Welcome to the 3rd Player2 NPC Jam!

Large language models like ChatGPT are now able to mimic human dialogue and can even be used to simulate human memory. This is a global game jam inviting developers to build AI-powered characters in any game engine using the completely free Player2 API. 

The Player2 API makes it extremely simple for developers to add voices with text-to-speech, conversation history memory, and other cool features to your characters to help bring them to life!

Your challenge is to create NPCs that think, react, and adapt in engaging and innovative ways. Games like Suck Up! where you, a vampire, convince strangers to go home with you to suck their blood and AI2U, where you talk to an anime girl who's dangerously in love with you are good examples. 

Prizes:

$5,000 - OVERALL GRAND PRIZE WINNER  

You will also win a free video promoting your game on Player2's social channels (100K+ followers)!

$1,000 - Best Mobile Game 

This prize is reserved for a playable mobile game on the player2 site

$1,000 - Best Web Game 

This prize is reserved for playable web games on the player2 site

$1,000 - Best AI Mod

This prize is reserved for game mods

$500 - Next place

$250 - Next ten places

*Playable on the player2 site means it is a web game with a game build uploaded to the player2 site through the developer portal

*Mobile means the game can be played through a browser on mobile devices with controls through touch screen without a mouse and keyboard

Join us to prototype the future of intelligent characters and showcase your creativity – let’s bring NPCs to life!

Special Rewards 

We're offering additional rewards to the best games for these categories. You can win these prizes in addition to the main ones!

Best Art - $500

Most Unique Gameplay - $500

Weirdest NPC - $500

Ever notice that the background characters are often more interesting than the hero? This category is all about filling your game with NPCs that are oddballs, misfits, and unforgettable personalities.

Maybe it’s a skeleton with stage fright, a pumpkin who won’t stop gossiping, or a neighbor who remembers every time you borrowed sugar and never gave it back. Your NPCs can hold grudges, crack jokes, or even spill secrets. In short, build a world where the NPCs are strange!

New Character Track for our game jam — No Coding Needed!

Create a character with our website tool during the current jam. We’ll pick 5 winners × $100 (main jam $12.5k continues).

How to enter

Add your correct email to your profile on player2.game

Open the Character Creation Tool on player2.game

Make a new character with at least one scene

Must use the website tool, not the in-app tool

The top 20 characters, as determined by player metrics, automatically enter the final round. Judges will then select the final 5, rewarding the most engaging/novel/interesting stories and scenes.

Winners of the character track will be announced with the main jam results.

REQUIREMENTS

• Join our Discord to find teammates and for technical support with the API. We have over 10,000 members and a team to help you with any bugs! Make sure to click the "I am in an official Player2 Game Jam." button to get your role.
• Use any game engine of your choice to make your game, and mod any game you want to mod!
• Follow the submission rules below.

Judging Criteria

We’ll be judging entries on these categories: 

• "Mood" (how well does the art, music, the gameplay fit together?)
• "Theme" (how well does the game incorporate NPCs? Is it a creative interpretation of the theme?)
• "Fun" (is it entertaining to play?)
• "Stability" (how stable is the build?)

Technical & Design Reminders

Don’t rely on LLMs alone. Use AI to augment your NPCs’ dialogue, memory, or decision-making, but underpin everything with explicit game logic.

General rules:

• Be respectful and supportive.
• Follow itch.io’s terms of service.
• Build your game in any engine you choose.
• Provide a playable demo or download link by the deadline, following the submission rules.
• Communicate with your team if you have to step away from the jam.
• Compete fairly—no sabotage or harassment.
• AI-generated game, art and assets are permitted.
• Use only assets with appropriate commercial licenses and honor their terms.
• No pornographic content or drug references. (If you won't show it to co-workers, parents, or little sister, don't make it here.)

Submission rules

Your game must use the Player2 web API correctly (https://player2.game/docs/api-reference), where you authenticate the player through the authentication flow with your own game client ID and send a health signal once every 60 seconds. 

To use the web API, you need to create a draft game under https://player2.game/profile/developer. Then you can find your game client ID in your developer dashboard next to your game’s name.

If you are building a game from scratch it is recommended that you use our unity/godot engine plugins. If you are using our Unity / Godot / Defold AI NPC engine, the authentication and health check will be sent for your game automatically.

Tutorials on how to use the web api, Unity, Godot and Defold engine can be found in the doc/README of each engine’s repository.

When you finish building, use the following steps to submit the game:

1, Publish your game anywhere you want to publish, this can be Steam, Nexus, CurseForge, Itch, app store, etc.

2, Submit the game through the player2 developer portal https://player2.game/profile/developer for review. If you build a web game, you must also submit the game to our website in the developer portal.

3, Submit the game through itch to this game jam with links/reference to where you published the game and what your player2 game page/name is.

How to build AI NPCs with Player2 API

• For low-code experiences, check out the following tools
• Our Unity AI NPC engine
• Our GoDot AI NPC plugin
• If you would like to use NPC API/LLM/TTS/STT from the web API directly, check out the documentation and this example project

Inspiration

Check out popular games on our platform, submissions to previous jams for inspiration

Death by AI - A party game where you describe your escape and see if you survive!

Human or AI - A game where you try to see if you're talking to an AI or human

Whisper from Your Star- Save a stranded astronaut on a mysterious alien planet through real-time AI conversations, where your words are her only lifeline.

AI Dungeon - A text-based adventure-story game you direct (and star in) while the AI brings it to life

Gandolf - Your goal is to make Gandalf reveal the secret password for each level. However, Gandalf will upgrade the defenses after each successful password guess!

https://itch.io/jam/ai-npc-jam

https://itch.io/jam/its-alive-ai-npc