Hosting a game jam is a great way to get together game developers for an event or cause to do what they do best: make games. itch.io’s jam system allows anyone to create a game jam instantly, no longer does the need for custom software to get in the way of your game jam idea! All that’s required is a free itch.io account.
"Game jam" is a pretty broad classification when it comes to trying to define how things are run. The spectrum ranges from ranked submissions and very specific deadlines, to no deadlines and no ranking. Some jams are held only on the internet while others are associated with a physical gathering. itch.io hopes to accommodate all of the kinds of jams imaginable. What is available today is only the start and the functionality will continually be expanded upon. If you would like to do something custom then don’t hesitate to get in touch.
To give you an idea of what game jams can look like on itch.io here are some examples:
All jams have a wide range of tools to customize how they look and how they're run.
itch.io’s basic jam system is closely modeled after Ludum Dare, a popular 48/72 hour game jam. Jams have a starting and ending date. Games can be submitted to the jam any time between these two dates.
If the jam has voting enabled, after the submission deadline passes the rating period commences up until the voting end date. Otherwise, the jam is over after the submission deadline
For ranked jams, after the voting end date passes, the results are calculated and everyone can see the how the games have been ranked.
In a ranked jam you can control who has permission to vote:
Public voting is generally a bad idea unless you have some way to restrict how people can vote (See Rating queue). On itch.io anyone can create a new account at any time. It is very easy for someone to cheat by creating new accounts to upvote their project and downvote others'. Although this is against the itch.io Terms of Service, and we have some automated systems in place to detect suspicious behavior, no system is perfect.
If are concerned about the integrity of your ranking (for example, you have a prize or reward), then you should be extremely cautious about using public voting.
Even if you think your community is friendly and wouldn’t cheat, you will almost always get cheaters. We highly recommend using the Rating Queue to help prevent cheaters. Even then, there may still be suspicious voting activity. If you need us to review votes on a jam you can contact support.
One last thing to consider with Public voting: even if you don’t have cheaters, it favors creators that have a large social presence. It essentially will boil down a popularity contest. Whoever can tell the most of their friends to upvote their project will win.
Therefore, Don’t use public voting unless you know what you are doing.
On itch.io, a single project can have any number of contributors added to the project. If are concerned about the integrity of your ranking (for example, you have a prize) then you should be careful about participants that may try to exploit this. Essentially a single submission with many contributors will have more “voting power” when using the Submitters & Contributors option. A single entry will have multiple people able to vote on other projects to influence their ranking in their favor.
It’s also possible for someone to cheat by creating a bunch of fake accounts as contributors so they can get more votes. Although this is against the itch.io Terms of Service, and we have some automated systems in place to detect suspicious behavior, no system is perfect.
If you need us to review votes on a jam for suspicious activity you can contact support.
The rating queue is a unique mode you can enable on ranked jams to assist submissions in reaching a minimum number of votes fairly. It operates by requiring a group of voters that you select to vote from a random assortment of entries (default is 5, but you can adjust this number).
This can help with many issues:
You can also provide an Rating queue unlock size to allow voters to freely rate any entry after they have rated a specific minimum number of entries. By default the queue is always in effect, but you can set this number from 1 to 100.
You can control who is required to vote through the rating queue.
Note that although the rating queue restricts what projects can be rated by an account, it does not prevent them from leaving comments or downloading submissions in any way.
To prevent participants from getting stuck with a list of games in their queue that they can’t rate, the rating queue comes with two tools for all voters:
Note: If there are a small number of submissions in the jam, then shuffling and preferred platform may have a limited effect on the set of available projects to rate. For smaller jams, we recommend hosts consider if the rating queue is a suitable solution for their jam.
When creating a jam you have the option to pick the criteria that entries are rated on. You can add as many as you like and they can be whatever you want. If you've got a theme feel free to pick criteria that represent the different components of the theme. Each criteria is rated on with a 5 star system.
You can pick create and edit criteria from the Edit jam page:
After a jam’s rating period is over, all the entries in the jam are ranked by the average scores in each criteria. If there are multiple criteria then an Overall rank is also calculated from the average of all the criteria results.
Once rating period has started, it’s not possible to edit your criteria. Please double check them before publishing your jam!
By default, entries are ranked by the average score of all the criteria. If you'd like to have one of your custom voting criteria determine the overall ranking then you can select it as the Primary option from the criteria editor.
When you provide a primary critiera an automatic Overall ranking will not be generated when there are multiple criteria.
If there is only one criteria, then it’s primary by default and it’s not necessary to mark it.
