💊🤕visual novels about weird girlies🩸💊

Menhera (メンヘラ) is an abbreviation of “Mental Healther”, meaning “someone who does mental health”, and refers to a subculture centered around a certain style of vent art as well as fashion featuring it.

Hello, and thank you for your interest in the very first Menhera VN Jam! This is a jam for games about living and coming to terms (or not) with unseen burdens, whether they be mental, emotional, physical, psychological, or otherwise.

We will play through all the submissions and pick FIVE of our favorites which will receive a $250 paypal headpat. There will be no first place. There will just be 5 judge favorites. Due to payment reasons, all members of teams involved must be legal adults.

Please note that, in addition to the overall quality of the works—writing, art, music, etc.—one of the primary criteria in determining which entries will be granted an award is being on-topic.  In other words, while the individual elements of a work are important to their overall composition, a work with a conventionally "bad" component (e.g. very amateurish art) will not lose points on those grounds alone. Intention and sincerity are the most important parts of our judging criteria, so try and make something representative of your heart more than anything!

✍️❤️rules for stories:

1. We want gay shit!! The entries must focus on queer characters with mental health problems. Stories don't have to be about mental health.
   
2. We want to see stories about people navigating their life with mental health problems. This can involve people getting over their problems, dealing (or not dealing) with their problems, living life alongside the axis of their problems - whatever you wish! We are aware that stories can go to dark places, and that's ok. Your story can be happy or sad or whatever else. All we ask is that you tell a story that's meaningful to you, one that we hope will resonate with the reader.
3. Be mindful of harmful stereotypes regarding mental illness; There are no specific topics that are off-limits, however we may disqualify entries based on our own judgement. (E.g., a game that treats suicide or self-harm as cheap shock value instead of telling something interesting with it.)
4. While the stories themselves can have characters or interactions that are bigoted, we do not want entries that promote bigotry! BE NICE.

🖥️🤓technical rules:

1. Ren'Py is HIGHLY PREFERRED, however any engine/framework which can create visual novels that are playable for all win, linux and mac are permitted.
2. All members involved in a team have to be legal adults.
3. This is an unranked game jam, however we will be picking five of our favorite entries and reward each with $250.
4. Off-topic submissions will be disqualified, and thus should NOT be expected to win any prizes regardless of the caliber and quality of their content!
5. There will be no ETA for when the judging will be complete. It will depend on how many entries we get.
6. Any team size is permitted, the person who submits the game will be responsible for splitting the potential prize money.
7. Free submissions are preferred, but if you submit a paid game you must send copies to the 5 judges.
8. We accept entries with NSFW, heavy and uncomfortable themes, but they are meant to be tagged appropriately.
9. While development should take place within the jam time frame, the usage of pre-existing free to use, public domain, creative commons, etc. resources is allowed and encouraged.
10. The usage of generative AI for your submission is forbidden. If you personally don't think you're very good at a particular artistic endeavor (e.g., art, music, writing), we would still rather see your best and most sincere attempt than generated assets.
    

✨example games that we like. BECAUSE THEY'RE OURS.✨

• Up the Hill Down to the Nevermind by fawxplus 
• THERA by Kyou System 
• rehAIbilitation by ophanimkei 
• Saturn's Rising Temperature by starbage
• Hopeless Junction by nadia nova
  

we are the organizers and judges btw. hi.