What is an Otome?

Otome or Otome Games specifically refer to games created for a female audience where the female player character pursues male love interests (via routes or events) and opts for a romantic happy ending (or not so happy bittersweet ending) with the chosen character. Often coming in the form of Visual Novels or VN-Hybrids such as RPGs and Simulations.

Every Otome is a Joseimuke. But not every Joseimuke Game is an Otome. Joseimuke is what we categorise a game directed towards a female audience but missing the key parts of an otome:

• Female Protagonist (Optional Chooseable, but available)
• Romance (You have to end up with one of the characters)
• Male Love Interest(s) (Female, nonbinary, and other ones optional but not necessarily included)

If the game has a female protagonist and male characters, but no actual romance or romance as part of the storyline but directed towards a female audience, it's a Joseimuke. 

If the game has romance and a female protagonist, but no male love interests, that's not an otome game.

If the game has romance and male love interests, but no female protagonist as an option, but is still directed toward a female audience, that's not an otome game.

Often other Joseimuke can be distinguished that the dates or romantic bits are locked behind cards or gacha and have no influence on the main story or the characters and thus canonical never happened.

Alternatively, a growing term for inclusive romances and relationships that fits the Western culture more is the term Amare.

Popular examples:

• Mystic Messenger
• Blooming Panic (one of last year's otome jam entries!)
• Magical Otoge series
• Dark Nights

If you're looking for a team or team members, be sure to join the Otome Jam Meet and Greets on April 9th and/or 23rd, 2PM Eastern Time (GMT-5) on the Devtalk Discord Server, a community we collaborated with last year and welcomes indie visual novel developers and people wanting to work on visual novels!

Rules

To have your project allowed for submission it must adhere to these rules

• The game has to feature at least one female protagonist or by choice
• The game has to feature male love interests or more, or at least equal, to female and/or nonbinary love interests.
• Characters who are trans/genderqueer/etc qualify if they fit the role of female protagonist or male love interest in terms of identity.
• The game must focus on romance and establishing a relationship with a love interest. Joseimuke products (see Obey Me or Mr. Love: Queen’s Choice) with only fan service and romantic events that lead to no endings, are forbidden from entry.

What is allowed?

1. R18 projects are allowed. However, please tag and label your game properly for that as well any content not appropriate for minors and list any triggering and sensitive content on both the game page and in the game. This applies to both SFW and NSFW submissions. If found out to be an unlabelled NSFW submission, the submission will be removed.

2. If you have an already open project that applies to the rules of this jam, you’re allowed to finish it during this time period and submit it as an entry. 

3. For projects that are for this jam, work that you’re allowed to do before it starts are:

• Story and character outlines
• Concept art
• Gather resources
• Join or find a team
• Any other tasks that don’t involve producing finished assets

4. Although jam games are most of the time free to play, it’s not discouraged to make it pay what you want or commercial later on as long as it's stated beforehand, and you provide a demo. We discourage however the abuse of volunteers for a commercial product in which only you, as the leader, gain. Pay your team.

5. Submitting multiple projects is allowed and far from forbidden as long you are the creator or one of the leaders of a project. The more, the merrier after all!

6. Use of Free to use, Public Domain and Creative Commons Licence resources are allowed and encouraged if you can’t fill in a position in your team, such as artists or composers. You can always update the game later on with updated materials and a new team.

7. Demos, Beta and Episodic entries are allowed as long they are in a playable state. It’s advised to scope properly and avoid crunch. Keep quality over quantity in mind, don’t try to be the next Otomate.

8. You can submit and finish your entry in another jam as long the rules of the other one allow it.

9. Feel free to use the logo in your game to brand it as a product for the Otome Jam (Right Click + Save As). But please credit the logo artist for that. We'll personally check every entry to confirm you credited appropriately. Please don't use it in commercial projects, however, as this would cause legal license issues.

10. Yes, a one male love interest project is allowed and counts as otome if it follows the requirements.

Developer Communities

Discord Servers

Otome Development - The Host Server

DevTalk - A General VN Development Server and our collaborator for Meet and Greets.

Boys Love Development - In case you have the choose your gender option planned (don't forget the goal of this Jam though!)

Amare Dev Server - The western term for inclusive relationships and individuals in games and visual novels!

Forum

Lemmasoft Forums - A Forum filled indie VN developers and enthusiasts. Big source of coding and assets.

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