A criteria can be configured to be “manually ranked,” allowing jam hosts to explicitly set the rank of submissions without any voting taking place. The results of manual ranking will appear on the results page of the jam after the voting period has ended.
Criteria typically cannot be changed after the jam has started, so ensure you add the criteria ahead of time so that you have a place to provide the results when you have them.
Jam hosts can set the ranking results even after the voting period has ended, and the results will appear when they are made available.
It’s not necessary to rank every entry, and entries can share the same rank if there was a tie.
To set the manual ranking for your jam, navigate to the jam’s edit page and use the “Set results…” link. This will take you to a page where you can manually input the rank and URL of the games you'd like to appear in the results.
To provide the results for each entry to be ranked, add a new line with the following format:
RANK_POSITION GAME_URL
The RANK_POSITION should start at 1, and multiple submissions can share the
same rank. The GAME_URL should be the full itch.io URL, not just the
submission page. Once you've entered the rankings, save your changes to update
the results.
Jam hosts can elect judges from their jam from their jam’s edit page. Judges are given special permission to rate any submission (normally, only people who submit to jams are allowed to vote). You can further restrict your jam to only allow judges to vote with using the Who can vote on entries? option on the jam’s edit page.
When judges comment on entries or posts in the jam’s community they are given a Judge badge so participants can identify them.
Jam hosts have all the same permissions of judges, but they get a Host badge instead.
Judges have a special method of giving feedback outside of the regular comments system provided on jam submission pages. The use of the feedback system is optional, and you should consult with your judges to see if it’s something that makes sense for your jam.
During the rating period, a feedback form will appear for judges on the submission page:
Judge feedback is only available for ranked jams.
You can provide custom fields to collect additional information with each submission. For example, if source code is a requirement for submission, you can create a Source Code field. Another example could be a checkbox to disclose whether the user used external assets in their submission.
The responses to the custom fields are visible to all on the jam’s submission page of the game.
Each custom field can have the following properties:
For any fields that may be considered personally identifiable information, like contact information, please use the “Private” option to ensure that the responses are only visible to jam hosts and not to other participants or the public.
Custom field types allow you to structure and constrain the data collected by your participants. Below are the available field types and their descriptions:
For choice types like Multiple choice (checkboxes) and Single choice
(radio buttons), you need to define the available choices using a special
syntax. Use CSV format, where each row is structured as id,name,description.
This allows you to specify unique identifiers and display names, and
optionally, descriptions for each choice.
Here’s an example of how you might provide options for choice field in the Field Settings input:
1,Option A,This is the first option
2,Option B,This is the second option
3,Option C,This is the third option
Having a unique ID is important to ensure that if you rename the label of a field, collected results aren’t lost.
Using the “Required” option on a single-choice field (radio buttons) will force the user to select ALL of the available options. You can use this to ensure the submitter confirms a set of options, such as acknowledging they have read the rules or that their submission complies with certain guidelines.
If you select Non-ranked on your jam’s edit page, no voting will take place, and the jam will be considered ended after the submission deadline has passed. This option is ideal for jams focused on collaboration, learning, or showcasing creativity without the competitive aspect. Criteria are disabled, but you can still use all other jam features, like custom fields and communities.
If you're running a private event you can make your jam unlisted: it’s only available to those who have the URL. Additionally, as a jam owner you have the power to moderate submissions. If something isn’t right you can remove it from the jam.
Additionally you can elect new jam admins to share edit & moderation access.
Unlisted jams will not be eligible to appear in the itch.io jam calendar, itch.io search results, or jam browsing pages. However, since the URL is public, the jam may still be able to appear in third-party search engines.
Many jams are team efforts, and so we have a contributors system to allow you to give other itch.io accounts access to your jam. Every contributor has few different options:
Additionally, on a jam’s community page, you can elect moderators if you need help managing your community.
Jam owners can can optionally enable a community: a message board where anyone with an itch.io account is free to discuss anything about the jam. All communities on itch.io come with a robust set of features to make management and moderation simple. Read more about itch.io jam communities.
Jam submissions automatically get comment threads on their submission page its own comment thread right on the submission page.
For ranked jams, jam hosts can use the Lock uploads option to prevent participants from adding or changing the files on their page during the rating period.
The lock is only active during the rating period, after the jam has ended submission owners are fee to release their post jam builds. Additionally, if the submission period is still active, files can still be changed. Submitting early will still let you publish updates right up until the deadline.
Participants are free to update their submission page design and content while their files are locked.
By default, a ranked jam will calculate and publish the results as soon as the rating period is over. Sometimes, you may want more control over when the jams results are published. The Hide results option will cause the results to be hidden from everyone except the jam hosts while enabled. The results will still be calculated though, so as a host you can preview the results.
