Every year, the PICO-8 community comes together to make games that reflect the joys and anxieties of the winter holiday season, releasing one each day in December leading up to the 25th. We've made so many great games and demos over the past seven years and we'd love to include your game in this year's collection!

How Does This Work?

The games submitted to this jam will be packaged in a special menu cart, the Advent Calendar, and released on the Lexaloffle BBS.  While we would like all entries for this jam to be submitted by November 30th, we will accept late submissions until December 24th if we do not yet have a full collection of games. We will start releasing completed games on December 1st and games will be included in the advent calendar in the order they are submitted. 

On Itch, all entries will remain hidden until December 24th, when we will deliver all of the community-created games to delight the Itch audience. 

What Should I Make?

Entries can be of any size.  Games, demos, interactive artwork and more are all welcome. Create something that represents the holiday season to share with the community! Need a little more inspiration? Take a look at some of the entries from previous years:

2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018

Rules

Don't get on Santa's naughty list. Entries that do not comply with the rules  below will be removed and that's no fun. First and foremost, be nice to each other.  We elves are here to have fun and spread joy.

1. Entries must be made in PICO-8.
2. Entries must be safe for work. Please, no hateful content. 
3. More than one entry per elf is allowed.
4. Team submissions are allowed
5. Submissions should remain unlisted on Itch and Lexaloffle until we release them. Surprises are fun!

You should also avoid sharing any in progress work, including images and gifs, on social media, Itch, or the Lexaloffle BBS ahead the entry's release. We don't want to spoil the surprise! However, you should join our Discord server and share regular progress updates there.  It's a fun place to hang out and share your work with fellow elves!

Resources

Several wonderful creators in the PICO-8 community have donated resources for you to use in your holiday games. If you use any of the resources below, please remember to credit the author in your entry.

Music

We know it's a struggle for some folks to create music, so we've compiled a collection of cartridges provided by the community for you to borrow tracks from. Expand the section below to view and download the PICO-8 carts then drag and drop it onto your PICO-8 application, or load it from the command line. If you need help transferring a track to your cartridge, check out Renoiser by Rune.

If you already have access to a MIDI track that you'd like to use in your game, you can use Denote by bikibird to convert your MIDI tracks into a PICO-8 compatible format.

View Music Carts

provided by shadowphiar

provided by smellyfishstiks

provided by gruber

Submitting Your Game

IMPORTANT! Prior to submitting your game to the jam, you must make an unlisted post of your game on Lexaloffle: 

1. Click your Lexaloffle profile.
2. Select POSTS from the menu bar.
3. Click New Unlisted Post.
4. Upload your game cart and a 16x16 png to be used as an icon in the Advent Calendar.
5. Include a title, brief description and your preferred credit

IMPORTANT! When you upload your game to Itch, be sure to make your game unlisted:

1. Click Edit Game.
2. Scroll down to Visibility & Access.
3. Click the Public radio button.
4. Click Configure Settings  (To the right of Public).
5. Click Unlisted in search & browse.
6. Next, go to your profile page and click Edit Theme.
7. Click HIDE next to your game.

You may switch your entry to listed after it has been released in the Advent Calendar.

Failing to follow these steps may lead to your game being omitted from the Advent Calendar bundle cart, which would be no fun!

Have Fun!

We're looking forward to seeing what you create!