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Quick reflexion about rules

A topic by Bastinus Rex created Mar 23, 2021 Views: 436 Replies: 6
Viewing posts 1 to 4

Hello ! First, thank you for organizing this game jam !
I was very interested to participate at start, but why are the rules so strict? 
The one that shocked me the most is :
The goal is a finished and reasonably polished dungeon crawler; not a prototype, proof of concept or tech demo. "

For me, in all the jams I participated in past, the goal was to have fun and experiment prototyping .
It is a rare place where you can make mistakes to learn new things, without consequences. 

So I thought it's a bit sad to limit the participation to people who are really really confident with their skills !

That's all, it was just a quick reflexion and maybe there is a good reason that I don't know. Don't take it the wrong way, and have fun <3 !!

HostSubmitted

Yeah I could probably have phrased that a little bit different. What I mean is that there has to be a degree of playability in the submitted games. Not just a single empty labyrinth that leads nowhere. If you find this shocking then I'm sorry. That's not the intention. However, jams that you describe are a dime a dozen. When I created this jam I did it with a very specific set of restrictions for the purpose of challenging those with experience in playing games of this genre and also have game dev experience. For such a niche genre and strict restrictions I expected only a few participants to join and maybe a handful of entries. A precursor to this is that I myself made a dungeon crawler in 7 days (The Ogre King) and I wanted to see if others could do it too and what they would come up with.

Submitted

"I did it with a very specific set of restrictions for the purpose of challenging those with experience in playing games of this genre"

- I haven't really played in this genre at all, but I've seen some screenshots and read your rules... what can go wrong? xD. 

HostSubmitted(+1)

Haha :) Maybe that's an advantage? Then you won't be biased by all the previous games and their re-used mechanics :D

Thank you!
Don't worry there is no problem, and I understand your point of view of organizing a more "niche" jam,
and regarding to the people joining I think you're method is not bad at all!
Have a good day!

I was wondering about this rule : 

  • The game must be a new game project started and finished within the 7 day time frame, not just another week of work on an existing one.

But you also mentioned 

  • You can use any game engines, libraries, pre-existing code/algorithms, pre-existing art, etc.

Because the rules are already announced. I'm seeing a lot of people on the dedicated discord that showed their work and already have a decent game. How will you check those who really starts on time ?

HostSubmitted (3 edits)

I realize that this is a little bit confusing. There is really no way to verify if it's a completely fresh game. I am allowing re-use of existing libraries/code because to start from 100% scratch is for many a too difficult task. To more understand what I mean I should explain the motivation behind creating this jam. I want to grow the community. I want more people to discover this niche genre that I myself love so much, and I want developers to create new dungeon crawlers that the world haven't seen before. If someone will submit their life's work, a dungeon crawler game they've worked on for years and years, for this jam then I will not disqualify that. I will not encourage that either, hence the rules. However, if one or more games are tied after the voting then the judges assessment will be the decider and whether this is a fresh project or not is something we'll be looking at.

I apologize for the lack of clarity on this and I hope my explanation helps a little bit :)

PS: You mention that a lot of people showed their work and that they are already decent games. I haven't seen much of that. Perhaps one or two that are a little bit beyond tech-demo state. Keep in mind that on that server there are many gamedevs that are working on dungeon crawlers outside of this jam. :)