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!

Using unity and scratch coding, I will be making a Industrial Zone game

We will be having a meeting to discuss next year's plans, to determine if we have enough manpower to provide additional events, and everything else we need to talk about! The meeting time has been official set to Wednesday, October 4, 2023 at 21:00UTC! It will take place on the Alakajam official Discord channel which, you aren't yet a part of, you can join here. https://discord.gg/yZPBpTn

See you there! (Or maybe we will just hear you there, there will be no cameras…)

We all love to meet, so let's have a meeting! This meeting will discuss events and plans for 2024. If you want to help with AKJ, or if you don't want to help but you want us to know what kind of events you would like to see, or if you just want to hang out with the cool kids, you should attend! We are looking for volunteers to give us new energy and ideas, so if you have lots of energy and ideas please attend! Everyone is welcome!

The day and time will be set according to the poll linked here. I tried to include all sorts of strange times so as to accomodate you if you are in the Americans, Europe, or East Asia. The bulk of Alakajammers are in Europe, so if you are not, let us know what kinds of times work for you. Further, this website does not seem to translate the time zone for you, so you will have to figure that out on your own.

https://framadate.org/EYZsmVma3mNjS9Kr

On the day that the Feedback Fortnight ends, I will look at the poll and determine when the most popular time and date is. I hope that you can find some time that fits your particular time zone!

I hope to see (I mean hear) every one at the meeting!

Welcome to the 2023 edition of Feedback Fortnight! If you aren't familar with FF, take your project that you've been working on, that is ready to show to people, that you want to show to people, and show us! Then, go play the games and projects that other people have posted, and let us know what you think! Look for bugs, look for what is fun, what is not fun, what you like, what you don't like, try them all out, and give us your feedback!

As always, remember there is a person who is showing thier artwork and may be shy, so be nice. Try to give constructive feedback, so don't say "this sux!", say something like "the artwork doesn't make sense to me and the game play wasn't fun, perhaps you could change these things?"

Since we are so excited, we are opening the website so you can post your projects now! We will keep FF2023 open at least until September 24th, so that should be enough time for you to play all the games and contemplate all the thoughts.

We will have another announcement tomorrow regarding something different! Alakajam needs help… maybe you can help?

I'd been wanting to do some multiplayer game dev, so this theme is perfect! I'm making a web game where you can control a blob and shoot at other blobs. Still rather unfinished, but playable here. I think the networking… kinda works?

🐮 🐮 🌿
Networked multiplayer racing!

The 13th Kajam coincides nicely with the Dos Games June 2023 Jam, so maybe I'll make a DOS based entry. This might make any kind of networked realtime multiplayer quite complicated to implement, unless the game is hosted on a BBS or something. Maybe I'll create a 'play by mail' game where each player takes their turn and then emails the save to the next? Interested to hear what everyone else's ideas and plans are

I will try and put up a post mortem at some point. Maybe I'll even get a finished game out.

For now I'll try to play and rate as many games as I can.