Welcome!

Magical Girls! Don't you love this genre about girls with magical powers fighting against evil?

Well, welcome to Magical Girl Game Jam #3!!

Seeing how much people enjoyed the previous two jams, I have decided I would like to see people make more games about Magical Girls again this time.

Discord Server

Collaboration:

For this jam, Magical Girl Game Jam will have a test collaboration with the Visual Novel community Devtalk. If you're interested, please do check them out:

https://discord.com/invite/devtalk

Rules:

As much as I want this jam to be as unrestricted as possible, there are some rules that I have decided to put in place:

• Put at least one magical girl character in your game -- it can be your main character, the enemy, anything. Creating an original character is strongly encouraged. Magical Girls being defined as "girls with magical powers" as the bare minimum. As for "magical powers", for the purpose of this jam the bare minimum is for you as  the author to declare her power as magical and for her power to not happen in the real world.
• Properly pick a theme and follow it
• Keep NSFW materials away from your game. Because so many have decided to ask specifically the boundaries, I have put the boundaries here:
  • Boundaries for nudity:
    • Definitely safe: up to standard bikinis (see image 1)
    • Gray area (your game will be at the mercy of my subjectivity): the more revealing bikinis, lingeries -- when I consider the intention to be s*x and nudity-focused it may get removed depending on context.
    • Definitely out: n*ppl*s and genitals
  • Boundaries for violence:
    • Definitely safe: uncensored red blood
    • Probably safe: decapitations, severed limbs -- probably add some warnings if your game has this
    • Definitely out: graphic depictions of innards (e.g.: beating heart getting ripped out of someone's chest and then getting squashed, intestines coming out of someone's stomach into the floor, brain getting splattered everywhere)
• The game has to be free to play upon submission
• Unfinished games are OK
• You are free to use any assets you have legal access to
• Respect the unwritten rules for game jams in general:
  • Submit games that are made for the sake of this jam
  • Keep toxicity away from this jam... or any jam for that matter
  • etc.
• Have fun! :)

Hashtags: #MGGJ #MGGJ3

This is the bare minimum clothing your characters need for it to be objectively considered safe and not at the mercy of my subjectivity -- if your chars have more clothings than that, you are definitely safe. However, I will prefer it if your girl has more than this.

Themes:

The followings are the themes for MGGJ3. Take a theme and make a game out of it until March 15th 2021 (JST).

1. Nuclear Energy
2. Schrödinger's Cat/Superposition
3. Wave and Particle Duality
4. Spacetime Curvature/Time Dilation/Length Contraction/Relativity
5. Spooky action at a Distance/Quantum Entanglement
6. Uncertainty Principle
7. Conservation of Energy

(Picture from before the theme reveal, posted as a hint to three of the themes)

Interpretation:

To interpret any theme, it is sufficient to take a word that's Capitalized and make a game based on that word (e.g. "Cat" is a valid interpretation but "action" is not). Of course however, direct proper interpretations and also literal interpretations of any theme as a whole are also allowed

Proper scientific meanings of the themes:

Since the themes aren't things everybody is familiar with this time, thanks to a feedback, I have decided to give a brief explanation to the proper scientific meanings of each of the themes are (hopefully I don't get any of these wrong):

