Welcome to the sixth official Bevy Jam! In this 9 day event, your goal is to make a game using Bevy, the free and open-source game engine built in Rust. 

Game jams are a great way to dive in to game development, even if you have never built a game (or used Bevy)! They are also a great way to meet like-minded people. Join the Bevy Discord to meet other people, discuss the jam, and form teams. Make sure you check out the "Bevy Jam" channels there!

The Bevy Jam is a competition with winners, but the goal is for everyone to have fun in a safe and collaborative space. This is about the journey, not the destination!

If you are new to Bevy, check out The Bevy Book and the various community-made learning resources in Bevy Assets.

⚪  Templates

We've provided a minimal template to help you get started! This is fully optional, but it should help you cut down on the boilerplate needed to make and host a web game, and get off to a solid start. Check it out at bevy_github_ci_template! For something more complete (and opinionated), browse the list of community-submitted templates.

⚪ Alpha Testing

This year, we have three experimental, community-made tools that are looking for feedback and that might make your quick-and-dirty jam-devving quicker and/or dirtier. If you'd like to live on the bleeding edge, try out:

- the bevy_cli's Alpha 1 release, for easy project creation, web builds and lints of all flavors
- bevy_simple_subsecond_system, for hotpatching of Rust code, allowing you to edit logic and values while your game is running
- bevy_seedling, a powerful audio API backed by the new firewheel crate. 

While handy, we don't expect these projects to be a fully polished experience yet. Please help them out by filing issues and passing on feedback to the project authors!

⚪  Theme

The theme will be determined in two stages:

1. Community members propose themes in the #jam-theme-voting channel of the Bevy Discord, which will open before Bevy Jam starts. One suggestion per person.
2. After a week, submissions will be closed and voting will open. Use emoji reacts to vote. Only "thumbs up" votes will be counted.
3. The day the jam starts, the theme will be randomly selected from the 5 highest voted suggestions. Organizers reserve the right to veto the random selection, but they will be transparent if this happens (and explain why the theme was vetoed).

Fate, as read by the cards, has selected Chain Reaction as this jam's theme!

⚪  Rules

1. Only submissions built with the Bevy Engine are allowed.
2. Submissions must be made during the duration of the jam, explicitly for Bevy Jam. No submitting old work!
3. You are allowed to reuse publicly available code, art and sound assets, provided your overall contribution is novel. Check out Bevy Assets for plugins, libraries, example games, tutorials, and more!
4. You must have the legal right to use any assets, and any premade assets that you use must be available for free (at the time of the jam). For example, AI image generation models trained on non-permissive sources would not be allowed.
5. Teaming up is allowed and encouraged! Reach out in the Bevy Discord if you are looking for a team.
6. Racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination are not allowed. If you have questions about this, ask us on Discord.
7. Submissions may be removed by the organizers for any reason. If you have questions about content, ask us on Discord.
8. Submissions must follow the theme. We will be lenient here, but submissions that clearly don't relate at all might be removed by the organizers. Be prepared to explain how your submission fits the theme!
9. Do your best to finalize your itch.io page before voting starts, but edits after that time are still permitted (we can't stop it, and listing workarounds or controls etc. can really help make the playtester experience better).

Additionally, we have some "soft rules". You are highly encouraged to follow them, but your submission won't be removed if you don't:

1. Submission code should be open source (ideally under the dual MIT / Apache-2.0 license for maximum compatibility with the ecosystem).
2. Submissions should be run-able on Windows, Mac, and Linux. This can be done by publishing native builds for each platform, by submitting a Wasm/Web build, or both.
   1. In the past, jam entries with a Web build have gotten many more players, so consider figuring that out at the start!
   2. Feel free to ask for help playtesting / verifying on other platforms in the #jam channel on Discord.
3. Credit all of the assets and libraries you used :)

⚪  Voting

Voting on submissions will begin as soon as the jam ends. Anyone with an itch account can vote. Submissions will be rated on the following criteria:

• Game Design: Were there interesting ideas here? Does everything feel like it fits together well? Was this a unique twist on the theme?
• Execution: How did this feel to play? If this is an action game, were the controls tight and responsive? Were the quality-of-life features you wanted in there? Was your experience marred by bugs?
• Graphics: Were the graphics breathtaking, cute, terrifying or otherwise delightful?
• Audio: How were the sound effects? Music?

The summed score of these criteria will be used to determine the winner.

⚪  Prizes

Winner(s) can pick any two items from either the old (currently closed) Bevy Merch store or the new (not-yet-opened and still being tested) Bevy Merch store. Teams must choose how to divide up the loot! A big thanks to the Bevy Foundation for funding the prizes! If you had a great time, consider donating :)