Welcome to the Harold's Last Stand Jam!

We've all come to love and respect Harold, that lovable orange haired himbo with kind eyes and an easy smile. But his time as our beloved RPG Maker Mascot is coming to an end. MZ usurpers are fast approaching to take his place as our RPG Maker representatives. Let's give him one last hurray in this special farewell game jam!

Hosted by Human (https://twitter.com/AkraticHuman) and the RPG Make Beta Testers Server! https://discord.gg/sd9b8em
Feel free to post a link to your submission on the server and let other members work out the bugs!

Rules:

1. Harold must be central to your game, whether he is the hero, villain, ever-present deity, or anything of the sort, he must be the core of your game.
2. Games should be 5-30 minutes long. Games that go significantly over in time should be docked by voters accordingly.
3. Users are encouraged to play and rate at least 3 other entries. This is how we truly honor Harold.
4. All game engines are allowed, although for obvious reasons, RPG Maker games are preferred. Also remember to  follow the EULA for any assets you use (MV Harold assets outside of RPG Maker games is a no-no) .
5. No pre-existing games! We want all submissions to be on a level playing field, just like Harold would have wanted. Please do all your devving during the 2 week jam time. 
6. Custom assets are allowed, including plug-ins and art made by others as long as you credit and have the rights to use them. You may also use pre-existing art and other assets. If you made custom assets for this jam, please indicate it in your game description, since this should boost creativity score.
7. No NSFW. Harold is a bit of a prude as we all know.
8. You may submit multiple projects, although Human highly recommends quality, not quantity. Multiple submissions only count once towards the prize tiers.
9. Human reserves the right to disqualify entries at his discretion.

Judgment Categories:

Voted on

1. Harold
   How well does this game capture the spirit and essence of Harold? Does it do Harold justice and lend honor to his memory?
2. Fun
   Did you enjoy playing?
3. Creativity
   Includes aspects of the game like art, music and sound design, gameplay, and writing - anything requiring originality and imagination.

Manually ranked

1.  Harold's Kind Smile Award. This will be awarded by Human himself to his top pick, but will be independent of voting. It will not award anything but bragging rights.

Rating Queue:

I'm excited to announce that we will be using the new "Rating Queue" system first seen in this year's GMTK! All raters will be given a random selection of three games to rate before they can rate anything else. After rating the three randomly assigned games, raters can then rate whichever games they choose.

Thanks to Leaf @ itch.io for setting this up!

Prizes:

Winners of the jam will be determined by community voting, based on the criteria above. The winning prize will scale up based on how many submissions we get (multiple submissions by the same person count only once)!

If the winner is a member of the RPG Maker Beta Testers Server, they will also get a unique "Golden Harold" award role. Everyone will know they are an amazing dev, and Harold will smile on them from the heavens.

Below are the participation tiers for prizes! Any of the prizes can be exchanged for a Steam Digital Gift card of equal value (MZ will be considered the discounted price).

5 submissions: A month of Nitro Classic
10 submissions: A month of Nitro
25 submissions: Assets or plugin of your choice ($25 limit)
40 submissions: A copy of MZ! Holy crap!

The original Harold graphics belong to KADOKAWA. Harold faceset banner by Palxan and Veribona. Cover image Harold by Charlesthehurst.