The judge archive has been populated and verified ahead of schedule, so you're now able to update your submissions for your viewers! Whatever was present when the archive was built is what will be judged, so feel free to update your submissions to take care of bugs!
Don't forget to check out the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam! category on Twitch!
If you've enjoyed the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam this year, consider checking out some of the ways to support the community responsible for it! The community has a Patreon and Discord subscriptions, and any donations made to the Make Visual Novels! packs go back to the community in the form of paying for website hosting for the very helpful wiki, funding prizes for big competitions like this one, and paying speakers, educators and creatives in our community for their hard work!
Now back to our regularly scheduled jam page!
Welcome to our 6th annual Spooktober Visual Novel Jam! We are running a competition with prizes based around the best holiday of the year!
Here's how it works. During the month September, participants will create submissions based around Halloween related themes. Then, through the month of October, we'll invite itch users, streamers and visual novel lovers to join in to celebrate and vote on their favorites! Prizes will be awarded to teams selected by our judge panel!
We are DevTalk! We represent a vibrant and diverse community of visual novel creative professionals and hobbyists. Our objective is to provide a safe learning space for people to develop professional skills related to visual novels, provide networking opportunities focused around actionable problem solving. Our community, between jams we host or support, our bots, and our helpful Discord Server, helps over 500 visual novels get created annually, many of which are available here on on Itch.io!
The Spooktober Visual Novel Jam is our biggest event of the year, and is our only sponsor backed event. We hope that Spooktober Visual Novel Jam being the competitive event that it is will encourage game developers to try their hand at visual novels using any and all of their skills, and inspire existing visual novel developers to shoot for the sky with their submissions.
In this Game Jam, you are tasked for completing a spooky or Halloween themed visual novel. This could mean...
Offshoots, spin offs, and 'fan-disc' style submissions are allowed and encouraged! Please see this from our community if you intend on making a spin off entry.
We will be offering awards for the following categories! Awards do not have prizes unless otherwise noted.
Submission based criteria:
Creator based criteria:
Jam ends October 1st and judging ends October 28th! Extensions may be requested, but it disqualifies your team from prizes!
You are permitted to create concept art, written outlines and log lines prior to the start date. With the exception of the log line, these prior creations cannot be used as-is in your final submissions.
Please be mindful of commonly reported content descriptors!
The ESRB's content descriptors are a good guideline of what we want to be mindful of!
Our judges do not wish to review and rank sexually explicit content, and many of our participants and audience are minors in their location.
We won't complain if you change it after the jam.
Our judges do not wish to review content where upon suicide or self-harm is promoted, glorified, or instructed. In the past, participants have submitted pranks raising alarm about their own state, and the stress associated with having to handle these situations are not something we expect our judges to need to deal with.
Text, whether in-game or in the non-executable files of the submission, containing instructions, encouragement of, or statement of intent of suicide or self-harm are similarly disqualified and reported to Itch.IO staff where applicable.
If you do not feel safe or have ideations of self-harm or suicide, please visit the find a helpline site to find a crisis helpline in your country!
Jams can be tough, and it can be hard to create a complete experience on your own in such a limited time frame. We encourage utilizing pre-existing, pre-packaged assets to help supplement your development to ease the burdens of skill and time.
Note: Third party means it was not created by you, or on your behalf.
Humans must illustrate, write, program, etc every part of your submission!
Be mindful if you are using third party assets as per the previous rule, as this extends to 3rd party assets.
In order to judge your entries, we need to be able to download them, and afford to download them. You're welcome to charge for your submissions after the judging period.
Running our competition in September means your visual novels will be ready by October. While Halloween is only one day of the year, people will consume Halloween and horror content leading up to the holiday, after which it sharply declines. Timely releases make your visual novels more likely to be seen, and we want visual novels to be seen!
Yes! In fact, we encourage it!
We download ALL of the submissions at the point where the jam closes and we judge that copy of the submissions. Those copies cannot be updated, but you can update and fix your submissions for your players.
In order to be eligible for prizes, you must be able to enable payment through Itch.IO and accept funds from Itch.IO. Special category winners may optionally accept prize distributions through PayPal or agreed upon distribution. Those not eligible for prizes due to pay out limitations are still eligible for awards that do not carry a prize.
In addition to the above, sponsors of the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam or those acting on their behalf are not eligible for prizes OR awards. The Spooktober Visual Novel Jam staff, judges, administrators, as well as their families, employers or those employed by, with, or under aforementioned competition officials are similarly ineligible for prizes but may still otherwise participate in the event.
