This year's theme for the jam is "Multiple Realities"

The theme is here to give you a direction and inspiration, you can implement it however you wish, whether in the game or controller.

This jam is about being creative with the controls of your game. Most developers are limiting themselves to the most standard and common controls: keyboard, mouse, gamepad. The aim of the jam is to try do experiment away from these standard boundaries.

So take out the duct tape, soldering iron, some spare parts, a development board (like the arduino), old controller shells you have laying around, and make the ultimate control for your game.
If you don't feel like you're too good with gluing things together, soldering etc, you can get creative with the things you already have.

These are just suggestions, you can build whatever you like! Experiment and have fun!

You can find some good alternative control examples here

Submissions will be open until 21 September, 23:59, so everyone has a chance to finish their game. If you cannot attend a real world gathering, you can participate online. Just submit your game(s) and controllers and a video explaining and demonstrating the controller within the deadline, and you're in. All times on the site are in GMT time zone.

You can stay in touch with fellow jammers on IRC:
chat.freenode.net #altctrlgamejam

Everyone's submission will be rated by other participants in the game jam.