"Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children." 

-- William Makepeace Thackeray

This is a game jam for our mom. My mom. Your mom. Moms everywhere.

Our mothers play a huge role in our lives, and in our development as human beings. Their support and involvement (or the lack thereof) has been proven to have large impact on our personal and professional development. This game jam is devoted to all our mothers everywhere. Whether you knew her your whole life and love her; or you knew her your whole life and hate her; or you never knew her, this jam is a chance to show our mothers what we have become, and to tell them what we think & feel, as expressed in our creations.

Theme: Mothers! Your game must relate to mothers in some way.

Jam entries will be judged on 3 criteria: Originality, Emotional content, and Engaging Gameplay.

While this jam is generally dedicated to all mothers everywhere, it was inspired by (and largely dedicated to) one mother in particular. Maria Munoz is the mother of Paolo (@GameDiviner); one of our own independent game development community members.

Maria was diagnosed with "mitral valve prolapse" of the left ventricle/left atrium around the end of May 2014. "Mitral valve prolapse" is a situation where a heart valve cannot close all the way causing blood to backflow. It weakens the heart and makes it vulnerable to infection. 

Some people can live with this condition for years, but for Maria it has severely degenerated. The average ejection ratio for the heart is around 55-70%. Maria's is at 30%. Below 40% puts her at the "heart failure" category.  

Maria is a fighter; she beat lung cancer about 25 years ago. But they had to remove the entirety of her left lung. Over the years, this shifted the position of the heart down and away from its original position. Maria just got a CT scan showing that this makes it extremely difficult (if not impossible) to operate on the valve that needs to be replaced. This means that now she must seek alternative and experimental procedures, and even with these procedures, there is a very real risk that she may not survive the procedure. And to make matters worse, Maria had a heart attack around 6 months ago and is now having difficulty breathing.

Maria, if she goes untreated or her treatments are unsuccessful, has a very limited amount of time left. This has left those around her devastated, and it inspired me to create this game jam.

We all get a limited amount of time on this earth. Nobody really knows where we go when we leave here, but the time we are here, we know it is fleeting. We game developers have been gifted with a unique set of skills and passion as artists, as engineers, as designers and composers. We are in the business of creating memories, of engineering experiences. Don't let time run out without using those gifts to express yourself to the people who made you what you are, and who matter to you the most.

My mother is a poem I’ll never be able to write,
though everything I write is a poem to my mother.
~Sharon Doubiago