Welcome one and all to the Sleepless Domain Community Game Jam 2025!

What's all this about?

We are the Sleepless Domain Discord Community! For a long time now, the discord has had Artgames running- games in which artists of every shape, style and level of ability come and draw something for a prompt, and then we all show them off to each other. For a few years now, there have also been Writegames, in which writers of every shape, style, and level of ability come to write fiction for a prompt, and then we all show them off to each other. The astute among you may have noticed a theme here, and let's be honest, it was inevitable that this was going to happen eventually. And in 2024, it did! People had a blast, so we're doing it again!

For the Sleepless Domain Community Game Jam 2025, we're once again going to have people of every shape, skillset and level of ability come together to make fun games to show off to each other! A prompt has been solicited from CubeWatermelon (to be revealed just before the jam begins) that you can use for inspiration if you need it, but if you already have ideas of your own, there's no obligation whatsoever to use it. There's no need for what you make to be complete, perfect, good, or even fun, all we ask is that you make something, learn from it, and have fun doing it. And if you're willing to, share it so we can have fun with it too!

Questions and Answers

What's a Sleepless Domain?

Sleepless Domain is a webcomic by Mary "CubeWatermelon" Cagle in which teenaged magical girls form the first line of defense against monsters intruding on the Great Barrier surrounding The City every night. During the day, those same girls have to juggle the stress of their nightly duty, the realities of being minor celebrities, and just being a teenaged girl, which is hard enough without all of that other stuff. We enjoy it a lot and are in a discord server that ostensibly talks about it but mostly talks about anything and everything, so don't feel any obligation to go binge-read the entire comic before joining up. We're happy to have you on board!

I don't/only know how to program/draw/make music/write, can I join in?

You sure can! If you fill out this form, join the discord linked above or post in the community forum for this jam, @Phillammon (the Jam organiser) is going to be doing some matchmaking to put teams of people together with complementary skillsets so anyone can join in and make something! If you prefer to work solo, though, there's plenty of good tools out there for making games with limited to no programming experience, if that's what you're lacking, and there's also no requirement that what you make be a video game- a board game or game book could work just fine, as might writing your own RPG or a supplement to an existing RPG, to name just a few examples. Want to make a newspaper puzzle page about the prompt? Knock yourself out!

I know how to do all of those things, do I have to be on a team?

Nope! No obligation at all. If you want to be matched up with folks anyway feel free to use the above channels to get matchmade, or come along with your own team on your own, if you don't feel free to just sign up solo. Either way works just fine.

How long have we got to make these games?

The jam begins proper on Friday the 3rd of January, 2024 and will conclude on Monday the 20th of the same month, giving you two weeks plus both weekends either side, with some fudging available for time zones. However, there's nothing stopping you getting started early, and if you want to submit late just get in contact with me via the jam forum or via discord and I can open up late submissions for you. We're not here to put you under time pressure, it's just there to try and make you get something complete.

What's the prompt/theme?

The prompt has been solicited from CubeWatermelon and will be made public both here and on the #artgame-arts channel at some point on Thursday the 2nd of January, the day before the Jam starts proper. However, if you look carefully at the banner and cover art above, you might be able to detect some hints!

The theme of the jam is Crimes! From murdering teenagers to doing maths to try and determine the height of said teenagers, we're no strangers to criminal behaviour here in the Sleepless Domain community, and thus Cube has provided Crimes as our theme for this year's jam! As always, feel free to interpret this theme however you like- more literal crimes, or the sort of crimes that involve evil fanfiction or mathematics- and as always feel free to ignore it altogether! The theme is just there to add things and give you ideas. If you already have an idea, all the more power to you!

How are we going to show these off?

Obviously we can't do parades in quite the same way that we typically do for artgames/writegames in the discord, but all of the games that are submitted to the jam will be available for download (in whatever form that may take) here on the Jam page, and additionally there will be at least one stream from Phillammon (and possibly other people too, interest has been shown by various folks) in which we play through all the entries to show 'em off!

That banner art is rad!

That's not a question, but it sure is! The artists responsible are, in no particular order:

• @pitohuiart (also found on tumblr and discord)
• Beefsen
• Hap
• Danelsan
• kategd
• @madamlava (on discord)
• Lina "rabbitlegs" Ciari
• TineWeaver
• CubeWatermelon
• Tenebrais

I have a different question!

By all means ask it! You can ask these questions either in the community forum for this jam (found in the links above) or by joining the Sleepless Domain Fans discord and mentioning @Phillammon (or directly messaging me, I'm not fussed)

I didn't read any of this, please summarize it in 140 characters or less like an old text message

Artgame game jam, January 3rd to 20th, ping Phillammon if you want to be paired up with team members, parade stream to follow at some point.