I managed to set aside plenty of time for AKJ. I even was mostly focused on making my game for almost all of Saturday. At the end of Saturday, I had a character who would fall in a tunnel. I didn't have the tunnel yet, well not really, but I did have mushrooms he could bounce off of and I was struggling to make it so that when you move the mouse he would point his arm in that direction. I didn't have shooting but I did have mushrooms he could bounce off of.

I also had soundtracks for both the main menu and the game play! I was also working on "boing" sounds for bouncing off mushrooms.

Also, I implemented the cypher from xkcd. Don't worry, changing it back to normal is just a button click away.

Unfortunately, at the end of Saturday night, my mind was thinking, this is the same game as AKJ4 or LD48. I lost almost all motivation to continue. I drew dinosaurs and helicopters and other evil things to make sure you ended up dead, and hadn't even imported them in to the game yet. Meanwhile all the people on discord were complaining about not being able to get their orbital mechanics simulators working here, and I was complaining about not getting my falling simulator working.

In any case, that is my sad tale. I just found out I can't seem to host images here, so I will update this post with screenshots when I find a nice place to put them. Edit: Posted images to mastodon. I don't know if they'll break after some time. Bonus image:

In all the hype and excitement for the upcoming jam, we will hosting a stream as we count down and carefully count the votes and make fun of the losing themes (and probably the winning theme too) and so you should join us! Join us for laughter and merriment and hype and all the other reasons!

The stream is on the internet at https://www.twitch.tv/danaeplays
It starts at 18:00 UTC! (find a converter for your own time zone, I can't do timezone math)
If you need more hype don't forget to join our discord channel at https://discord.gg/yZPBpTn

The jam will start soon! Don't forget to vote on themes before the stream starts!

For the 20th Alakajam, the theme as voted on and run through the process and corrupted by evil hackers and memes made up by dedicated alakajammers, is…

"In a loop"!

With this announcement, the 20th AKJ has begun! To reiterate what I said before, we will have
13-15th Sep main jam
16th extra day for unranked participants
17th-31 Sep rate the games!
1 Oct reveal the results!

Go make your wonderful games! May the theme inspire you!

Prepare your game engines! The 20th AKJ will take place on 13th-15th of September. The week before will be dedicated to theme voting! And before that, we will submit themes! Since we always seem hate the theme, don't forget to submit a theme you actually like!

Our dates will look like:

If you've participated in an Alakajam before, you should know what to expect! And if not, it is easy to follow along, and we will be putting more info before things happen!

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!