Logo by LootGodamn!

Join the DISCORD server for other jams in the future: https://discord.gg/SYJaQY9 

Welcome to the Puzzle jam 2020! The purpose of this jam is to help you improve your skills of level designer in puzzle games (if you never made a puzzle game, don't worry, there's a first time for everything!). For this reason, the art and the audio of your game won't be rated (more info below).

Theme:

Railway Tracks

It is optional and won't affect the rating of your game.

Rating:

Let's be honest: a puzzle game with beautiful art, an awesome soundtrack, and crappy puzzles is a bad puzzle game. For this reason, the jam has the following criteria:

- Presentation: to mention Mark's video, "The player shouldn't be figuring out what to do, just how to do it". Does the game explain to the player the tools to solve the puzzles? And most importantly, is the goal of the levels clear?

- Level Design:  in a good puzzle level the most intuitive attempt should lead to a logical contradiction where the puzzle can't be solved (it is called "the catch",  see the video for more info). A puzzle game where all the solutions are the most obvious ones tends to be boring.

- Difficulty Curve: all puzzle games start with an easy level and then the difficulty progression increases over time. A puzzle game that starts with a difficult level will probably make the player ragequit , but a puzzle game with all easy levels is just not fun to play.

- Innovation: be creative! Is the game a rip-off of another puzzle game or something original?

To understand more about this criteria, I strongly recommend you to watch this awesome video of Game Maker's Toolkit:

Rules:

- No NSFW content

- You can use any game engine you want and make a game for any platform you want (making a build for Windows is recommended)

- The game must be developed only within the time frame of the jam

- You can use assets or old scripts, my suggestion is to focus mainly on creating good puzzle levels