Welcome to the Magical Girl Game Jam #4!

Do you like Magical Girls? If so, this jam is for you. This game jam is about the Magical Girl genre -- explore the genre of Magical Girls through the games you make for this jam!

This informal jam had irregular schedule in the beginning, but I recently decide that for the time being, Magical Girl Game Jams will be held twice a year for one month long every February and August -- for MGGJ4, the jam period will be from August 15th to September 15th.

Discord Server

Rules:

Although I want as much freedoms for you jammers to have, there are still rules in the Magical Girl Game Jam. The most important ones are:

• In accordance to Rule #2: Thou shalt 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. For the purpose of this jam, the bare minimum requirement is a "Girl with Magical Power" -- as long as you fulfill this, I won't remove your submission.
• In accordance to Rule #164295: Thou shalt properly pick at least one theme and follow it
• In accordance to Rule #3028: Thou shalt keep pornographic materials away from your game. I have decided to relax this rule a lot from the previous jam due to some confusion and ambiguity. For this jam, as long as you don't show genitals and female n*ppl*s I won't remove your submission... However, I prefer you do put more clothes than this bare minimum requirement I put. Basically no restrictions for the gore type of NSFW, but I prefer there to be no internal organs splattered tier graphics.
• In accordance to Rule #99742: Thy game has to be free to play upon submission
  
• In accordance to Rule #394899: Thou shalt submit video games. The question came out in the previous jam because I didn't specify it and so I had to allow it last jam. From this jam onwards however, only video game submissions are accepted.
• In accordance to Rule #314159: Unfinished games shall be allowed
• In accordance to Rule #217828: Thou art free to use any assets you have legal access to -- however, I encourage you to create as much as possible during the jam, and during submission you will be asked about it -- players might rate more harshly if your game is mostly purchased assets.
• In accordance to Rule #33: Thou shalt 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.
• In accordance to rule #1: Have fun! :)

(Please don't mind the numbers. I was just making a little joke reference. Those of you who know what I referenced, high five to you!)

Also while this is not really a rule, I would appreciate it if you put the following hashtags if you tweet about this jam: #MGGJ, #MGGJ4

Themes:

The themes were revealed around one week before the jam actually starts. During this time, I advise you to thoroughly develop your concepts first. You can of course, start working; and I probably wouldn't know -- but my advice is to mature your concepts first d(^^

And so, the themes for MGGJ4 are... taken from the first to sixth part names of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure! Pick a theme, and interpret them however you like \(^o^)/:

1. Phantom Blood
2. Battle* Tendency (*see "Interpretation" section below)
3. Stardust Crusaders
4. Diamond is Unbreakable
5. Golden Wind
6. Stone Ocean

(I wanted to include all 8, but of course there is no way "JoJolion" can be taken as theme... so I just took the first 6 due to the relations of the parts)

Interpretation:

Just like the previous jam, to interpret any theme, it is sufficient to take a word that's Capitalized and make a game based on that word. For example, if one of the themes were "Unconnected Marketeers", then simply taking "Unconnected" or "Marketeers" are valid interpretations for this jam. Depending on how loosely a word can be interpreted, I might choose to not capitalize the word and you may not use that word as a standalone (e.g. in MGGJ2, the themes were Touhou titles, and I chose to not capitalize "character" from "Double Dealing character" because any game about Magical Girls naturally fulfill that)

*For the theme word "Battle", due to the nature of the theme being something most games about Magical Girls very easily fulfill, in order to fulfill this word, I require you to especially put focus on the battle aspect of your game (explain it in the submission questionnaire); be it the mechanics (i.e. a game designed around a battle mechanic), genre (e.g. battle royale, arena, action heavy, a game whose main appeal is the difficulty of the battle), story (e.g. war), or character/object (e.g. warrior magical girls).

A quick test is if the "Battle" aspect of your game is something that can normally be already expected from a game that is not thinking about "Battle", it probably doesn't fulfill it as a word. For example a normal platformer that just so happens to have some fights with enemies... they do not fulfill this theme. I do realize this can be subjective, so I will lean towards the more lenient side unless your game is very obviously not battle focused.

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
  • How well the graphics fit the game
• Audio
  • How well the audio enhances the gaming experience
  • Includes music if the game has one
• Polish
  • Primarily talks about gameplay/experience polish. Is the difficulty balanced? Does the game give good player feedbacks, making it more fun to play? Special effects? If it's mostly narration are the texts properly screened for errors that may ruin player experience?
  • Graphics and audio polish should be rated based on the previous criteria
• Theme Interpretation
  • This is talking about the six themes, not about the whole premise of the jam being themed around Magical Girls.

