🌍 What is Code for a Cause?

Code for a Cause is a game jam where your creativity can make a real-world impact! This is not just another jam—it's an opportunity to win cash and prizes while supporting a charity.

How does it work?

• The total prize pool is split up, spread to the podium and any special tracks.
• 50% of each prize is then donated to a charity of the winners' choice ❤️

Here's the exciting part: The prize pool grows as we receive more donations and sponsorships! That means the more people support the jam, the bigger the rewards for both participants and charity.

Join the Discord to participate with the community! (also a requirement to be eligible to win)

The THEME is: KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

💰 Prizes

Our current prize pool is a total of $1680 USD:

🏅 1st Place:

$420 ($210 to winner, $210 to a charity of your choice)

1x  Diamond Prize Pack (scroll down for more info)

1x GameMaker Commercial License (one per team member, max. 4)

🥈 2nd Place:

$220 ($110 to winner, $110 to charity)

1x  Diamond Prize Pack (scroll down for more info)

🥉 3rd Place: 

$120 ($60 to winner, $60 to charity) 

1x  Diamond Prize Pack (scroll down for more info)

🏅 4th Place:

$60 ($30 to winner, $30 to charity)

1x  Platinum Prize Pack (scroll down for more info)

🏅 5th Place:

$40 ($20 to winner, $20 to charity)

1x  Platinum Prize Pack (scroll down for more info)

👥 Best Playroom Multiplayer Game - $100 ($50 to winner, $50 to charity) This prize goes to the best dev that pushed their skills to the limit, making an online multiplayer game using our sponsor Playroom! Playroom is a scalable approach to multiplayer games, requiring no backend setup, making the entire process much easier and approachable! Hop into our Discord for some help channels and resources!

🎮 Best MiniScript entries: These prizes go to the best games made with our sponsor MiniScript! MiniScript is a simple-to-learn coding language perfect for making a game jam game! Check out their website for more information, or our Discord channels with people ready to help!

1st Place - $60 ($30 to winner, $30 to charity)

2nd Place - $40 ($20 to winner, $20 to charity)

👾 Best Pixel Art Game: This prize goes to the best game that uses pixel art! No matter how big or small the resolution is, if you used pixel you're eligible!

$100 ($50 to winner, $50 to charity)

1x GameMaker Commercial License (one per team member, max. 4)

🗳️ Community Winner: The overall winner of the community vote! Winning the community vote does not automatically mean you win the judge's pick, but prizes can stack! 🎉

$100 ($50 to winner, $50 to charity)

1x  Gold Prize Pack (scroll down for more info)

🎭 Best Theme Usage: This prize goes to the game with the coolest or most innovative use of the announced theme!

$100 ($50 to winner, $50 to charity)

1x  Gold Prize Pack (scroll down for more info)

🤪 Silliest/Funniest Game - $130 ($65 to winner, $65 to charity) This prize goes to the silliest/funniest game in the jam! Make us laugh, we all know the world needs more of that!

🦾 Most Interesting Mechanic - $90 ($45 to winner, $45 to charity) This prize goes towards the game with the most thought-out and fascinating mechanic! Maybe this is a game where you remove a crucial control, or maybe a never before seen movement controller, totally up to you!

🎨 Most Appealing Art - $50 ($25 to winner, $25 to charity) This prize (funded by Juniper) goes to the game with the most interesting artstyle! 

💨 Best Speedrunning Game - $50  ($25 to winner, $25 to charity) This prize goes to the best game for speedrunning! This basically means your game is a lot of fun to try and complete as fast as possible, and has basic speedrunner support (timers and so on)

🔹 As we secure more sponsors and donations, these prizes will increase and we can introduce new tracks for more opportunities to win! 🔹

Want to help grow the prize pool? Donate or share the jam with potential sponsors!

🏆 Prize Packs

💎Diamond Prize Pack:

1x Aseprite key (worth $20)

1x picoCAD key (worth $5)

1x LIFETIME Coddy.tech access (worth $150)

1x Low Poly Swords and Shield Asset pack (worth $10)

1x Cute Fantasy UI Asset pack (worth $5)

1x Cozy RPG Tileset Asset pack (worth $4)

1x Magical UI Asset pack (worth $10)

1x Pixel Art Character Template Asset pack (worth $1, super underpriced for the value it brings!)

1x Oh no, more goblins! Art Asset pack (worth $5)

1x Mega Pack: Top Down Monsters pack (worth $10)

1x Low Poly Office Art pack (worth $5)

⚔️ Platinum Prize Pack:

1x Aseprite key (worth $20)

1x picoCAD key (worth $5)

1x Year Coddy.tech access (worth $150)

1x Low Poly Swords and Shield Asset pack (worth $10)

1x Cozy RPG Tileset Asset pack (worth $4)

1x Pixel Art Character Template Asset pack (worth $1, super underpriced for the value it brings!)

1x Low Poly Office Art pack (worth $5)

⭐ Gold Prize Pack:

1x Mega Pack: Top Down Monsters pack (worth $10)

1x Low Poly Office Art pack (worth $5)

💡 Judges

Were actively working on growing our judges panel! Here are some notable features on the panel so far: 

      

Sifd is an indie game YouTuber with over 130,000 subscribers! He makes videos on a variety of indie games and has played tons of amazing indie games in his time, so no pressure!

Rye is a game development YouTuber with almost 150,000 subscribers! He makes super funny videos on his game development journey!

Hedge is an amazing streamer over on Twitch with over 1000 followers! She has very chill and relaxing streams working on different development projects, please do check her out!

Juniper is a game development YouTuber with over 40,000 subscribers making extremely interesting videos both on her own games and on the indie game space itself, do go support!

TheChief has been making games for over a decade, helping host the Bullet Hell Jam and tons of others, including the latest GMTK jam! He's also taken part in over 100 jams, so he knows what he's talking about!

Tommy has been running the past few Micro Jams, a bi-weekly jam with cash prizes of up to 110$! He's got tons of experience judging games, again, no pressure!

Legendile has been making games for over five years and runs his own indie studio, Overshock Games! He's also an admin of the Indie Dev Feedback Discord, supporting over 600 game developers and hosting 5 game jams. 

Olexa is an indie game YouTuber with over 200,000 subscribers! He plays variety indie games on his Olexa Looks series, looking for hidden gems and giving tons of devs loads of attention on their games! He will also be livestreaming the top 10 games after the rating period!

🕹️ How It Works

1. Develop a game based on the announced theme.

2. Work solo or in teams – it's up to you! 

3. Submit your game before the deadline. 

4. Judging Criteria – Winners are selected based on creativity, gameplay, visuals, sound/music and theme interpretation.

📍 Who Can Join?

🌍 Anyone, anywhere! Whether you're a solo developer or part of a team, you're welcome to participate. The jam is completely online, so anyone around the world can join in!

🚀 Why Join?

✅ Win cash prizes! More sponsors = bigger prizes! 

✅ Help raise money for a great cause. 

✅ Connect with fellow devs and grow your network. 

Rules

1. No AI-generated content (code, art, cover art, music, etc)

2. No NSFW content, including excessive gore and sexual content

3. Team sizes of max. 6 members!

📢 Help Spread the Word!

The bigger this jam gets, the bigger the prize pool and the greater the impact we can make together. Share this jam with your dev friends, communities, and potential sponsors!

Our Sponsors:

          

Let’s make games for good! 🎮