be shy, so be nice. Try to give constructive feedback, so don't say "this sux!", say something like "the artwork doesn't make sense to me and the game play wasn't fun, perhaps you could change these things?"

Since we are so excited, we are opening the website so you can post your projects now! We will keep FF2023 open at least until September 24th, so that should be enough time for you to play all the games and contemplate all the thoughts.

We will have another announcement tomorrow regarding something different! Alakajam needs help… maybe you can help?