(Image by RDNE Stock Project)

This is a jam for transformative narrative games of all kinds. It will be judged by me (Chance). Since I prefer to cultivate a collaborative rather than a competitive environment, and since judging is often highly subjective, I have chosen to use the word "Favorite" rather than "Best" for the award categories:

Favorite Educational Game - Open to educators and non-educators, as long as your game teaches something intended to be useful for players' personal growth or learning.

Favorite Therapeutic Game - Please enter only if you're a therapist, social worker, psychologist, counselor, life coach, neurodiversity researcher, etc. Games about therapy or therapeutic topics are allowed in other categories; this category is specifically for games intended for use as part of a therapy session.

Favorite Spiritual or Religious Game - You don't need to be clergy to submit to this category. Religious fundamentalists, including militant atheists, are not welcome.

Favorite Recreational Game - This is for games primarily intended to be fun to play, while also exploring a thought-provoking or emotionally resonant theme / genre.

Favorite Serious Game - This is for games intended to be thought-provoking, emotionally intense, or culturally important, but not necessarily fun or light-hearted.

Entering multiple categories is allowed, as long as it makes sense for your game. The only two categories that are mutually exclusive are "Favorite Recreational Game" and "Favorite Serious Game".

Since I'm a TTRPG and LARP designer with academic training in transformative role-playing game design, this jam is primarily geared toward analog, physical games. But if you're a CRPG or visual novel designer with an idea that fits, go for it! Some of my favorite transformative narrative games are computer games (e.g. The Longest Journey, The Talos Principle, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Disco Elysium).

You'll find a few games from me (Chance / Narrative Alchemy) in the submissions: The Monster's Last Request (educational), The Gates Are Open (spiritual / religious), Otherlings (serious), and Got Your Number (recreational).  They are here as examples only, and are not eligible for any awards.

(While I do occasionally practice pastoral counseling, it does not require licensure in the state of Pennsylvania, if you're already clergy. This means I'm not qualified to label any games as "therapeutic", without design and playtesting assistance from a licensed counselor or psychologist.)

Rules:

1. Multiple submissions are fine, but I'm just one person, so I'll only be judging one submission per person. Please clearly mark the one you'd like me to judge.

1a. I will do my very best to give at least a one-paragraph review of each game submitted, whether it was judged for the awards or not. This will depend on how many total submissions there are, though.

2. Work solo or in a group, whichever you prefer. 

3. Making a new game for this jam is encouraged, but not required.

4. Games containing out-of-character bigotry of any kind - including the ones many people overlook, like fat shaming, slut shaming, kink shaming, ableism, and speciesism - will be disqualified and removed. The judge is a queer, non-binary, neurodivergent, pagan anarcho-socialist Jew, who loves their cats as full family members. Zero tolerance for any kind of prejudice.

4a. Criticism of the Israeli government does not count as anti-Semitism in any way. Bibi Netanyahu is well to the right of Donald Trump - in other words, a raging fascist monster, guilty of crimes against humanity - and he has been for a very long time. 

4b. Likewise with criticism of Hamas: they are objectively terrible for Gaza and Israel, just like the Netanyahu government is.

5. Games exploring the in-character experience and meaning of bigotry are allowed, but they're disqualified from the Favorite Recreational Game category. 

6. Your game needs to be a narrative game of some kind. This includes TTRPGs, LARPs, narrative card games (e.g. Once Upon a Time, For the Queen), visual novels, point-and-click adventure games, and CRPGs in general. The narrative elements of your game need to be important and central to the gameplay experience. If your story is surface-level and could easily be swapped out for a different one, while keeping the same mechanics, this is not the jam for you.

7. I don't care whether your game is free or not. But if it isn't, I'm going to need a community copy or an emailed PDF, in order to judge the game for any awards and get you your promised one-paragraph review. Plus, I'd just really like to read it anyway :)

I'm looking forward to finding out what you all come up with :-D