This is the 16th Game Jam organized by GoedWare.  Our goal is to let you practice coding, create and finish a game in around 10 days and also learn from the experience, expand your skills and above all have fun and enjoy making your own game and playing other participants' games.

GoedWare:

Link to previous Jams  #1  #2  #3  #4  #5  #6  #7  #8  #9  #10  #11  #12  #13  #14  #15 |  ZERO UI |  HALLOWEEN  #2 |  CUTSCENE  #2|  LIMITED COLOR |  LIMITED SHAPES

Rules & Requirements

• Open to All: Anyone, regardless of experience, is welcome to participate!
• Itch.io Account Required: An itch.io account is needed to join the jam and submit your entry.
• Engine Flexibility: You can use any engine or framework you like! For example: Unity, Godot, Unreal, GameMaker, etc. You’re also welcome to build your own engine if you prefer😉.
• Submission Deadline: You cannot edit your submission after the deadline, so submit your game a few hours early to address any last-minute issues.
• Team Participation: Teams are allowed, but we recommend keeping them to 4 members or fewer, as larger teams can be challenging to manage in 10 days. (Prizes are awarded to the team as a whole, not individual members).
• Multiple Entries: If you have the time and can manage it, you are welcome to submit multiple entries.
• Music and Fonts: Any music must be royalty-free or copyright-free and properly credited. Fonts from the internet can be used as long as you have the appropriate licenses.
• Assets: You may use assets you already own, such as those from the Unity Asset Store or Unreal Marketplace. Ensure that all assets are properly licensed and that you have permission to use them. Avoid infringing on copyrights or trademarks.
• No NSFW Content: Games must not contain nudity, hateful language, or offensive visuals.
• Fair Voting: Any attempts to manipulate voting will result in removal from the jam.
• AI Assistance: AI tools may assist with coding, but the majority of the code must be your own work.
• DEVLOG (optional): You are encouraged to create a devlog as part of your submission. A devlog is a great way to share your game development journey and help others learn! This can be a blog, a video, your daily schedule of the jam, some text or a short story telling us how you made the game, what difficulties you had during the jam and how you solved them.
  What to Include in Your Devlog:
  • Your process: How did you make your game?
  • Challenges: What difficulties did you face, and how did you overcome them?
  • Key mechanics: Explain your game’s most important features and how you implemented them.
  • Lessons learned: Share any milestones or insights you think others can learn from.
  Where to Share It:
  • Add your devlog directly to your itch.io game project page.
  • Provide a link in your submission to an external blog, video, or other format.
  Why Create a Devlog?
  Creating a devlog is optional, but it makes your submission stand out and helps the community grow by sharing knowledge and inspiration. Plus, participants who create a devlog will be eligible for a special prize (see Prizes).

Submission & Judging Criteria

All entries will be judged by other participants of the jam, so that includes you (hopefully)!

The categories the games are rated in are:

• Gameplay / Fun / Engagement: Is the game fun, accessible, engaging, and does it provide a smooth experience?
• Art Style / Visuals: How cool, beautiful, or eye-catching the game looks.
• Audio / Sound Design: How good the music and sound effects are, and if they make the game feel even better. Do they enhance the theme.
• Theme: Does the game fit into the theme.
• Devlog: How insightful and educational was the log of the developer(s).

There will be a Judge/Jury Ranking where our panel will evaluate submissions based on personal preference, artistic quality, and gameplay experience. The jury panel will help balance any unusual voting patterns to ensure a fair outcome.

After the jam, a 10-day rating period allows participants to play and rate each game. Remember to leave constructive feedback. This is more helpful than just a rating and helps other participants discover your game! 😊

Note: To be eligible for prizes, each game needs at least 10 ratings. Playing, commenting and rating others' entries will also increase the chances of your game receiving ratings.

In our game jams, voting is restricted to submitters only. This decision was made after some teams in previous jams downvoted all competing entries. Team members are still welcome and encouraged to leave comments of course.

*We reserve the right to remove any entries with clear vote manipulation.
**Minimum rating requirements may be adjusted based on the number of participants.

