Let the limitations begin!

The task: make a game by 10th of June, using one or more of these limitations. Pick as many or as few as you like - if you're feeling brave, you could even take one from each category. They're intended to be flexible, as we have a wonderfully mixed community creating games in lots of different ways.

Good luck, and let us know your limitations!

Demoscene

• Cramped: Executable is at most N bytes/pieces/whatever. Choose N appropriate for your platform/engine.
• Esoteric: Game works on $obscure_platform.
• Art attack: No assets; procgen only.

Graphics

• Geometron: Lines and shapes only: no images.
• Seeing double: Use exactly two sprites.
• Illustrator: Draw all your art by hand.

Audio

• Orator: Make audio only using your mouth.
• Bleep bloop: Music, generated by gameplay.
• In the field: All audio comes from a single field recording.

Wildcard

• Over-sensitive: Must use as many inputs (keys, buttons, devices, whatever) as possible.
• Vestige: The past must leave a trace.
• Window dressing: Game windows are part of the gameplay.

Note: if you need something more specific for the Demoscene limitations, I suggest looking at the Revision PC events.

Let the limitations begin!

The task: make a game by 10th of June, using one or more of these limitations. Pick as many or as few as you like - if you're feeling brave, you could even take one from each category. They're intended to be flexible, as we have a wonderfully mixed community creating games in lots of different ways.

Good luck, and let us know your limitations!

Demoscene

• Cramped: Executable is at most N bytes/pieces/whatever. Choose N appropriate for your platform/engine.
• Esoteric: Game works on $obscure_platform.
• Art attack: No assets; procgen only.

Graphics

• Geometron: Lines and shapes only: no images.
• Seeing double: Use exactly two sprites.
• Illustrator: Draw all your art by hand.

Audio

• Orator: Make audio only using your mouth.
• Bleep bloop: Music, generated by gameplay.
• In the field: All audio comes from a single field recording.

Wildcard

• Over-sensitive: Must use as many inputs (keys, buttons, devices, whatever) as possible.
• Vestige: The past must leave a trace.
• Window dressing: Game windows are part of the gameplay.

Note: if you need something more specific for the Demoscene limitations, I suggest looking at the Revision PC events.

The 15th Kajam is nearly here!

Get your spellbooks ready folks, because we'll be jamming again in May. The 15th Kajam will run from 3rd May, 20:00 UTC to 9th June. (That's this weekend!)

The theme will be: Limitations.

Back in the day, game creators had to work hard to squeeze the most performance out of their processors and limited hard disks, the best art out of their palettes, and the most fun out of their printers. This is rarely a problem for indies nowadays, but it can still be inspiring to work within limits.

On Friday at 20:00 UTC we'll announce a list of limitations - some like the above, but others, too. When you enter the jam, we want you to choose a set of limitations that inspire you, and then see what you can create over the month.

Rules

• The Kajam rules are very relaxed. The limitations in this jam will be flexible enough to accommodate different styles of gamedev (e.g. using an engine; creating a ZX Spectrum game; inventing a board game). You're also free to change your selected limitations mid-jam - they're here for fun and inspiration, after all.
• We do ask that you refrain from relying on "AI" to make parts of your game, though. We want to see what you can create, not what ChatRPG regurgitates! If you really really must use AI, make it clear you did, and how.

The 15th Kajam is nearly here!

Get your spellbooks ready folks, because we'll be jamming again in May. The 15th Kajam will run from 3rd May, 20:00 UTC to 9th June. (That's this weekend!)

The theme will be: Limitations.

Back in the day, game creators had to work hard to squeeze the most performance out of their processors and limited hard disks, the best art out of their palettes, and the most fun out of their printers. This is rarely a problem for indies nowadays, but it can still be inspiring to work within limits.

On Friday at 20:00 UTC we'll announce a list of limitations - some like the above, but others, too. When you enter the jam, we want you to choose a set of limitations that inspire you, and then see what you can create over the month.

Rules

• The Kajam rules are very relaxed. The limitations in this jam will be flexible enough to accommodate different styles of gamedev (e.g. using an engine; creating a ZX Spectrum game; inventing a board game). You're also free to change your selected limitations mid-jam - they're here for fun and inspiration, after all.
• We do ask that you refrain from relying on "AI" to make parts of your game, though. We want to see what you can create, not what ChatRPG regurgitates! If you really really must use AI, make it clear you did, and how.

The jam is up! Well done everybody. Give yourselves a pat on the back and take a break.

But who won?

