🍸🧛‍♂️Who are we and why are we running a game jam?🧛‍♂️🍸

 

We are Unlucky Planet Games; a collective of mostly artists who love video games. We started our journey by creating So, This Vampire Walks into a Bar during a game jam and our second game Ink Escape:Coven Conundrum is near release.

❓🎉⁉️Theme⁉️🎉❓

To Be Announced!

The theme will be announced on the Game Jam page at midnight when the Jam goes live,  BUT it will be announced on the Discord server a full 12 HOURS EARLY!

✨🔮Rules🔮✨

• There are no limitations to team sizes. We HIGHLY recommend you keep your team small. The bigger your team is, the harder it will be to schedule around everyone. We suggest keeping it to 5 or fewer.
• You may submit your game in any form you want, however we highly recommend you submit your game as playable in a browser. We have seen other game jams out there and noticed that if it isn’t a browser game, it’s played a lot less.
• Ratings categories will be several main areas of game development, as well as how well the game matches the theme. They include:

  Gameplay 🕹️ Art/Graphics  🖥️  Story  ⌨️ Music/Sound  🎧 On Theme 🫧

• Rating is open to the public. We’ll be getting our friends to come play the games. You should get your friends to play them too!
• No AI. We would rather see stick figures than AI generated assets. 
• No NSFW. Keep the games PG-13/Teen rating at the highest.  Trigger warnings are always appreciated!
• You can use any asset you have the rights to use. Anything you have created, been given permission to use, bought through an asset pack that gives you the right to use it, found under a creative commons license is fine to use so long as you include attribution for it.
• Games must include credits, either in the game itself or on the game description page for all attributions and game creators that worked on your game.
• We are playing for pride, not prize. This is for fun, for a chance to be creatively reckless, and enjoy the process. 
• No games that are in another jam.  You may do what you wish with your creation after the completion of this jam, but no double dipping while this one is happening.

👾🎮 Discord  🎮👾

The best way to stay plugged in, motivated, and get real time updates is to join our discord server.  We will host a channel for Game Jammers where you can get tips and find teammates . 

We are creating a couple of assets that can be used on a non-commercial basis. Come check them out, talk about questions you might have in game design, art, coding, writing, show your progress, or do some bodydoubling with us.

Come join our discord to discuss the game jam and find team members.

🕸️🕷️ Resources!🕷️🕸️

Game Engines

There are lots of engine options available. Some are more user friendly than others. Some are free to use, require an upfront payment, or require payments only if you make money off of the game you make. Here are a few options you can pick from. Feel free to pick one of these, or use another engine you like better.

You can use the general engines, like Godot, Unity, or Unreal. For So, This Vampire Walks into a Bar , we used Unity with the Fungus plugin.  We wrote a post about our choice here. For Ink Escape: Coven Conundrum, we used Godot.

Art/Music

Itch.io is a great resource for game assets. You are welcome to use assets you’ve collected in the past and still have the rights to use. You can also look into the more than 40 thousand game asset packs that are available for free on itch (https://itch.io/game-assets/free) This includes both artwork and sound/music. Make sure to read over their attribution requirements. 

Some art/music is public domain, some art/music is under creative commons license, and some you have to create yourself. Art and music that is made more than 95 years ago in the US is considered public domain. You can check out the Smithsonian's website for art that they have made available for public access. https://www.si.edu/openaccess 

If you want to make your own art, and don’t already have an art program to do so, some free options include Krita, IbisPaint, Blender, Medibang, or libresprite. 

If you want to try your hand at making your own music, you can look into some free or free trial programs like GarageBand, Audacity, Reaper, or Fruity Loops.

Remember that when you download things, you do so at your own risk. Best practice is to make sure you are downloading from trusted sources and official websites.