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

Congratulations to everybody who participated! It looks like we have a lot of intriguing entries, so well done everybody :)

Even if you didn't manage to create a full game, you should be proud - this is a particularly technical challenge, after all.

This means there are games to play!

Even if you didn't enter, I suggest you take some time to play the games these excellent folk have made! As always, if you can, please provide them with some of that lovely, juicy feedback. A bit of encouragement wouldn't go amiss either :)

There's still time, sort of

If you haven't yet finished your game, don't panic! This is a casual jam, so entries will be left open for a few days yet. Do try to get it done soon, though: the longer you leave it, the less chance people have to play your game!

What's next then?

We have a bunch of exciting stuff coming up.

11th Alakajam! 26-28th February

The biggest event of 2021 so far: theme voting for the 11th Alakajam! will start in early February, with the actual jam taking place on the weekend 26-28 February. Don't miss it!

Alakajam hackathon, 1st & 8th February

An informal hackathon with @wan, @toasty and others will take place over at Github on the 1st and 8th of February, in the evening Central European Time. If you're interested in fixing bugs, polishing pages or just hacking on your favourite niche magical game jam site, ask in the Alakajam discord or on IRC.

That's right! From the 4th to the 31st of January, we're having another Kajam event. Your mission is to make a game that uses ray casting in some way, graphical or otherwise.

But what is ray casting?

In 3D graphics, ray tracing is a rendering method in which "virtual light rays are "cast" or "traced" on their path from the focal point of a camera through each pixel in the camera sensor to determine what is visible along the ray" (Wikipedia article). For a resolution of 320x240, that would be 76800 rays each frame! Ray casting is an optimised version of Ray tracing where only one ray is required for each column of pixels, which means only 320 rays each frame! This is the technique used in classic games like Wolfenstein 3D!

So I have to write an esoteric retro 3D renderer?

I encourage you to give it a go, but it's not required! There are plenty of other reasons why you might "cast rays" in a game. The same ideas are often used in physics simulations, AI, and sometimes seemingly simple operations, like checking if a player can jump. So please feel free to use your imagination! If it involves rays, we're happy :).

But what is a Kajam?

Kajam competitions are month-long events in which people make a small video game focusing on a specific aspect of game development. They're a perfect opportunity to learn, experiment and level-up your gamedev skills!

Detailed rules here.

Some relevant links:

• Retro FPS ray casting tutorial at lodev.org
• Ray-Casting Tutorial For Game Development And Other Purposes by F. Permadi
• A ray casting renderer in 265 lines of JavaScript
• Different uses of ray casting in Unity (interesting even for non-Unity devs)
• AI ray casting in general

I managed to release Minimum Damage today, and only a couple of days late! I'm actually really happy with the end result: pretty much everything is amateurish, crass and probably broken, but unlike my other games it looks intentional.

This is the first time I've created music for a jam game, but it's been a hugely positive experience. In particular I found it a real relief to work on the music, and get away from the screen (or at least, the IDE) for a while. I've found - like with graphics - that having some concrete assets, no matter how tacky, in place really motivates me in the soul-crushing twilight that is the end stage of game jams. It also took the game in more imaginative directions than I think it could have gone otherwise.

In addition to the music, I'm quite happy with the original idea. For one thing the graphics were simple enough that I could implement them very quickly, allowing time to think about more important things. The execution is imperfect, but maybe I can work that out at a later stage.

So thanks, @Tijn, for hosting this jam! I certainly learned something.

I may come to regret this, but I had an idea to create a sheet music bullet hell game. After an hour or so of hacking I got this far.

Most of the basics are there; it just needs some simple collision code and then I can get started on the squishy bits.

P.s. Yes I'm aware that isn't a minim >__<

The tournament is on, people! Let's get moving!

We've released half of the games so far. So focus on these for now, and we'll release the other ones soon!

So what are you waiting for? Get playing!

Time to warm up those digits for some button mashing, people, because there's a tournament coming up soon!

How it works

For two weeks, from 12th-27th July 2019, everyone is invited to play and post high scores on a selection of games which have been submitted to the site. Using screenshots as proof, players can compete in those games' leaderboards for points.

For each game, players are awarded a number of points for being in the top 10, as per the table below. The players with the highest total scores are shown on a global leaderboard throughout, and at the end we'll announce the winner and runners up.

Check out the previous leaderboard to see the current title holders! :)

We need your games!

You might be wondering, which games? Well, good question! If you've submitted a game on alakajam.com which has high scores and might be suitable, let us know—simply fill out this form. Before the tournament begins a small number of games will be picked. The more accessible the better (so cross-platform and web games are preferred), and we try to have a nice blend of genres. Remember, this is a great opportunity to have your games played!

Hey everybody. I was browsing through this list, and thought it might help to inspire some other poor soul.

Good luck in your games, everyone!

RIP Galois :'(