Check out the results! Congratulations to the winners, and to everybody who participated. Game jams are hard, and you all did great.

What's up next?

In April, we have Feedback Fun Times 2024! An event where you can show off what you've been working on, and get some of that delicious, constructive feedback (as well as oodles of appreciation). Following that in May we have the 15th Kajam, a month-long event often for honing skills or working on taylored themes.

What's happening elsewhere?

You can follow the Jamician on Twitter or Mastodon to keep up-to-date with the goings on in the community, or join us on Discord.

Quite happy I finished, because I don't normally take part in 48h game jams (if you're curious to know why, see my entry).

Good luck to everyone still struggling with their games! <3

Sadly all adventures eventually end. But congratulations to the winners, and to everyone who participated. We were lucky to have such a diverse array of games, and I want to say thanks to everybody who submitted something.

Missed your chance to play a game? You can find them here.

Alrighty. What's next?

It's time for another Feedback Fortnight! It now starts tomorrow at 20:00 UTC. So take a quick breather then hurry back for some delicious feedback (and also games to play!).

In the end we got a nice handful of games, so let's show our appreciation and play them!

Well done to everyone involved—making an adventure game is no small feat—and to @AaronBacon in particular.

If you need more time

Entries are still open (this is a Kajam, after all), so if you've been working hard on something and want to show it, there's still a little time left. We only have until Friday to vote, though, so don't take too long! :)

So it turns out making an adventure game is hard.

Perhaps we were asking a lot, sandwiching an adventure game jam into such a small amount of time. So we've extended the entries period! Yep, that's right, there's a little bit more time to squeeze out some more adventures!

Let's also have a round of applause for @AaronBacon, who did manage to finish a game in the time limit!

The 10th Kajam is upon us, folks!

This time we're focusing on building an adventure game.

What does that mean?

A typical adventure game might include elements like:

• Puzzle solving
• Gathering items to use and combine later on
• A story involving the player
• Dialogue
• Multiple endings
• Either a point-and-click interface, a text-based parser (where you type in commands, rather than moving a mouse) - or both!

Your challenge is to make a game involving some of these elements, or any others you think are common to the genre.

Or just make something cool and show us! Whatever you do, the real goal is to have fun and be nice. 😎

When? October-November!

• Jam begins: 22nd October.
• Feedback and ratings: 8pm UTC, 15th November.
• Ratings close: 8pm UTC, 22nd November.

A brief history lesson…

When I was your age, we played these things called adventure games…

Beginning as far back as the 1970s (😱), these games originated as text-based experiences such as Colossal Cave Adventure. During the 1980s and '90s, the genre embraced graphics and brought us memorable classics such as Siera's King's Quest series and The Secret of Monkey Island. Influential 3D titles include Myst and Grim Fandango. More recently, the genre supposedly declined, but has also seen some real success with games like Telltale's The Walking Dead and Don't Escape, as well as the prolific output of Wadjet Eye.

Tools!

@Tijn very helpfully composed a list of tools that might be useful. If you have any others, suggest them below and I'll keep this list updated.

• Twine - probably the most well-known tool for creating interactive fiction
  https://twinery.org/

• Adventuron - web-based adventure game system, inspired by classic games, but easy to learn by beginners
  https://adventuron.io/

• Ink & Inky - language & editor by Inkle Studios, powering such games as 80 Days
  https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/

• Inklewriter - easy-to-use online tool to write basic interactive stories, also by Inkle Studio
  https://www.inklewriter.com/

• Adventure Game Studio - point & click adventure game creation system for Windows, used by many successful indie titles such as Gemini Rue, Heroine's Quest and the Blackwell series
  https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/

• GB Studio - a simple tool to make Game Boy games
  https://www.gbstudio.dev/

• SCUMM-8 - SCUMM-like engine demake, created in PICO-8. Great for creating tiny adventure games
  https://github.com/Liquidream/scumm-8

• SCI Companion - editor for creating SCI games, the engine used by Sierra
  http://scicompanion.com/

• Story Teller - a brand new text adventure engine for DOS
  https://thelobdegg.itch.io/story-teller

• Dolores - an experimental new engine by Ron Gilbert (creator of Monkey Island, but also the SCUMM-engine)
  https://github.com/grumpygamer/DeloresDev

• ohtge - An engine made by our very own @wan to make fake terminal games in the browser, with an easy BASIC-inspired API
  https://github.com/mkalam-alami/ohtge

Simple Game Interpreter - an adventure game interpreter built in Cython. Released for beta testing only recently
https://kyamix.itch.io/sgi