Welcome

Welcome all developers, artists, and designers to our Platformer Jam, a 4‑day game jam hosted by Bezi to reimagine THE classic game mechanic! From SuperMarioBros to Celeste to Limbo, platformers have kept players jumping, running, and ducking for joy since day one. (The team member writing this has a soft spot for Kirby Squeak Squad, especially!)

Your game must be a platformer at its core but past that, the world is your oyster! 2D, 3D, VR, side-scrolling, first-person, it's up to you. Feel free to weave in puzzles, narrative, collectibles, any and all twists you want. So long as the player is navigating at least one level towards a conclusive endpoint, and the path there poses a fun challenge.

Theme

The theme is RETRO! 70s, 80s, 90s, even early 2000s, you take your pick. Is your character roller skating through a disco ring? Is your game the NES hit that the world never got to play? Or is every character in your game wearing Heelys? Use the vibes of the decades gone by to craft your nostalgic platformer! (No need to reference real-life aspects of those years, just the general aesthetic works).

About Bezi

Bezi is a development assistant for Unity designed to help with the repetitive and boilerplate parts of building a game. Bezi has real-time context of your project - codebase, assets, scene graph, components, and more - to provide the most accurate and customized assistance. It can help with coding and script writing, debugging and optimization, and technical explanations. You can download and use Bezi here.

Join our Discord

Join the the Bezi Discord to find teammates, share progress, get feedback, and more! All conversations about the jam will happen in #jam-chat. If you have any questions, issues, or feedback on Bezi, please share them in the #bezi-feedback channel.

Prizes

The winners will all receive cash prizes and 3 months of Bezi for free.

1. 1st Place - $300
2. 2nd Place - $200
3. 3rd Place - $100

Participants who submit a short devlog on how they used Bezi as part of their game jam submission will receive $10. The optional devlog form will be a part of the game submission process.

Rules & Requirements

1. You must use Unity. Other programs, such as Blender or Photoshop, are also allowed.
2. You must use Bezi in some capacity as a part of the development process.
   1. You can download Bezi here.
   2. Although using Bezi is a requirement, there is no usage quota. Just try Bezi out and see it you find it useful :)
3. Games must be built for this jam. This means templates and duplicates of existing games are not considered. Games made for other jams will also NOT be considered— if you have an idea that you used for another jam that you think would fit well, you must rebuild it fully for it to be considered.
4. Teams are not required, but are capped at 3 members.
5. If you use for AI for anything other than code/scripting, such as art or sound, you MUST disclose it on the submission.
6. You must submit your game by the submission deadline. No late submissions or editing after submission are allowed.
7. The primary game language must be English.
8. Games cannot include offensive, discriminatory, or NSFW content.
9. You may use pre-made, publicly available, or purchased assets. Please credit the original creators in your submission.

Determining Winners & Criteria

We will be using a rating system. All submitter and contributors will be able to vote and rate, but will be subject to a rating queue of 3. This means that you will have to rate 3 random submissions before rating other submissions to keep the voting fair. You will be voting the games based on the following criteria:

• General Fun: Is the game generally fun to play? Is it challenging while feeling rewarding? Is there a great story?
• Visuals & Theme: Is the art style unique? Are there visual bugs? How well does it adhere to the theme?
• Unique Mechanics: Does the game bring something new to the platformer genre?

Timeline

• Submission Start Time: July 10th at 8:00am PT/11:00am ET (3pm UTC)
• Submission Deadline: July 14th at 11:59pm PT/ July 15th at 2:59am ET (6:59am UTC)
• Voting Deadline: July 17th at 11:59pm PT/ July 15th at 2:59am ET (6:59am UTC)