Pheeew huge relief for me: after trying a first approach at implementing a minecart system and seeing the physics completely fail, I finally managed to put something together. Now on to actual gameplay…

Here's our elevator pitch!

You're in a cave mining for diamonds, when you suddenly have to escape a rockslide. Your only chance is a nearby coal-powered railcart: use it to escape, managing your fuel by making quick stops to mine for coal… other more valuable rocks.

With the theme now revealed, the 8th Alakajam! has started! Let's make games :)

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: February 23rd 7:00pm UTC, which means you have 48 hours (+1 hour for late entries to create their page).
• Unranked: February 24th 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!

This Friday, one hour before the jam launch, DanaePlays and @Aurel300 will host a livestream! Featuring jam host @Thrainsa as a guest, it's the closest thing we have to meeting in the flesh, and also:

• a chance for winning magnets and stickers (???),
• for watching the top 10 themes getting eliminated live,
• …and of course for getting 300% hyped before 48 hours of jamming!

See you on DanaePlay's Twitch channel :)

Greetings from France, where we'll be reforming the team from last jam! Our last time together was when we worked on Arkenstone (pictured on the right), and we're hoping to have a great week-end together again.

The team

• @BalBoom Game design
• @Thrainsa Code
• @Wan Art & audio

This is now the fourth jam for BalBoom, while Thrainsa and I have been guilty of numerous game jams entries on both Alakajam and Ludum Dare.

Our plans

The last jam left us with mixed feelings. On one side it was fun to make a good old "platformer-with-a-twist" for the first time in a while (we used to do those all the time for our first jams in the early 2010s). On the other hand, it proved trickier than expected this time to code the mechanics we had in mind and glue everything together into a finished game. That left little time to polish the look and feel of the game, and literally zero time for audio.

We're still discussing what kind of game we'd like to do, but the main goal is to get the scope as small as possible in terms of code - and assets ideally, to leave plenty of space for polish.

Techs we'll most certainly be using are Unity and the Reason music software, the rest will depend on the game.
Have a nice jam!

In March will be held the 6rd AKJ Tournament, where the community is invited once again to play & compete on existing jam games!

If you want to submit your own game to the event, follow this link :)

My original plan was to add music to a past jam game, but I have this little idea for a platformer that feels easy enough to explore. It will be pretty straightforward mechanics-wise, possibly quite hard, and as the gif suggests it will be synchronized to the music.

Good news is it took under two hours to get the basics in place with Unity. It's surprising that not many games I've seen explore that kind of stuff… The closest that comes to mind is the "140" indie game, otherwise I haven't seen it in jams that much.

The gif is only an early test so possibly not representative. I'm not 100% sure where this will end, but I have in mind some danceclub-like atmosphere with a heavy electro track on top, and difficult platforming where you find gaps between constantly moving shapes to try and stay alive. Let's see what I can get!

The 8th Kajam will start with the new year and will focus on Music!

It will be hosted by game developer and musician @Tijn (Twitter). His experience in music includes contributing songs (as Nerk) to the soundtrack of PC game My Summer Car, composing the occasional chiptune with the Adlib tracker and having a weird passion for exotic VST plugins.

Stay tuned for more details :)

The next edition of the Alakajam! event will start on February 21th.

As always, 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 be ranked against every other contestant! If you prefer a more relaxed setting, the unranked jam will still give you an opportunity to get plays and comments.

Schedule

Dates	Phase	Description
February 7, 7pm UTC	Theme submission and voting	You can submit theme ideas for the jam and vote for all other submissions.
February 14, 7pm UTC	Theme shortlist	Only the best 10 themes are kept. Rank them by order of preference in this final phase of theme voting.
February 21, 6pm UTC	Countdown stream	An official stream is held on Twitch bu @DanaePlays, @Aurel300 and guest @Thrainsa to launch the event!
February 21, 7pm UTC	THE JAM!!!	Start making a game solo or as a team, and simply submit it before the deadline!
February 23, 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.
February 24,10pm 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.
March 8, 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 ;)

Congratulations to the authors of finished (and unfinished) Challenge entries! It can take some courage to finally brand your game as commercial and put a price tag on it. We hope this event helped some of you jump this hurdle.

Feedback week

We now have one week reserved to gather some feedback on the submissions. Everyone is invited to comment on:

• The product itself (game quality) ;
• The store presentation / marketing / pricing aspects.

I'll be leaving submissions open during the next week for any late entry.

Challenge winners

Any entry that made money is considered a winner! Let me know when you win to be added to this list. You also earn the right to use this badge anywhere you see fit :)