Theme: Theatre of the Grotesque

Bonus Challenges: Unlike the Theme, these are entirely optional. Feel free to do one, two, all of them or ignore them completely.

For this game jam, the optional challenges are the following three:

1 - Body Horror: The game focuses on body horror.

2 - Stick to the Script: There's a puzzle in the game where you are supposed to reenact a scene in a play according to a script.

3 - Animal Masks: The game features figures wearing animal masks.

About the Jam:

RPG Maker has spawned many great horror games and now it's time to create games in the style of these classics! You are welcome to join this jam no matter if you are a beginner or an experienced developer, so long as you want to create a game inspired by traditional RPG Maker horror games. Hopefully, at the end of the game jam you will have something playable you can be proud of!

About the Theme:

In the 20th century, there was a dramatic movement called Theatre of the Grotesque. It focused on surreal comedy, rejecting that which was seen as natural and proper, taking refuge in absurdism and bringing together until then conflicting concepts. Masks, facepaint and elaborate props and costumes would be frequently used on stage to help create the desired effect.

Animals would take on human features or vice versa, human features would be exaggerated and distorted, boundaries would be pushed. All in the pursuit of creating art not limited to mundane reality, one which disorients and unnerves the audience, questions any objective view of reality and laughs at any attempts to make sense of it.

But we aren't here for an art history lesson. We are here to make games, ones that involve a place where the pursuit of dramatic art went far beyond the boundaries of what's sane or even thought possible. A theatre where even reality itself broke apart, unable to stand in the way of a mad playwright's magnum opus. Where the truly grotesque is a fact of life and that which is mundane is strange and out of place.

Lean, shadowy figures hiding their faces behind animal masks seem to keep this show running, handling the stage lights, props and any other busywork that needs to be done. The stage is filled with actors that might once have been human, but their bodies are so monstrously twisted that it's hard to believe it, engaged in a performance that is as horrific as it is oddly captivating. The audience is filled with all sorts of beings, humans or otherwise. Some eager to be there, others held captive, forced to watch the performance until they too become just a part of the ecstatic crowd.

One of them might be the protagonist of your game!

But perhaps that is not the case. Perhaps your protagonist is among the actors, counting the days before their body too will twist in grotesque ways to better fit their assigned role in this strange play. Will they ever be permitted to leave this horrific show? Maybe they are the ones who are in control, a willing participant in all of this? Maybe even the mastermind?

Or maybe everything is completely different from what was previously described! As always, it's all up to you!

Discord: Here's the link to the Discord server!

Rules:

- You can only start working on the actual game project after the submission period starts, but you can start planning and creating/gathering assets, plugins and other resources before that time.

- Entries created in any version of RPG Maker are preferred, but you can use any engine or framework, so long as you keep to the spirit of RPG Maker horror games.

- Your game must be a horror game, or atleast have horror elements. It doesn't have to be outright scary, so long as it can even remotely be considered one.

- You can use whatever assets, resources and scripts/plugins you want, so long as you have the rights to use them, abide by their Terms of Use and give credit.

- Your game must incorporate the Theme in some way.

- Abide by itch.io's Terms of Service.

- There has to be some kind of free version of your game made available for the duration of the both this game jam's submission period and also its rating period, be it a free demo version or the game itself being free for a limited time. This requirement no longer applies after the game jam ends.

- Suggestions: If you use RPG Maker MV or MZ to make your game, try to include a Browser version of your game if you can. It's not a requirement and you don't have to do so, but you will get a lot more people to play your game if it can be played in a browser.

Art by: Broody Gaming