Submissions open from 2025-10-11 16:00:01 to 2025-10-20 03:59:58
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Welcome to the Fall 2025 Collegiate Game Jam hosted by UNC Chapel Hill!

This is a game jam hosted by college students, for college students. It seeks to encourage new and upcoming game devs to get started on their quest to make great games! This jam is open to any students currently enrolled in collegiate education, worldwide, regardless of major, club affiliation or experience level.

The theme will be announced at the starting time!

           

The game jam will start on October 11th at 12 PM EST with the announcement of the theme. You will have 9 days to create a unique game from scratch! Submissions are due on Sunday, October 19th at 11:59 PM EST.

If you are a student at UNC-Chapel Hill, our jam kickoff event will be Oct 11th, 11AM at Hanes ART CENTER 215! Come form teams/meet other jammers! We will have the room reserved until 5 PM, so feel free to stay and get the ball rolling!

Extensions may be available if you have exams the week of the jam! If that is your biggest concern, we strongly encourage you participate anyway, and wait to hear about extensions (but of course, study for your exams). We chose this timing because we're all busy college students — this way even the busiest of us will still have two weekends to work, plus the extra days from the break.

Voting ends two weeks after the jam ends, on November 2nd at 11:59 PM EST. Please vote and play other games!

If your game is significantly broken or unplayable, we will allow you to upload a fixed version. Please DM or ping any of the club officers on Discord (link at the bottom of the page). 

                  

Most people participating in this game jam will be new to game development! This means it is not just okay to follow YouTube tutorials, it is encouraged! But one thing is important: the majority of the content of your game must be made by you and your team during the 9-day jam period. 

After the jam ends, play other submissions and rate them! Additionally, leave comments on each submission! We want to foster a positive, constructive community for this game jam.

You can either participate solo in the game jam, or with as many other students as you wish. We don't recommend teams larger than 3-4 people, but you do you.

AI Policy: For this jam, the use of AI-generated art and music is prohibited. The use of ChatGPT for coding assistance is permitted, but discouraged. If you are in need of art or music, we suggest this list of resources compiled by Mark Brown for the GMTK jam.

Please provide credit for any assets used in your game's description!

 

Games will be judged by the community based on the following categories:

  • Enjoyment 
  • Creativity 
  • Presentation 

Participants can rate any games! The public is required to rate three random entries first before they are allowed to rate specific games. The community vote is purely for fun and bragging rights and will not determine award winners.

Expect the results to come out no later than two weeks after the end of the jam. 

This year, we have $0 available for prizes. Sorry! However, it is possible that we will be able to get some merch! You may have mixed teams, but at least one person must be from UNC-CH to be eligible for an award or merch. Prize winners are selected by the officers of the club and NOT the community vote! This is to ensure each game gets a fair shot and that the prizes go to UNC students only. Officers are ineligible to win prizes, and no officer will vote on a game made by someone they know personally.

We will be selecting our favorite three games out of the submission pool. All three winning teams will receive placement awards. In addition, we have 4 additional:

  • Notable in Technicality
  • Notable in Visuals and Aesthetics
  • Notable in Music and Sound Design
  • Best First-timer Game

Note that there is a possibility for overlap (e.g. one of the three winning submissions may also receive a Notable in Technicality award). Award names may change if we find something better-sounding.

Additionally, one game will win the Luckiest Game Award - we will spin a roulette wheel at the award ceremony and the president will personally pay each member of the team one dollar and give them a nice certificate. 

There will be individualized certificates for every game submitted with a UNC student on the team, so MAKE THOSE GAMES!

Oh, and of course: anything that you make during the game jam is 100% your intellectual property to own.

The 2025 UNC Collegiate Game Jam is hosted by the UNC Game Development Club. 

Join our Discord here! https://discord.gg/bMHxVPk

Contact the president for any questions: Claire (@bbcc on Discord).