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When the sun goes down, the monsters come out to play.

🗓️ Jun 2 · 10:00 AM → Jun 15 · 10:00 AM
🌙 13 nights · 5 months until Halloween

🌑 The Night Is Calling

The veil is thin and the nights are long. Night Shadows is a 13-night monster jam to summon your darkest, weirdest, most wonderful creatures of the night — a warm-up howl before Halloween, still five months away.

Vampires, ghouls, eldritch things in the dark, friendly slimes, or whatever crawls out of your imagination — build a game around monsters and the shadows they live in. Almost anything goes.

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✨ The Theme

Your game should embrace monsters and the night. Lean into shadow, moonlight, fog, and fear — or subvert all of it.

Make us scream. Make us laugh. Make us want to pet the monster. The interpretation is entirely yours — the only thing we ask is that something monstrous lives at its heart.

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💡 Need a Spark?

A few seeds to plant in the dark — steal them, twist them, or ignore them entirely.

• A lonely villager who befriends the monster under their bed.
• A vampire managing their crumbling estate before sunrise.
• Survive the night as the shadows slowly close in around you.
• Play as the monster — terrorize a sleepy little town.
• A foggy forest where the trees quietly watch you back.
• A cozy midnight shop run entirely by friendly creatures.
• A flashlight, a dark house, and something breathing nearby.
• A full-moon transformation you can't quite control.

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🕰️ The Witching Hours

• Begins: Jun 2 · 10:00 AM
• You have: 13 nights to build your monster
• Closes: Jun 15 · 10:00 AM

Phase I — Conjure. Settle on your creature, your mood, and your one core mechanic. Sketch the nightmare before you build it.

Phase II — Summon. Build the playable thing. Get it running first, make it pretty later. A small finished game beats a huge unfinished one.

Phase III — Haunt. Add sound, atmosphere, a menu, an ending, and the little details. Then upload before the clock strikes zero.

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🛠️ Make Anything

Any genre, any engine, any art style. If it can be played, it counts.

Genres: Horror · Action · Puzzle · Platformer · Visual Novel · Survival · Cozy · Walking Sim · Comedy · Experimental

Engines & Tools: Unity · Godot · Unreal · GameMaker · Construct · RPG Maker · Bitsy · Twine · HTML/JS · …anything

Art Styles: Pixel · Low-poly · Hand-drawn · 3D · Silhouette · Cute · Grotesque · Surreal

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📜 The Rules

Almost everything is allowed. Two things are not negotiable:

🚫 No NSFW Content. Keep it safe for everyone. Frights, gore, and the macabre are welcome — explicit sexual content is not.

🌱 Start Fresh. Your game must be made during the jam, beginning when it opens. No pre-built games — they start the moment the gates do.

• Solo or teams are both welcome — bring a coven or fly alone.
• Use any engine or tool you like. There are no engine restrictions.
• Free & AI-assisted assets are allowed — credit your sources and make sure the final game is yours and playable.
• Brainstorming, learning, and your own reusable libraries beforehand are perfectly fine.
• No stolen content. Don't ship work that isn't yours to ship.
• Be kind. No hate, harassment, or bigotry of any kind.
• Above all — have fun in the dark.

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📤 How to Submit

Submit your game from the jam page before the clock hits zero on June 15. On your game's page, tell players:

• What your game is about
• How to play it (the controls)
• The engine and tools you used
• Whether you flew solo or with a team
• The assets you used — with credit
• Any known bugs lurking in the code

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⭐ How It's Judged

Night Shadows is a ranked jam — entries are scored across five categories:

• Monster — How memorable, creative, or terrifying is the creature you've conjured?
• Atmosphere — Mood, sound, visuals: how strongly does it make us feel the night?
• Fun — Beyond the dread, how good is it to actually play?
• Creativity — Originality of the idea and the boldness of its execution.
• Polish — How finished, clear, and complete the whole thing feels.

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🌙 Join the Coven

Share your progress, your screenshots, and your screams. Tag your posts so we can find your creatures:

#NightShadowsJam

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Light a candle, lock the door, and make something that goes bump in the night.

We can't wait to meet your monsters.

Sweet nightmares — The Night Shadows Team 🦇