Prizes

Yes, this Game Jam will also have prizes for the winners 😊. These prizes are made available by our sponsor and organizer GoedWare.

Let's start by saying that if you press that join button and upload a game before the deadline, you are already a winner! Having fun while creating and finishing your game project is an achievement in itself! That experience is more valuable than money, but we do have some real prizes for the winners also 😉.

We have a public vote with prizes and we also have a jury ranking.

Public Voting

• #Overall winner: The overall winner will receive a $100 gift card!* + Eternal Glory of winning the Game Jam😁!
• #Runner-up: The runner-up will get a $25 gift card.
• #Gameplay / Fun / Engagement: The winner in this category will receive a $25 gift card.
• #Art Style / Visuals: The winner in this category will receive a $25 gift card.
• #Audio / Sound Design: The winner in this category will receive a $25 gift card.
• #Theme: The winner in this category will receive a $25 gift card.
• #Devlog (optional): The most insightful, informative & educational Devlog will receive a $100 gift card.
  *The Devlog category will be manually ranked by the Jury and not the participants. It is NOT a required part of the Jam if you want a chance to win overall prizes. The deadline of the devlog is also a couple of days after the game submission period. So you can add it later and focus on your game during the jam.

Jury Ranking Prizes

• #1: The winner will get a $250 gift card!!
• #2: The runner-up will get a $125 gift card.
• #3: Third place will get a $50 gift card.
• #Gameplay, Fun & Engagement: The winner in this category will receive a $25 gift card.
• #Art style & Visuals: The winner in this category will receive a $25 gift card.
• #Audio & Sound Design: The winner in this category will receive a $25 gift card.
• #Theme: The winner in this category will receive a $25 gift card.

Special jury category:
#Feedback: Awarded to the participant who provides the most helpful, constructive, and insightful feedback on others’ games. This category values those who go above and beyond with thoughtful comments, tips, and encouragement to help fellow developers improve their games. The winner in this category will receive a $50 gift card as a thank-you for fostering a positive, supportive community!

Discord

All the winners get a fancy Discord server role 😁.

NOTE:

• Participants will receive an Amazon gift card for the Amazon website that applies to their country. No other gift cards or prizes will be distributed or swapped.
• For the record for Brazilians, Madagaskar and Indian. Unfortunately, no gift cards are possible for amazon.com.br & amazon.in and we will give out gift cards for amazon.com online shop.
• Jury ranking prizes will stack with the public prizes.
• Because the organizers already know the theme in advance, we will merely be participators. If one of us gets voted to be winner of a category or the overall winner, prizes will be awarded to the next person instead. 
• The prizes may change a little bit before the Game Jam starts, but will mostly contain the content as it is shown now. Once the Game Jam has started the prizes will not change anymore!

Bonus Prizes from Our Supporting Sponsors

In addition to the main prizes sponsored by GoedWare, we also have bonus prizes generously provided by our supporting sponsors. These sponsors help make the jam even more exciting by offering extra rewards for the participants!

A big thank you to all our supporting sponsors for contributing these additional prizes and helping make this event even better!

Current Supporting Sponsors:

Pizza Doggy will sponsor the following prizes for the ranks 4, 5 and 6 in the public ranking:

• #4 - PSX Mega Pack (https://pizzadoggy.itch.io/psx-mega-pack)
• #5 - PSX Mega Pack II (https://pizzadoggy.itch.io/psx-mega-pack-2)
• #6 - PSX Textures (https://pizzadoggy.itch.io/psx-textures)

CraftPix.net is an online store and resource specializing in providing high-quality premium and free 2D game assets for game developers, indie studios, and hobbyists.

CraftPix.net will sponsor the following prizes for the top 3 in the public & jury ranking:

• 1-year Craftpix Membership

Best 3D Model Design with UModeler X

We are excited to introduce a special prize category provided by UModeler X for creators who enjoy building 3D content.  As part of the sponsorship, we will be awarding a Best 3D Modelling (Jury Award). This category is optional and open, and it does not require using any specific tool. Our jury will review the eligible entries and select the winner based on overall visual quality and execution. In addition, the Public Top 3 (based on community voting) will each receive a world template asset voucher provided by UModeler.

