Little Doctor Games is proud to be hosting our very first game jam!!

For the past handful of years, we have been involved with game jams both as participants making games and as players checking out other people's games. And seeing as how a good amount of folks in our cozy little community were brought together via other jams, we thought it would be fun to host one of our own! So mark your calendars and roll up them sleeves, we expect these games to be of the highest quality!

Why two weeks?

While the pressure of making a game in 48 or 72 hours can definitely add to the excitement and satisfaction of completion, we decided that a two week run time for the jam would allow for more people to participate who might not be able to commit a full weekend. We all got lives and stuff ya know?? That being said, the deadline for submissions is on 8:00 PM MST on April 9. No games will be accepted after that time.

Ok, but who is allowed to participate?

Anyone can join, either as a team or solo! We welcome anyone of any level of skill or experience to create a game for the jam, whether you are a seasoned vet or a first timer.

Oh sweet! I'm definitely in that category! But what should my cool LDG Game Jam game be about anyway?

We will be announcing the theme for the jam in a video uploaded to the Little Doctor Games YouTube Channel™ at 8:00 PM MST on March 24th, kicking off the jam. There are no rules about what your game needs to be about, including what genre/tone/etc. you choose for your game, however we strongly encourage you to creatively incorporate the theme.

I don't wanna get in any trouble. What rules and regs should I know about so that I stay on the right side of the law?

1. You may work alone or as a team.
2. You may not begin working on your game until the jam begins at 8:00 PM MST on March 24th.
3. You may use pre-existing (and public use) assets, including art, sound effects, music, and code libraries (controller support for example) but we encourage you to produce as much of the content in your game as possible.
4. All code for your game (excluding libraries) must be written during the jam
5. Your game must be safe to stream on Twitch (no nudity or explicit sexual content)
6. Absolutely no hateful or bigoted content, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia.

Also, please be sure that the game you make runs either on Windows or in a browser. We want to play them on stream!!

Got it. Look this is all cool and everything, and I'd love to join because you guys are my favorite streamers ever like omg, but I don't even know how to make games. What should I do??

Homie. Amigo. We gotchu. Bitsy is a simple little game editor, perfect for people jumping into the gamedev pool for the first time. If that one doesn't grab ya, check out this list and see if something there is more your speed: https://itch.io/blog/6037/get-ready-for-ludum-dare-game-development-tools

Let's get down to brass tacks. What about ratings? What about prizes?

Games will be rated based on three criteria: Enjoyment, Aesthetics, and Creativity. While we would love to offer a big fancy prize for the highest rated games, we can't afford it, so the prize is the friends you make along the way. Think of the ratings more as a way of providing feedback on the game than as a way to rank them (esp. since we aren't anticipating a whole lot of entrants but then again who knows?) That said, we strongly encourage all participants to give constructive, positive feedback on the games that are made. We will play all of them on stream of course, so that's a prize in it's own right.

Ok well hey, this sounds like a wonderful opportunity and a great time! But dude, you left out a HUGE important detail that I just can't wait to tell you about!

Join our Discord server to discuss anything jam related as well as ask us questions for clarification on anything we missed. This is our first jam so please be patient with us while we get all the bugs out!

Most importantly, HAVE FUN! We can't wait to play your games!!

-Nack and Marco

Little Doctor Games

Credit to itsBoats for creating this lil cutie