Gourdtober 2023

Hosted by Gaming Gourd

Get ready for Gourdtober 2023! For the month of October, Gaming Gourd Studios is hosting a chill game jam. The theme is lighthearted spooky - following the theme is optional but encouraged. The goal is to release something small and fun in one month - the jam is open to games, interactive fiction, and other new media. There are no prizes or rankings, but it will be a fun challenge and we'd love to get the community involved with their own projects and ideas! Anyone who participates will be invited to our community discord where you can share your progress and even get some feedback from the team. We can't wait to see what you come up with!

Inspired by IndieCade's yearly Greenlight Jam, we recommend splitting your work up into four sprints: concept, prototype, production, and release! Our team will be working one week ahead of y'all so we can share our progress and help inspire/inform jammers with what we've tackled in each sprint. Here's a quick overview: 

Concept Sprint

October 9th - October 15th 

Starting with Sprint 1, brainstorm your core ideas and bring together your inspiration - now is the time to be throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks! Try not to start working on your game just yet. Instead, start with creating mood boards, inspiration/similar works lists, and paper prototypes of how you game might play out. It's also a good time to figure out which platform and tools you hope to use for your project and make sure everyone in your team is ready to jump in for the next sprint. We recommend finding one core gimmick to hook onto for your game to keep the scope manageable for a month long project!  

Prototype Sprint

October 16th - October 22nd

Sprint 2 is when it's finally time to jump into your engine or platform of choice and get your initial prototype together. Expect this stage to be buggy, messy, and full of placeholder content! Your aim here is to create a playable experience that gets the feeling of your core mechanic/narrative idea across.

Production Sprint

October 23rd - November 5th

Next up is our longest sprint with Sprint 3 - Production! This is where the bulk of your projects will come together as everything from Concept and Prototyping now take their places in the game. By the end of this sprint, aim to have your gameplay fully laid out and read for final polish and release!

Release Sprint

November 6th - November 13th

This is it, Sprint 4, the last rush to the end. With everything ready in game, use this final piece to test your project, fix any bugs you find, and add that last bit of polish before hitting publish! Make sure you leave yourself some time to set up your release page wherever your publishing it if you're releasing it publicly. If you want to go one step further, you could even create a release trailer or poster to celebrate your projects completion! 

If you've made it this far, congrats on publishing your project - we hope you had a blast along the way!