We are pleased to announce our first cross-curriculum game jam at City of Bristol College. Teams will be made up from students on the BTEC Level 3 IT courses and the UAL Level 3 Interactive Game Design and Development courses at the college. The duration of the Game Jam is 2 weeks between the hours stated on the game jam page. You will be expected to give your team a name, create a game jam account for your team on the itch.io website, and join the jam by visiting the jam page.  

You are expected to work together effectively to produce a game on the theme by the deadline stated on the jam page. It will be a very good opportunity to work together in an industrially simulated environment and develop valuable team working skills which will be important for your progression and employability. 

If you enjoy the experience, there are lots of other game jams run on https://www.itch.io which can be entered to help develop your skills even further after we finish this game jam.

RULES

1. General 

1.1. These rules are laid down to allow a fun, entertaining and fair event for everyone. These rules apply to all jams, unless otherwise stated. Please refer to the itch.io Terms of Use under section 3. Acceptable Use - https://itch.io/docs/legal/terms#1-service  

1.2 The judges/admins may remove games if they do not conform to these regulations and itch.io may suspend or terminate your account. 

1.3 The game will consist of ‘The Game’, however extra consideration should be made to incorporate a menu and credits. Judges will reward for these considerations. 

1.4 The game will be produced in Unity but any other software can be used to create models, sprites, or other external assets to import in to the game if required. There is a useful list of game jame tools located here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/tools/ 

1.5 The game should have multiple backups throughout the project build. These backups will be stored for instance on your ‘F’ Drive, USB or Office 365 so all members have access. It is your responsibility to make these backups throughout the project. 

1.6 The duration of the Jam will require all team members to communicate but how this is done is up to the individual teams.

2. Team size 

2.1 Team jams: You can work in teams. The team size is stated in the jam description, if not, it's unlimited. Your team can include coders, artists, game designers, composers as long as they are students enrolled in the college.

2.3 Team jams: The teams will be decided and/or authorised only by the judges.

3. Theme 

3.1 All games must have something to do with the theme, which is Retro Games. This means that your game must be inspired by games which are considered retro classics, and games made before 1990. 

3.2 Your game must not include any copyrighted assets from any commercial “Retro Classics” titles. You can pay homage to these titles but must not under any circumstances copy the content contained within these titles. 

4. Time limit 

4.1 The time limit is stated in the jam details. Any work after the deadline is purely minor bug fixing, compatibility fixing and packaging. No gameplay changes allowed. However, If a late submission has been granted, a link will be provided to submit your game.  

4.2 The game will be uploaded within the time limit in the jam details.

5.Packaging 

5.1 When packaging, you are not required to provide the full source of your game with the release. 

5.2 The release will be for PC and Mac. You must produce a game that will run on both platforms as executable files. Submission of the game must be compressed in a zipped folder for submission. 

5.3 The game must be built on a machine in college.

6. Hardware compatibility 

6.1 Your game should be optimised to be run for fast gameplay and you should aim to produce a game that doesn’t lag. It will need to be able to run for laptop users as well as high-performance desktop users. If you make a game full of shaders and fancy graphics, do not expect everyone to be able to run it. You are free to do this, though. Be sensible.  

6.2 The final build will be assembled on an Apple Mac machine so that it can be build for both PC and Mac. Judges must be able to view the game on both platforms. If the machine is a PC, the judges will need to view the game on machines with a minimum of i5 Processors, with 8GB RAM.

7. Snippets/Personal Code 

7.1 Usage of snippets/personal code is allowed, as long as it’s not game related code.  

7.2 You can code your engine/toolset before the jam, but you cannot code the game before the jam starts.

8. Assets  

8.1 All assets used must be created by members of your team or freely available, external assets may be used. This applies to all sounds, graphics libraries or plugins. No use of copyrighted assets or media which have not been give explicit permission from the creator for use in writing will be allowed.

9. Judging Criteria  

9.1 All games must be submitted on either the itch.io jam site directly or the college link provided on the jam site before the deadline.  

9.2 Games must be inspired by retro classic titles made before 1990.  

9.3 We are looking for games that provide maximum enjoyment, replay value and challenging gameplay. “Challenging gameplay” in this instance means, increasing level of difficulty. The need for complex key mappings or the need for a manual in order to play the game should be avoided.  

9.4 All games must have sound effects. You are encouraged to include a retro theme tune with your game but this is not essential. 

9.5 You may consider adding a high score table to encourage more people to play your game. 

9.6 Games can be 1 player or 2 player or more if preferred. 

9.7 Games can use either a 2D or 3D perspective and can incorporate multiple camera viewpoints.