1. Nuclear Energy: Energy of atomic nucleus. Nuclear fission refers to splitting of (large) atoms (like Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239) and nuclear fusion refers to merging of (small) atoms into bigger ones (like Deuterium + Tritium becoming Helium). Big atoms release energy when they split and small atoms release energy when they combine.
2. Schrödinger's Cat/Superposition: Superposition refers to summation of two vectors, but in the quantum world this can be interpreted as two states happening at the same time until observed. Schrödinger's Cat is a thought experiment about Superposition turned into a macro level where a cat in a box is alive and dead at the same time (until the superposition collapse when you open the box)
3. Wave and Particle Duality: In the quantum world, small stuffs behave as both a wave and a particle -- they have properties of both a wave and a particle. A famous experiment demonstrating it is the double slit experiment: when individual photons are shot through a double slit, it is observed that although ultimately only one individual photon goes through the slit, it behaves as if it were a wave going through a slit that then collapses when observed. Closely related to superposition.
4. Spacetime Curvature/Time Dilation/Length Contraction/Relativity: The speed of light is the fastest speed cause and effect and information can travel through space, and the speed of light is the same for all perspectives without acceleration -- the speed of light for someone floating around in space is exactly the same as the speed of light "c" for someone in a rocket ship moving at 0.99c relative to the floating around in space observer. The speed of light is constant, and it turns out it's space and time that changes with velocity. Einstein then came to the conclusion that from the perspective of the floating person, the clock of the rocket person is slower (time dilation) and the length of the rocket much shorter (length contraction). This is called Special Relativity. Spacetime curvature a related concept also by Einstein in the theory of General Relativity that gravity is not a force but a result of spacetime curving -- our perspective is the same as a rocket accelerating constantly at 9.8m/s² and it's free falling objects that are "not accelerating". Also worth noting that time moves slower near large gravitational fields.
5. Spooky action at a Distance/Quantum Entanglement: Two particles can be entangled -- in such state when for example one particle takes one state, the other necessarily takes the other state. If those two particles are then separated by great distance, then measuring one will still collapse the superposition of the other even if the other particle is now light years away -- information now appears to travel faster than light. Einstein didn't like this idea and called it "Spooky action at a distance". Theoretical teleportation is said to be able to be performed by exploiting this concept.
6. (Heisenberg's) Uncertainty Principle: TL;DR there is a limit to how precise you can measure for example the position and velocity of an object. The more precise you measure position the less precise you can measure velocity and vise versa. A good illustration is a wave: when you measure the wave as a short pulse you know where exactly the wave is, but measuring the frequency of a short pulse is nonsense. On the other hand you can take longer sample and know the frequency better, but now the position of the wave is nonsense. Closely related to wave and particle duality and also demonstrated with the double slit experiment.
7. Conservation of Energy: The first law of thermodynamics. Energy is not created or destroyed, it just changes form, from nuclear to heat, from mechanical to kinetic, etc.

7th theme:

There were originally only 6 themes. But because the themes got guessed so rapidly, I had to add a 7th theme just so there could be a reason to still wait no matter how small. The 7th theme was determined via voting, and these were the theme candidates.

1. Entropy
2. Conservation of Energy
3. Strangeness
4. Antimatter
5. Electromagnetism
6. Island of Stability

The themes "Conservation of Energy" and "Strangeness" got the same amount of most votes -- however, random.org chose Conservation of Energy and therefore Conservation of Energy was chosen as the 7th theme.

Rating:

Your submissions will be rated publicly like based on the following criteria.

• Magical Girl Concept
  • How creative are the magical girl ideas in the game?
  • Changed from "Magical Girl Design" from MGGJ2
• Engagement/Fun
  • Duh. How fun the gameplay/story is
• Originality/Creativity
  • The creativity of the gameplay mechanics primarily
• Graphics, Audio, and Polish
  • How polished the game is. Does it have good graphic? Does the game give good feedback to the player? Aim for quality over quantity
• Theme Interpretation
  • How well and creatively are the themes interpreted
  • I hope with this rating criteria 'petty' interpretations are more discouraged; where the themes are interpreted into a concept that is basic to any game or anything Magical Girl related.
• Overall

What is a Magical Girl?

Some people unexpectedly joined the jam without knowing what the Magical Girl genre is in the first jam, so from MGGJ2 onwards, I decided to put this section to explain a bit about what the Magical Girl genre is.

To put it simply, the Magical Girl genre, or Mahō Shōjo (魔法少女) in Japanese, is a genre about cute girls having cute magical powers -- often associated with anime, manga, and other Japanese works. In my own personal opinions, some primary characteristics of the Magical Girl genre are:

1. Cute girl with magical powers.
2. Cute dresses -- not always though... some Magical Girls go the elegant route while others go the wild route
3. Transformation sequence -- not always but I think most do have it
4. Fighting against evil powers -- be it witches, aliens, or whatever

If I need to emphasize this more, this is just my own opinion, not strict guidelines. Feel free to subvert or deviate from my expectations, but make a Magical Girl.

Some examples of Magical Girl works:

• Puella Magi Madoka Magica
  • A veeery cute one. The cutest, most cheerful of all Magical Girl shows.  A complete masterpiece. I recommend this one very strongly

• Sailor Moon

• Pretty Cure

• Minky Momo

If you are previously not familiar with the Magical Girl genre, I hope this explanation at least gives you a vague idea of what you should be aiming for.

For more information, you can check the TV Tropes page for it. While to avoid removal it is enough to fulfill the definition "girls with magical powers", I want you to aim for TV Tropes's Magical Girls