Prizes:

Two members in our discord server decided to offer prizes based on your game's ratings in this jam.

• The team/individual that makes the highest rated game will get an art prize from PixiTales, an amazing artist who participated in MGGJ2 and MGGJ3 last time, but cannot participate this time, so Pixi offered to draw a prize instead.
• The team/individual that makes the lowest rated game will get an art prize from XCVG, another amazing artist who has participated since MGGJ1; whose drawing style is... very different... from Pixi's \(^o^)/

Also special to Mudae players in our server, I offer 3000 kakera if your game gets to the top 5.

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 (NOTE: THIS IS NOT PART OF THE RULE. The following is simply meant to introduce to those who are not familiar with the genre):

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 or Magical form -- not always but I think most do have it

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

FAQs:

A few questions that came up a few times during MGGJ3, that may be in your head too if you are new:

• What do you define as "Magical Power"?
  • For the purpose of this jam, there are a few ways it can fit:
    • A power the author declares as magical.
    • A power that may not be explicitly declared as such by the author, but natural explanations for the power is not given.
    • A power the author may declare as not magical (e.g. machines), but somewhat intends to feel magical and/or mimics something you may expect if it were magical. For a quick test, try to replace the supposed "non-magical explanation" with "magic" and see if it makes sense.

• Do Magical Boys count?
  • In general, no; but as long as the magical form is a girl, you may have the non-magical form as any other forms including animals, boys, objects, etc. and it still counts.
    • In addition, as long as you put at least one Magical Girl I don't mind what else you put into your game as long as it doesn't get you into legal troubles.
• Can I submit my game into other jams?
  • If it also fits that jam, yes. Feel free to do multiple jams in conjunction if it happens to coincide with MGGJ4.
    • Beware though if you submit to so many jams, it might look suspicious. If I see your game being submitted to jams that your game doesn't actually fit into, even if your game fits my jam, I might question whether or not your game fitting into my jam is just a coincidence.
• Can I submit multiple games into this jam?

  
  

  • If you have the time, sure! You can also participate in multiple teams; your choice. As long as you have the time, and your games all fit into the themes.
• Can I continue my project from previous MGGJs?
  • If you can fit it into the new themes, go ahead -- but I think it's going to be difficult. You may want to instead create a new story with the same characters, or a sequel.
• Can I pick multiple themes?
  • Picking multiple themes is logically also picking at least one theme. If I were to forbid this all you needed to do would be to pretend as if you only had picked one theme and just coincidentally had matched the other themes; so yes.
• Can I modify my game during the rating period?
  • I am very lax regarding this, so in this casual jam, I do not lock submission modification during rating period. However, I request you include all versions every time you add a new one -- or at least just the original one or the last one submitted before the submission period ends.
• The themes are revealed 1 week before the start of the jam itself. Why?
  • My jam, my rules XP. However, the primary reason is to let players ponder about the theme for a week first before jumping straight into coding/asset making/etc.; I want you people to have a mature concept/plan first. Can you start making your game anyway during that time? Yes; and I can't check. It's really up to you, although I think it's much better to work on the concept first (^.^;
• Why are there multiple themes anyway?
  • My jam, my rules :/. The reason is that I don't want the themes to be restrictive. I want the themes to function as inspiration, not as restrictions. The idea came from a story my friend told me of a Game Jam he participated in. I can't go into details but the jam in question is said to use Sonic titles as themes.
• With your definition <non-Magical Girl character X> is a Magical Girl (or vise versa)?
  • Well obviously I want as many obvious Magical Girl characters in while keeping as many obvious non-Magical Girl characters out... We however, are dealing with art and fiction, and it is basically impossible for me or anyone to enact a hard-line one fits all definition to pigeon hole everything perfectly. If there were such a thing, people will always find ways to subvert it. Because of that, what I put is simply a bare minimum definition that is as loose as possible which in consequent may technically allow obvious non-Magical Girl characters in (e.g. Wizards, some Sci-Fi chars); but I want you to aim for TVTropes' ideal. If you have better ideas however, I will welcome it.

Previous jams

Some of you who are new might want to see games (or themes) from previous jams. Here are some links to the previous jams:

• MGGJ1
• MGGJ2
• MGGJ3