The theme will be announced on this page at or slightly before the official jam start time. You may start as soon as the theme is announced.

The theme is Ungrounded. What does that even mean? That is for you to decide. Be creative with it. And most importantly, have fun!

Rules during the jam:

• Anyone may enter
• You must spend at least 8 hours sleeping
• Teams are allowed, as large or small as you wish
• You may use any engine, tool, asset, code, and/or past creation you have the legal rights to
• Your game must be easily discernable from any past project (if you make a Tetris clone, it must have some unique mechanic that demonstrates some original creativity)
• You may target any platform
• You may interpret the theme creatively
• You may submit at any time
• You may make multiple submissions
• The last 30 minutes of the jam is for submissions only and development must be completed before then
• Have fun (or at least try to)

Rules for voting:

• You must vote on at least 5 submissions that you are capable of playtesting
• If there are less than 5 submissions you can playtest, vote on as many as you can
• Try to leave comments on every game you vote for so that the creator(s) know(s) a real human being played it
• There are no prizes for winning other than bragging rights against you family, friends, acquaintances, and/or us
• Criteria
  • Theme - Does the game match the theme?
  • Creativity - Does the game introduce a creative mechanic, story, or art style?
  • Technical Achievement - Is the game technically impressive? Does it make one wonder how it was made?
  • Polish - Does the game go the extra mile to feel clean? Does it have those extra details that make it shine?
  • Entertainment - Was the game entertaining to play?
  • Bonus Points - For the little things that matter!

Host Challenge (Optional):

We'll be making a game using Unity's bleeding-edge DOTS including its ECS implementation targeting desktop platforms. If you want to challenge us directly, do the same!

About the 48 + 8 Jam:

This jam is a spiritual successor to the jam we hosted as a student organization back in college and is actually our 9th annual game jam we have done together. This year we moved the end time up so that we have time at the end of the jam to review submissions as a group. The time is also more friendly to our friends in Europe.

Regardless of what is going on in the world, whether or not you consider game dev your life, your hobby, or something that only mildly interests you, sometimes you just need to set aside a weekend to do something crazy. That way, when you look back, there's a little bright highlight of an interesting crazy adventure to remember. That's why we require 8 hours of sleep, so you can actually remember it!

Wherever you are in life, we hope you can take advantage of this opportunity and have some fun!