You can use this time to prepare any announcements or do any moderation. When you're ready to publish the results, uncheck this option and save the jam.
Normally, during a jam’s submission period, entries are displayed on the jam page immediately after submission. This may give an unfair distribution of attention to submissions that come earlier than others.
The Hide submissions before end hides the submissions list from the jam’s page until the submission period is over. This ensures that every entry will have the same visibility.
Jam submissions are still accessible by their direct URL, or via the project’s page on itch.io.
Some developers try to abuse this by submitting an unrelated game to the jam at the start of the submission period to capitalize on any traffic the jam’s page may be receiving.
Note: Some nefarious developers may try to abuse the submission process to try to capitalize on a jam’s traffic by submitting their unrelated project early on to get it listed on the jam’s page before there are any legitimate entries. This is against our rules, but the Hide submissions before end will prevent this abuse. If you do spot someone trying to abuse the jam submissions process, please report their page. Our moderation team will handle their account.
When the jam enters the submission period people who want to enter the jam can navigate to the jam’s page to find a submit button. This brings up a game submission dialog where you can choose from games you've created on itch.io to submit. If you haven’t uploaded your game yet you'll be guided through the process.
Because jam submissions are itch.io project pages, you get all the features that itch.io provides. Your files and screenshots are hosted, and you can design a custom game page. A nice side effect of submitting to a jam on itch.io is that you automatically now have a nice page containing your game ready to be shared and distributed.
Did you, or someone in a jam you host, miss the deadline? No big deal, jam hosts can generate late-submit links from the jam’s edit page.
In order to submit late, the entry must have a completed project page on itch.io uploaded and published. Afterwards, the link to the project can be sent to the jam host and they can paste it into the late-submit link generator. The late-submit link can be sent back to the game’s creator and they can use it to fill in any information and complete their submission.
Jam hosts can find the late-submit link generator on the Edit submissions tab of the jam editor.
For ranked jams, after the submission period the rating period starts. Anyone who has permission to vote can now vote on games from their submission pages.
If you have any feedback about the submission you can leave a comment on the submission’s page.
From the Submissions tab on a jam’s main page you'll be able to find all the of entries that have been submitted to the jam already. You can filter the entries by the platforms they support, and by any public submission fields.
Some jams may have submissions hidden until the jam’s submission period is over. In this case, only the hosts of the jam can view the submissions during that time period.
For jams with voting, any entries that you have voted on will be sorted to the bottom of the list of entries by default, but you can use the filters to quickly bring up those entries.
During the voting period for ranked jams, entries will be sorted randomly by default, but you can select from additional sort options on the sidebar if you're looking for something in particular.
After the rating period is over the results of the jams are instantly calculated and available. A results page is made available where you can browse how well games have done by the average of all the criteria and even by individual criteria. You can also see the results for an individual game on the game’s submission page.
Each entry to a jam gets a dedicated submission page for that particular jam. This page is separate from the project’s main itch.io page. The jam’s submission page will provide a quick summary of the project, with quick links to play or download, along with any jam-specific fields. This is also the page where viewers can place their votes, and the results are published when the jam is over.
Lastly, the submissions page has a comments thread where people are free to leave feedback about the submission for that jam. These comments do not appear on the project’s main page, only on the page for the particular entry. If you leave a comment on a submission, and have also submitted to the jam, a link to your submission will automatically be included beneath your comment so people can easily discover your project.
Individual submission votes are never published. The score you give a project will remain private.
The submission page can be accessed by a link on the top right of the project’s page, or by clicking the project from the jam’s entries page.
Everyone who joins your jam is put on the jam’s mailing list. You can use this to email everyone who’s participating. This is great if you have a reminder message, updated rules, or maybe a theme announcement. Additionally, after the jam is over, you could use the list to email the participants about future jams or any other information about the completed jam.
When drafting a jam you can pick the recipients from the following groups:
People who have left your jam, or are unsubscribed from emails from itch.io will not receive your message.
itch.io will send out an automated reminder email to all participants when a jam starts reminding them that it’s time to submit. It’s not necessary for you to send an email when the jam starts unless you need to announce additional information, like a theme.
We love seeing successful jams. We promote jams we think are interesting on our homepage, social media accounts, and through email. If you want to be eligible for promotion please make sure to fill out all the appropriate fields: description, summary, cover image, etc. We watch for new jams every day so we'll spot your jam once it’s published.
If you're hosting a bigger event, or something you think we should know about, please get in touch. We can help facilitate your jam, and make sure you have the support you need to run it effectively.
Now that you've seen what itch.io offers for creating game jams you can begin creating your own: