Audio Keynote

Listen to the keynote on soundcloud Thanks to xXBloodyOrange for helping me with that!

The theme for this Kajam is “retro”

By definition “retro” means to consciously derive from or imitate previous creatings.
In gaming, everything started with retro games. Games like “Donkey Kong”, “Pong”, “Pac Man”, “Sonic”, “Super Metroid”, “Zelda: A Link to the past”, “Tetris” or “Super Mario Cars” are inherently linked to gaming.
Lately “retro”-games and consoles are having their rennaisance. Companies like Nintendo or Atari create new versions of old consoles, like the “NES Mini”, “SNES Mini” or the “Atari Flashback 8”. Original consoles and games can be found on almost every flea market.

All of those games feature a unique art-style or a piece of music that sticks in our heads forever. However, from the developer’s perspective, retro games are not just about art and style. They have one thing in common, which is a clear, simple mechanic. Because of the limited features of old consoles, the games had to focus on simple mechanics and tricks.

This Kajam is all about Retro games!

Make a game that derives from a previous creation!
Make a game for an old console!
Make a retro game!

For this Kajam you can work solo or as a team. You have the complete month of August 2018 to create and submit your entry. Every Framework or Engine is allowed. You can even use third party assets.

At the end of August you will be able to rate other participants’ games based on one single “retro” score.

So start your engines and join this Kajam!

Schedule

• 1. August - 2. September: Develop your games
• 3. September - 9. September: Rating Phase
• 9. September: Results

We have had an awesome 2nd Alakajam! We want to shout out a big "Thank you" to everyone who made this jam that great, being it submitting/rating theme suggestions, creating games, rating games and giving valuable feedback. You are awesome!

71 Games were created during a very limited time and that alone is a great achievement. So congratulations to all solo or team devs who took part!
But of course Alakajam wouldn't be Alakajam without ratings and winners. So let's crown our winners!

Champions: Solo | Team

We hope you had a lot of fun, learned some new skills or found some new friends. As we try to make the event even more pleasing to you, we would also like to ask you for your feedback in this 2 minute survey.

Next Events

Of course we have the next jams ready for you. Mark your calendars!

3rd Alakajam: June 22nd to June 24th

4th Kajam: April 1st to April 30th hosted by Toasty (What is a Kajam?)

Behind the Scenes

The 2nd Alakajam was not run by a single person but by a growing group of enthusiastic people:

• The wan and only, who started Alakajam and keeps it running!
• Chief Video Officers Aurel300 and Danae who supported the jam with the wonderful opening ceremony
• Technical Managers: Aurel300, eldy, thomastc (recently active developers), but also thrainsa, toasty, rnlf, dollarone and more!
• Community Managers (IRC): tsjost, toasty, sorceress
• QA department: sorceress, cmlsc, yumaikas and various nice people who reported bugs :)

Also, thanks to all the streamers, youtubers and speedrunners who covered the event!

We hope to see you all for the next event!

A total of 71 amazing games were created for the 2nd Alakajam. You have until Sunday, Mar 11th to rate the games. Please do so, to ensure that all games get a final score.
The game view has switched to rescue mode (displaying the entries which desperately need some ratings) to ensure that all of the games get a final score.

The rules for rating, scores and the feedback score can be found at the Rules and the FAQ

Congratulations to everyone who took part in this event! You have (solo or team, ranked or unranked) created a game in a very short timeframe! That is a good reason to tap your shoulder and get a big smile to your face!

The 2nd Alakajam is now complete with over 72 games!

The next step is the voting phase. Go to the games listing and play (and vote on) those awesome games. The creators are definitely also interested in some feedback, so if you have the time, write them some lines what you like, what could be improved and where you would have taken this game. The voting phase runs for two weeks until 11th March. This is also the date where the winners will be announced.

After 48 hours the 2nd Alakajam has ended (for ranked submissions).

Stop writing code, painting graphics or composing music now. Starting from now, you have one hour left for submitting your game. If you haven't done so, you can do this here.
Around 8pm UTC submissions will finally be closed for ranked entries. Unranked entries have 24 hours extra, but for them there will be no submssion hour.

Rating starts directly after the submissions are closed and will stay open until Mar 11th.

I like the wooshing sounds deadlines make when they pass by.

Douglas Adams

The time to work on your game ends tonight at 7pm UTC for ranked entries. After that time, stop adding features to your game.
However, as we know that the final hours of a jam can be quite stressfull, you have one additional "submission hour". So the submission of ranked entries is possible until 8pm UTC.

At this point, solo and team submissions will be locked. As literally everybody is trying to submit in that timeframe, traffic issues might occur.

Voting will start right after the submission hour, so if you are looking forward to play some games, you can do so right away.
Unranked jammers have additional 24 hours ( + submission hour) so for them the doors close on Feb 26th at 10pm UTC.

Hi there,

So, the final hours of the jam. This is where dirty hacks appear. ;) But first, let's do an update here!

A lot of bugfixes and features made it into the game. Now there are powerups, three different levels and we now even have music. I also worked on the main menu. As graphics are coming in (wall tile, player and powerups still missing), the game is more and more polished and I feel that we will be ready to submit in time. I also did a playtest to check if gamepad controls are working correctly and that the game was fun to play. And I have to say: yes, it is.

So, time is running!

I hope, everyone is doing great on their games!
Our project makes great progress. :)
The most obvious thning are probably the graphics. And then there is a whole set of gameplay mechanics which have been implemented:
Players can throw mines now, a level is loaded, collisions, a win/loose condition, a sudden death mode once the timer is over, …

The level is actually just a 32x24 image with the r,g and b values encoding different types of tile types, like which player spawns where, if it is a normal, wall or breakable tile and so on. Implementing this is super easy and creating levels is really fun then. So I hope I can push out some more levels quickly at the end of the jam.

I hope I get some of the larger issues (win screen with some statistics, nice join screen, some player traces) out of the way tonight, as tomorrow will be quite packed with "non-jam" stuff (so to say an unjammed day ;) ).

Hi everyone!

With more than a quarter of the time passed it is time for the first update.

Unfortunately xXBloodyOrange dropped out of the team due to an intensive schoolwork spike this weekend.

After the great opening ceremony yesterday evening we sat down for brainstorming. Actually we all hoped for the "little robot workers" theme, but well…
So we decided to go for a couch multiplayer game where the players become invisible after a short time. You have to beat the enemies by throw mines and you have to remeber/guess where everyone is (including you).

Yesterday evening my teammates went to the cinema (I skipped because I am still a little bit sick) and I started to work on input and a joining-screen wich came out pretty nice yesterday.
Today I woke up early (and refreshed) and started to work on movement and controls. Tile based movement as well as throwing mines is working so far. (beautiful programmers art)

Now I crave for breakfast and after that I will set up player death, chain reactions and an actual level.

Good morning jammers!

We hope everyone is doing great and has a good time working on their games.

Whether you got some sleep or pulled an all-nighter or started late, we are not 12 hours in.
Everyone would like to see some progress on other peoples games and hereby we announce a call for blog-posts! Just click here to do so.
Where are you taking the theme? Which tools do you use? solo or team? And everyone loves to see images or gifs of gameplay mechanics starting to come to live or beautiful glitches and funny bugs. Pictures of food, pets, memes also get a great share of love as well as sharing your progress on audio or soundeffcts!
As it is saturday you should take advantage of #screenshotsaturday and post your progress also on Twitter #alakajam.

If any question or issue with the site or jam arises, do not hesitate to look for the support thread or as a question there in the comment section!

Happy jamming! :3