Welcome to the 1st annual Pokemon Mini Console game jam!
What the heck is a Pokemon Mini?
The Pokemon Mini is to this date the world's smallest cartridge-based console and one of (if not the single most) obscure Nintendo consoles around; there are a total of 10 official games released for it (only 5 of which were available outside of Japan), yet the enthusiastic community of Pokemon-Mini.net have made roughly 100 homebrew titles to supplement this surprisingly capable tamagotchi-sized gameboy-like console. We also have a post on the forums packed with information to help guide you through development.
What will we make in this jam?
One of the most well-known games in the official suite was Pokémon Party Mini, which is a collection of minigames not unlike Mario Party, or Wario Ware. Since development for older hardware can be tricky, and given that most of our community is based in the Northern Hemisphere and have school/work obligations for most of the month, we're going to make bite-sized nuggets of gameplay that, at the end of the jam, will be bundled together as a minigame collection. If you're unfamiliar with this, please hop over to the aforementioned post on our forum for links to play Pokemon Party Mini so you can get an idea of the simplicity and scope of each minigame. We also recommend checking out other minigame/party titles for inspiration. Try checking out WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! or if you have a 3ds, try downloading the free demo for WarioWare Gold from the DS eshop, these have a very broad set of examples for gameplay.
How is the jam structured?
Leading up to December 1st we encourage participants to form teams and schedule the workflow (there's more specific information and tips on the forum post). You can form as many teams as you're comfortable with; since there are prizes for the individuals who help on the most amount of games, we encourage teams to be scheduled for development on a weekly basis at most. December has 4 weeks (with an extra 3 days for wiggle room), here's an example development schedule:
- Dec 1st - 7th be for your first team
- Dec 8th - 14th be for your second
- Dec 15th - 21st be for your third
- Dec 22nd - 28th be for your final team
- Dec 29th - 31st wrap up any loose ends with your teams
- Submit all games by the end of Dec 31st
You can of course only have one team for the entire month, too, if that's how you'll be of most help to your team; simply being on a load of teams won't earn you participation points, your effort will!
Once the submissions have closed the admins will review the games, interview each team to assess how much their teammates helped one another, and finally tally the participation points of each individual dev to award prizes based on this ranking. Don't worry if your minigame isn't fun or complete/bug-free, what matters most is the teamwork, practice, and fun you all had together!
PRIZES?!
Thanks to the generosity of Astro, we have prizes for first and second place!
Thanks, Astro!