Welcome, Blind and Sighted Game Developers!

Welcome to the fifth annual Games for Blind Gamers jam!

The goal of this jam is to make games for blind players and build awareness of blind gaming and accessibility in general. We welcome developers of all types and experiences (beginners and veterans, sighted and blind, etc.) and encourage them to learn about blind gamers and accessibility to create interesting and creative games!

See our past editions for inspiration: 1st (2021), 2nd (2023), 3rd (2024). 4th (2025).

See our next event: Making Games Accessible (July 2026).

Want to learn more with our community? 

Check out our wiki at Games for Blind Gamers Wiki and our Discord community! There you'll find links to our past games, resources to get started and helpful mutual support!

Announcement: This year's winners were...

Community choice: Impulse Response: a thrilling, and impressively written and voiced acted story. Stands out for the sound design, writing and ambience.

Judge's Choice: Valencia Tales: a Zelda-inspired game with an innovative navigation mechanic that "makes navigation a breeze" for sighted and blind players. We all hope to see more 3D first-person games adopt this feature.

See more games in the Results.

2025's optional theme is...

"Confidently Wrong"!

Somehow, a small joke in the community grew to become an official jam theme. Use it for inspiration if you need some!

Jam Details

What: A month-long chilled jam where you create a game that blind players can play, too.

Why: Blind gamers have their own set of challenges when gaming. We hope to build awareness and create interesting, creative games that they can enjoy too!

How: Create a game (solo or in teams). Then, public voting will determine the Community Winner (anyone with an account on Itch can vote) and a panel of judges will vote on the Judges' Choice!

Rules

The rules are:

1. Blind-accessible: Make your game accessible for blind players. And remember to test it with target demographics!
2. Create it during the jam: Don't work on the game before the jam starts. However, researching beforehand is still encouraged!
3. Teams of any size: You can work alone or in teams (no size limit).
4. Builds: You must publish, at minimum, Web or Windows builds.
5. Deadline: Games must be published before the jam deadline. However, you may update it during the rating period to fix bugs or any issues. 
6. NoGen AI:To nurture our supportive community and respect the skill and talent of our participants, please avoid using generative AI for creation of assets, including source code. If you need, you may use it to manage accessibility-related barriers (e.g. modifying an inaccessible game engine).
7. Be creative! Any game can be made accessible with proper planning and work. Don't feel limited to a certain genre or graphics. 
   

If there are issues with any of the rules due to accessibility, please reach out on discord and we are happy to assist. 

Prizes

Top Judge and community voted games get $100!

Top entrants will get a copy of "Taking Video Out of the Game A Game Developer's Guide to Total Blind Accessibility" By Brandon Cole until we run out!

Over 100 game keys to blind accessible games where each team can pick keys based on order of placement!

Rating details

This is a chill, friendly jam, but we like to give recognition the community's favorite choices. We do so by announcing two winners: The Community Voting winners, and the Judge's Committee Choice.

Community Voting

The community (all participants) can vote for every submission and rate them for:

1. Polish - How well did they execute what they set out to do? Is the UI intuitive, is the game stable, does it feel cohesive?
2. Fun - Did you have fun? If you beat the game, did you wish there was more?
3. Creativity/Innovation - How many things made you go "Oh wow, never experienced that before!" Even a 2d platformer or text adventure can be very creative through story telling, mechanics, or accessibility features.  Feel free to to take inspiration from your favorite genres, but put your own spin on it!

Judges' Choice

A panel of blind and low vision judges will play the games and pick which ones were their favorites to play as blind gamers!

The Judges Choice award is announced in our discord server and posted on the Wiki! Long standing blind community members will used rank choice voting for the best "Game for Blind gamers"

Fresh Press

Our community members have written high-quality educational articles. They'll be published and promoted in r/indieGames subreddit throughout January:

• A Risk Worth Taking: How to Make a Blind Accessible Game (Patrícia, Jan 17th, 2026)
• What makes a good audio game? (Talon, Jan 24th, 2026)
• How a solo developer made a very beloved cozy café game (Asaf, Jan 31st, 2026)
• Audio Description: The Basics (Jennissary, Feb 07, 2026)

Other news:

• Call for Games for Blind Gamers Jam (Visionaire's Blog, Jan 19th, 2026)
• The countdown to Games for Blind Gamers 5 begins (Can I Play That?, Jan 20th, 2026)
• The World of Blind and Low Vision Games (AbleToPlay, Jan 27th, 2026)

Post-jam press:

• Illegally Sighted playing Impulse Response (Youtube)
• Arevya's youtube short: "HORROR game for BLIND gamer[s]"

More resources

Jam Socials and Resources:

• Discord: Find team members, playtesters and a helpful community!
  
• Our Wiki: Games for Blind Gamers Wiki
• On making games as a blind developer: Tutorial on making games in GODOT as a blind developer
  
• On making your itch page accessible: Structuring an Itch Page for Headings (by Patrícia)

Making of past jam games:

• Lacus Opportunitas, by shiftbacktick
• "How to make a game for blind players?!", by punishedfelix
  

External resources:

• List of blind-accessible mainstream games, on Github
•  Sightless Kombat - Community Soapbox, - Interview of a blind gamer on Can I Play That?
• "How to make a dungeon crawler for blind people", by Miziziziz.

See examples of games from our past editions: 

• 1st (2021), and its Results (Overall)
• 2nd (2023), and its Results (Overall)
• 3rd (2024). and its Results (Overall)
• 4th (2025)  and its Results (Overall)

About past jams:

•  Top Picks: best blind-accessible games from the Games for Blind Gamers 4 Jam (Patrícia, 2025)
•  Top 3 Games For Blind Gamers (Youtube) (The Blind Life, 2025)