This jam is now over. It ran from 2024-02-23 19:00:00 to 2024-02-26 19:00:00. View 4 entries

Welcome to the PILOT of a series to make the World's hardest Game JAMS, ever!

(Yet still doable?)

If you are an experienced dev looking for a challenge, an enthusiast or just a random dev with a lot of energy to spend, Inspire yourself in your favorite MMORPGs and take some time (or all of it) this weekend to make your own, from scratch!

It may sound like a daunting task... but imagine how satisfying it would be to have people (or at least us... or your friends!) playing an MMO you made yourself... in a WEEKEND! That's insane, isn't it?

If you follow Guilherme's (me) YouTube channels (Portuguese - 66k subs, English - 6k subs) for a while, you probably know that we have a funny untold "Goal" to get the hardest things to make in the world of Game Dev (and beyond) and simply make it in a stupidly short amount of time, yet still delivering it in the end. Like the popular video I made: "I Made a GAME ENGINE in 30 HOURS! (from Scratch)" - (you should watch it, it's fun!), and since them, people keep asking me to host an actual jam on those topics...

(Edit: y'all are commenting that I'm featuring a deleted user, but this is his actual nickname on my discord, you can check that! hahaha)

And since y'all won't stop asking for it... let's try to make it a reality!

I'll probably host a Game Engine Jam somewhere in the future, but since this one is considerably harder, let's start with an "easier" one instead... so MMORPG!

As you probably noticed, the entire point of this Jam is to test your skills and pushing them to the extreme, by making something VERY hard in a short amount of time. But this should NOT MEAN that it is IMPOSSIBLE or that the final result would be "JANKY". We still want to make good stuff, and more importantly: finish it!

And how do we do this?

I have absolutely no idea (yet)! 😅

So this Pilot exists for us to figure it out together. It's very easy to me to blindly spit some very hard or impossible rules to the jam and call it "the world's hardest one", but what's the point is no one can participate? Due to this, I'll adjust everything and make sure it's exactly on point. And if you find this "hard jam things" idea cool, then I count on you to participate and help this to take off!!

While WE WILL NOT REINFORCE THE RULES for the Pilot (unless the mandatory one bellow), I do have a couple of strong suggestions for it. The point here is to have YOUR FEEDBACK, specially (but not only) after you finish the jam, into which rules worked for you, which ones felt too hard and what you've missed.

MANDATORY RULE: I plan to showcase your games on my channels. So PLEASE, do not make NSFW, political or controversial games. Be kind and enjoy yourself and the jam. Participate not only by making a game, but by also engaging with us on discord and the jam page.

I believe that, for this Jam, it will work best if you could "pick the rules you like" and go with them (although you'll see that some of them are pretty "mandatory" to fit the jam). With all that said, for every rule I'll try my best to explain WHY I believe it is a good idea. Here is a summary:

And the detailed explanation for each rule:

RULE #1: The Game must be ONLINE and have a PUBLIC SERVER:

This is an MMO jam, that stands for "massive multiplayer online", so it makes a lot of sense that your game must be (1) online and (2) have a public server, where anyone that downloads the "client" (aka the Game) could join and start playing with each other. So a local multiplayer, p2p or room based online game will probably not work for this Jam. It needs to have a single online world, where everyone can join and play simultaneously. This is alone a HARD task, so let's see...

RULE #2: No premade ASSETS allowed:

Do not use any Models, Textures, Sounds, Animations or anything that you did not made for the jam and during the jam. Why not? Because it's harder! :P This rule have some controversies... especially with people that are not particularly good at some of those areas (like sound) or simply loved the challenge, but don't want to bother spending your time doing some parts that does not make a lot of sense to you. Perhaps if we say that you should make AT LEAST 50% of the assets instead (and the rest could be premade ones, if you have the rights to use them) and considered modified versions of assets, "new", will be a good middle point.

RULE #3: Custom GAME ENGINE Only:

This rule prohibits you to you a Game Engine that was NOT made by you. Meaning that you cannot use Godot, Unreal, Unity and so on (unless you are the dev(s) who made them).

RULE #4: The game MUST BE 3D!

Of course 2D games are fun and we love them. But they could be a bit "easier" to make (or at least to get started with). So for this "HARD JAM", let's make a 3D project.

RULE #5: About AI Generated content:

Well, complex topic, but let's NOT use AI generated Art. But I'm a programmer too and I know how y'all feel, so because of this and this, as long as you create the majority of the code yourself, you can use generative AI to assist you with the programming side of the things. :)

I know you may have some QUESTIONS, so here is a small FAQ:

Any Prizes?

Nah bro... just have fun! :)

Why bother joining the PILOT? I'll wait for the official one!

One of the things we need to validate in this PILOT is: HOW MANY PEOPLE are interested in this idea. If no one participates, then I'll know that it's not something that you find interesting. So I encourage you to join, even if you end up making a very small game, just to show some interest. :)