This is where commonly asked questions will be answered.
The obviousness or lack thereof of the themes you used will be reflected in your score. You'll be required to state which themes you picked while submitting your game, so we'll be looking out for whether in not it fits. This kind of thing is subjective and each judge will have their own opinion on whether it fits the theme or not. So, I can't give you a concrete answer, but I can suggest you try to make the themes you pick noticeable.
Is the 'Writing' judgement criteria synonymous with storytelling, or is it a focus specifically on written elements (eg dialog)?
I ask be cause the protagonist of my entry is a baby, so the story is told with symbols, sound, images, and action. Outside of some very brief intro text and babyspeak item descriptions, there are no words.
I took some liberties in that she can wield a sword, don armor, and throw grenades, but speaking and comprehending language seemed like too big a stretch :)
Hi! For submitting our project, are we allowed to post it on our public itch.io account before submitting, or do we only submit and then can make it public once the Game Jam is complete?
I’ve never used itch.io before, so I’m assuming that if we submit the project to the game jam it’ll remain private, whereas uploading to my account would make it public. If I’m completely wrong in that, I’d love to hear it too haha.
Thanks in advance for any help!
My approach for a Jam with a long development time like this one is to make the game public before the submission deadline in the hopes that some of my few followers try it out and leave feedback/find bugs to help me make it better.
For example my submitted 1.0 release was missing a lasergate that blocked the player from completing their final objective before they defeat the final boss, meaning the boss would be awkwardly wandering around in the final cutscene. I'd reworked the map before deploying and simply forgot to bring the gate back in, and was so used to beating the boss before moving on I missed i in my playtest. Luckily Kazuki_T126 was kind enough to give it a go, and to take the time to let me know about the issue so I could fix it before the deadline.
I guess some devs may not want to 'show their cards' before the deadline, but in my experience it just makes my games better.
This is a good question though, I've always just assumed it was OK to make the game public and continue to improve it right up to the deadline; hopefully I'm not mistaken!
EDIT: solved my own problem clicking around - had to go back to the Jam page and go through my submission then Edit Submission. Leaving this thread up in case someone else has an oopsie.
I inadvertently submitted my Project with only one theme (oops!), should I leave and re-join, or how does one edit the submission?
I'm so bummed I missed the live playthroughs on Youtube today, had no idea it was happening.
Would it be possible to announce them here on a Community thread?
Or maybe there's somewhere else they're announced that I don't know about.
Not a big deal, fun to watch the recording, but more fun to watch live! :)