Best 3D Modelling (Jury Award)

One winner will be selected by the GoedWare jury, based on overall visual quality and execution (any engine or workflow is allowed). 

Prize

• 🏆 1 winner: UModeler X Plus (Unity Asset Store voucher)

Public Top 3 (Community Voting)

The top 3 entries in the public ranking will each receive a Unity Asset Store world template voucher.

Prizes for this jam (3 total)

• 🥇 Public #1: The Riverwalk City (world template asset voucher)
• 🥈 Public #2: The Medieval Town: Vermilion (world template asset voucher)
• 🥉 Public #3: The Moonglow Village (world template asset voucher)

Notes:

• The Best 3D Modelling award is optional and does not require using any specific tool.
• Winners will receive their voucher codes after the results are announced.
• How to redeem a Unity Asset Store voucher: https://support.unity.com/hc/en-us/articles/207520186-How-do-I-redeem-an-Asset-Store-voucher
• New to UModeler X? Get a free 45-day trial specifically for jam participants: Get Your Free Trial
• Our jury will review all eligible entries and manually select the winners

Show us your creativity and craftsmanship with UModeler X's powerful 3D modeling tools!

Following its success in our 5th Anniversary Edition, we’re excited to bring back this fun extra challenge for the jam!

Add an Easter Egg
Include a unique Easter egg in your game—something clever, funny, or surprising. It could be a joke, a secret power-up, a hidden shortcut, or anything else creative. The goal is to fit it seamlessly into your game and leave players with a sense of delight or awe when they discover it.

Share the Fun
We’ll set up a spoiler channel on Discord and a community thread where players can share the Easter eggs they find and their reactions to them. The judges will choose a winner based on these shared experiences.

How to Participate
When submitting your game, include a description of how players can find your Easter egg in the designated field. After the jam, we’ll share this information with everyone so the whole community can enjoy exploring each other’s hidden surprises.

The Prize
What’s the prize? It’s a surprise! But we promise it’ll be something you’ll definitely appreciate! 😁

Tips

In my experience, here is what you need to do if you want to win one of the top spots:

• Make your game easy to understand for new players. This is a super common trap a lot of game jam games fall into. Start thinking about your tutorial or how you want to teach your mechanics right from the beginning!
• Usually it's a good idea to make your game not too hard to win. People spend roughly five to fifteen minutes on each game. In most cases they won't have enough time to reach a super high level of mastery. Keep that in mind when balancing the difficulty.
• Quality over quantity. Keep your game super simple! This is important in this jam but every bit of extra polish can really make your game stand out in a short jam like this.
• Take risk. The winning games are usually those who were brave enough to try something completely new and crazy (while also following the other three tips above).
• Browser games get more plays. If you want more people to actually try your game (and vote on it), consider submitting a WebGL or HTML5 browser version. Many players prefer not to download files during a jam, so browser games tend to get significantly more attention and feedback.
• Resources. Check out the resources thread "Free gamedev resources (art, music , sfx, vfx, models etc.)" in our itch.io community for useful resources that can help you start and can be used for your game.

Obviously there are exceptions to all rules but still, I hope it helps. 😊

FAQ

Also check the latest updated FAQ in our community

Question: What is the theme?
Answer: The theme will be announced when the jam begins.

Question: Does my game have to be a certain format?
Answer: No, but remember that not all users have Windows/Mac/Linux devices. Browser based is a good idea to get as many people playing your game as possible and try to make at least a Windows version.

Question: What assets can I use?
Answer: The vast majority of code must be written during the jam, but you can use whatever art and audio assets you have the legal right to use.

Question: Can I submit a game that I already started on?
Answer: No, it is required that all participants make the entirety of the game in the time provided.

Question: Is there a Discord I can join?
Answer: Yes, click here to join.

LEGAL

• Anything you make during the GoedWare Game Jam is your property. GoedWare claims no rights or ownership of your game.
• Any game submitted to the GoedWare Game Jam may show up in a GoedWare YouTube video, Social Media or website without your express permission.