Hello quantum!

Welcome to the wonderland of quantum computer games! 

This is the second edition of the quantum game jam for the IndiQ Quantum Community and is hosted in parallel to Ludum Dare 47 jam (LDJAM47).  

In this jam, you will create games that can be run on quantum computers using Qiskit, an open source quantum software development kit. There is only one additional restriction: your games must run on a quantum computer (see "Rules" below for more details).

Check out our previous editions here: April 2020

Community

Our communication channels will be #quantum-games channel on the IndiQ Discord Server (join link here) and #qiskit-games channel on the Qiskit Slack workspace (join link here). 

Theme

"Stuck in a Loop"

How to make games with quantum computers?

Qiskit is a Python library. You can make games with Qiskit using any Python game engines (Pygame, Python Arcade, etc.). 

If your favourite game engine doesn't support Python (which is extremely likely!), you can follow this workaround: run Qiskit on a Flask server, either locally or remotely, and send command from your favourite game engines to the Flask server via HTTPS request. 

The best way to learn how to code is to read the source codes. We picked a few examples of quantum games for you to take a look at:

• QPong (pygame/Python)
• QPong-Unity (Unity/C#)
• Qiskit Blocks (Minetest/Lua)
• Qubit Tic Tac Toe (Tkinter/Python)
• Wolfiverse (Twine/JavasScript)
• Quantum Gate Quest (Phaser.io/JavaScript)
• QPong-PICO-8 (Pico-8/Lua)

Also here's a very simple guide for making quantum games on Jupyter Notebooks if you're interested to take a look.

You can find more details about Qiskit game development on the  Qiskit for GameDev repo and about MicroQiskit with PewPew game development on this repo. You can find more quantum games on Awesome Quantum Game repo. When in doubt, ask on either of the community channels mentioned above!

*We have some tools ready for Unity for this jam. There's a MicroQiskit for Unity and also Python and Unity implementations of some procedural generation tools.

If you are interested in the history of quantum games, read this seminal piece written by the father of quantum games, Decodoku: Making games with quantum computers.

You can also check out all the entries from the first edition of the IndiQ Quantum Game Jam here.

Rules for submission

1. Your games must run on a quantum computer. The quantum computer can be:
   1.  a simulator in Qiskit running locally on your computer (examples: QPong, QPong-Unity, Qubit Tic Tac Toe)
   2. a simulator in Qiskit running remotely on a cloud service (examples: QiskitBlocks, Wolfiverse)
   3. a real device on IBM Quantum Experience(examples: CatBoxScissors, Quantum Battleships, Quantum Awesomeness)
   4. a simulator in MicroQiskit written in the native language of the game engine (examples: Fredventure, Q-Snake, PewPew-Qube)
2. Follow the rules and theme of LDJAM47.
3. Team formations are allowed, one game per team.

What will happen when the jam is over?

1. After submission deadline, the public can vote for a week. The judging criteria are the following:
   1. Quantumness: accuracy of quantum physics principles implemented in the game, such as superposition, entanglement and randomness.
   2. Theme: how well the theme is reflected in the game.
   3. Graphics: how good the game looks.
   4. Fun: how much you enjoyed playing the game.
   5. Overall: Your overall opinion of the game, in every aspect important to you.
2. Prizes: Apart from the joy of making, learning and meeting new people, your games will have a featured spot on our showcase, receive community cred via IndiQ, and may possibly even be featured on talks such as this one among other community benefits, so stay tuned!