Prizes and awards that would otherwise be given to an ineligible participant will be given instead to the next eligible runner up.
The Spooktober Visual Novel Jam staff do not distribute funds directly to individual team members. Prizes are distributed directly to the owner of the account that submits a prize winning entry, and the owner of that account is responsible for managing the prize distribution amongst team members.
We encourage teams to plan for success! Be sure to have an agreement amongst your team members about how prizes your team wins will be distributed.
As long as it fits the above criteria and was created within the same time span as this jam, then yes!
Yes! Inquire on our Discord Server or at Nai@SpooktoberVNJam.com
Yes! Please do. Logos, graphical attribution (e.g, PFPs for team members, plugin/engine graphics, etc) and similar assets representing makers of the game that would ordinarily be included on a splash screen, on the title screen, or in a credits section, are fine to be included.
Yes! Actually we appreciate it if you do. Using the logo in your submission helps us quickly identify that the game was made for Spooktober VN Jam and it helps readers find your fellow jam participants through the name of the jam!
You are welcome to remix the logo to fit your game's aesthetic, keeping the same general shape and the words 'Spooktober Visual Novel Jam' in their arrangement. You may not, however, include an exclamation mark on the right end of the logo. You can find a copy of the logo at the bottom of this page!
We expect that people be allowed to stream and consume the content during the month of October freely. If you'd like to add a price after October 31st, we won't object.
We claim no ownership of any jam game submitted. By submitting to the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam, you do agree to allow the hosts of Spooktober Visual Novel Jam and its sponsors to use all or part of your submissions for jam promotion and sponsorship news purposes. (It's usually just a screen shot or short video clip)
If you have any concerns about your jam submission, whether it be a rule based on or you'd just like some feedback on improving it before submitting, check out our Discord server.
The community votes are publicly visible on Itch.IO.
The Judge rankings that are publicly visible are only the three main prize winning submissions and the special category winners and nominees. A combined list of short listed and honorable mentions will be added to this page in addition to that for all submissions that make it to final judgement or are of special interest to one or more of the judges.
Short answer: No. All of the judges do not read all of the entries. At least two judges will evaluate each submission.
For the first pass of judgement, two judges are assigned to each submission to determine whether or not it is likely a submission will be able to compete in the top 10 entries for the competition. Those that are confirmed as potential contenders for ranking are added to the 'Short List.'
Entries that make it past the first pass of judgement are then read by all of the judges, and then ranked accordingly.
Yes and no.
Judges are permitted to write reviews if the team lead of the project specifically asks for a written review from the judges. This does not mean a request will be fulfilled, as the judges can elect not to give feedback.
We'd like to thank all of our sponsors for making this year possible! Without their help, we couldn't keep Spooktober VN Jam the competitive event that it is!
Since 1996 JASTUSA has been publishing Japanese video games and visual novels and had joined our sponsors again this year! They'll be judging their own special category, Best Boys Love submission!
Light.VN is a new sponsor to the competition this year. Light.VN is a visual novel engine originating in Japan that's made its way over into the English speaking word. You can get their visual novel engine right here on itch.io!
Light.VN is a recently translated visual novel engine from Japan and they've come to the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam to support creators world wide! We're greatly impressed with its simple scripting and ability to support many of the advanced features our community has been asking for. As a thanks to their efforts, we'll also be offering a $250 prize from the community for the best Light.VN submission this year!
You can check out the engine here on itch.io
We're also joined this year by
Our sponsors typically run various specials around the time of the competition that you can take advantage of, so be sure to check out their sites for more information.
Specifically for Vograce, you can use coupon code SpooktoberVNJ-8 for a flat 8 dollars off of your purchase from their store. Vograce is a trusted supplier of character themed merch that our community uses, and we're happy to be able to offer this promotion as part of our competition! If you get merch made of your submissions, be sure to share pictures!
Our sponsorship drive for 2024 is officially closed! If you're interested in reaching out to us for 2025 or future years, please e-mail us at Nai@SpooktoberVNJam.com
Grand Prizes, awarded to submissions as judged by our judging panel.
Special categories, awarded to the individual team member responsible.
And thanks to supporters like YOU, we're able to afford 3 more special categories this year!
Sponsor Categories, awarded to the submitter of the selected submissions.
This year, we will be joined by Chizu Koyote-chan in celebrating in October! You can catch her streams covering YOUR submissions every Friday in October, and she will be co-hosting our awards show at the end of October!