The First Ever GameNite Game Jam!

RecBox Games is hosting our first game jam to get developers involved with our new console: The GameNite! Our console is best suited to supporting tabletop style games but you can stretch the bounds of that genre as much as you like or try something entirely unique. You will utilize a primary display (like a TV) as your “game board” and the mobile device of each player as their private display and control interface. We have supporting libraries for Unity and Godot as well as direct libraries for C, C++, and Rust. If you use a different engine or framework please let us know and we may be able to accommodate you.

THEME:      🎭🃏 Decoys and Deception 🃏🎭

Fill your submission with tricks, traps, and treachery. In this jam, not all is as it seems and the path to victory is paved with deceit. It's time to create a game where the players must hide, cheat, and bluff their way to the top. Whether that means designing your whole game around bluff mechanics or giving a simple nod to the theme with some shady graphics, how seriously you take this theme is totally up to you!

WHEN

It’s a 48 hour jam on the weekend of July 29th

The jam starts Friday July 28th at 6:00pm PST and ends July 30th at 6:00pm PST. (9:00pm-9:00pm EST)

WHERE

The jam will be held in our discord: https://discord.gg/JN6NrUcBhr

We will have a kickoff in our GameJam voice channel then teams and individuals will split off into smaller voice channels. Voice channel participation is not required.

We are trying to reserve a space at UCLA for LA  based developers that want to participate in person, but no promises.

RULES

Your game must be developed for the GameNite gaming console and must work on the console. Tools will be provided to build for the console and test natively. We suggest submitting early and getting confirmation that your game works.

Our console is low cost and will not support game resolutions greater than 1080p, high poly 3D graphics, glaring inefficiencies, or anything particularly computation heavy in general. The average game jam submission will run just fine, so this isn't something you have to worry about unless you're planning something particularly juicy or large-scale.

Your game must support 2 players. Judges come in pairs who will be playing your game together (or against each other). You may support more than 2 players and/or a single player mode but you will only be judged on the 2 player mode so focus on that.

No explicit or pornographic content. No excessive or realistic gore. Your game should be family friendly.

You may work with a team. You may use third party assets (as long as you have permission). You may use assets you’ve created previously. You may license your game however you like.

JUDGING AND PRIZES

1st Place: $250

2nd Place: $150

3rd Place: $100

Judging will be done by our GameNite alpha testers. Judges come in pairs and will test each entry (or a subset we determine if there are too many entries), ultimately deciding on a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. You will get 3 points if a pair of judges gives you first, 2 points for second, 1 point for third. In cases of a tie, all prize money allocated to those positions will be split equally e.g. a 3-way tie for second = ($150 + $100 + $0)/3 = $83.33 per person.

HOW TO DEVELOP FOR GAMENITE

Godot Walkthrough: https://clever-rain-b72.notion.site/Godot-GameNite-Development-Walkthrough-a4c9f...

Unity Walkthrough: https://clever-rain-b72.notion.site/Unity-GameNite-Development-Walkthrough-b84ff...

If you are a Godot developer, download the "GameNite Controlpads" plugin. If you're a Unity developer ask in the discord and we'll send you the necessary library and example code (we'll have a download for it somewhere soon).

Then you'll need to run our controlpads test server. This is a program that emulates parts of our console and allows your game to communicate with web browsers. You can get that here: https://github.com/RecBox-Games/controlpad_test_server

Right now your best bet for developing your custom controls for phone browser is by talking to us in the discord and we'll get you started. If you don't like talking to people you can start with: https://github.com/RecBox-Games/controller_boilerplate

DISCORD

Seriously, join the Discord: https://discord.gg/JN6NrUcBhr