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It's that time of year again.  Cold, dark clouds are gathering overhead.  The spectre of video games is looming.

Not just video games, either, but fast video games.  There's no reason to watch someone play through the entirety of Wind Waker in only three hours, but I know I'm going to end up doing it anyway.

If you're like me and have already resigned yourself to spending a solid 168 consecutive hours staring motionless at a Twitch stream, then this is your ray of hope.  Why not spend that time also making a video game?  At least, like, during setup time.

The Deal

Make a video game during AGDQ!  You have from the moment it starts until 24 hours after it ends, according to the final state of the GDQ schedule.  (It gets updated over the course of the week, and always ends up running late by a few hours.)

• Rules: There are none!  Work alone, in a team, on a new thing, on an old thing.  Make a game, make a level for an existing game, mod a game, hex edit some abandonware, flesh out a design doc, or just try out a new tool/engine.  Hell, write a story or compose some music.  Anything is better than nothing.
• Voting: There isn't any!
• Prizes: Nope!
• Theme: Nada!  But if you really want one, I always appreciate an ironic theme like "difficult to speedrun" or "must be speedrun" or "save the animals".  Or try this theme generator.  Or it's my birthday on the 12th, just saying.

FAQ

Q: Can I—
A: Yes.

Q: Making video games?  Isn't that just a fancy word for being a wizard?
A: Dwight, you ignorant slut.  No one has to be a wizard to making video games!

How to making video games

If you've never made a game, this is an excellent time to start!  There's only a week and everyone will be spending most of their time watching Sonic go faster than usual or whatever, so most of the entries will be half-finished prototypes.

Some hints off the top of my head:

• Make garbage.  Doing this for the first time under a tight time limit is not the best setting for worrying about polish.  Embrace the inevitable crappiness and worry about making something that functions.  It'll blend in perfectly with everyone else's garbage.
• Stick to what you know.  If you don't know anything about programming, don't start the week by busting out Unity.  If you're not an artist, stick to rectangles or stock sprites.  Again, make garbage.

Speaking of which, here are some things that are relatively quick and easy to get into and also don't require a lot of art or programming investment:

bitsy is a microscopic game engine for making little worlds where you can walk around and talk to people.  It's actually hard to do much more than that (though a few people have managed).  I made Roguelike Simulator in a day with bitsy!

Twine is a system for writing nonlinear stories.  Doesn't sound game-ish enough?  With some clever use of the Harlowe 2 story format, you can track progress and add an inventory and probably even rig up combat or something.

PuzzleScript has its own custom programming language for describing grid-based puzzle games (e.g., Sokoban) surprisingly easily.  It's fairly sensible even if you have no idea what "custom programming language" means.  And if you are a programmer, you can do all kinds of stupid unreadable hacks!

Inform 7 is an entire programming language designed specifically for writing old-school text adventures — the ones with no pictures where you have to type GET YE FLASK and whatever.  It gets pretty deep, but since half the fun is in the writing, a week is plenty of time to make a charming little world with a few rooms and a few things you can interact with.

Doom is, you know, Doom???  The first video games ever made?????  It turns out you can make your own maps for Doom, and walking around a world that you built from scratch as John Doommans is pretty rewarding!  I wrote a whole series on how to do this a couple years ago.

MegaZeux is, I admit, getting kind of obscure, but I will give you a thousand bonus points if you actually make something with it.  It's a DOS-era tile-based game engine with a bunch of built-in stuff, so you can treat it like a level editor if you want — but it's also pretty easy to dip your toes into adding custom behavior.

There are plenty more depending on what you're after; maybe ask in the Discord?  I'm sure folks can point you towards some stock assets if you're in need of those, too.