SACRIFICE! hmm... I wonder what you could do with this... guess we gotta wait and see! Get as creative as you like, and I hope you all enjoy this year's jam!
Good luck! To be honest on the discord server some other people were asking about how far is *too far*, so I just wanna preface this if you ever do feel like making the dark/cult game :p If you think it's bordering the NSFW line, then just add a warning at the start of your game and/or on the itch page, as it helps a ton with moderation and just making sure everyone has the best experience.
For example it's quite hard to have a theme like sacrifice as a Halloween story mechanic, without having a lil' bit of blood here and there haha, as long as you just make it clear what's gonna be in the game then it's fine. Same applies for anything religious that could potentially be offensive or anything, so if you're not sure if it's too much or not, just to be safe I'd put a warning somewhere.
Anywho, that was a bit of a rant sorry. Super excited to see what you make and have fun!
"This 7 day long jam requires you to make a Halloween themed game, with an added theme [sacrifice], announced on the 24th!
馃槺 The games can be any genre, NOT just horror. We want to see different kinds of games, be creative!"
Can you explain? Any-genre + halloween + sacrifice...? What is a halloween theme outside of the event itself and its icons like pumpkins? Most ppl would say horror. Its horror. Tv says its horror. simpsons halloween eps were varied outside the halloween event, but they were all about horror. alien is scifi but its horror...so its halloween themed. But then alien without horror...how is that halloween themed?
Do i need to just link it to either horror or anygenre+halloween symbolism (pumpkin,ghost sprites)?? then add sacrifice to that somehow? is that the bottomline?
Not a host but I think you can still create a Halloween themed game without horror elements. For example: Witch Racing Game, Ghost Maze, Pumpkin Parkour, Skeleton Dance Off, Demon Dating-Sim... On another thread one of the hosts said the following about the theme, "However if you don't want to use it [theme] then that's completely fine too! Jams themes are just there to try and provoke new or unique mechanics but as always you don't have to use it if you don't want to". I bet if you linked your game to anything stereotypical "Halloween" themed could fit.
That's what I mean. There's halloween in and of itself, then there's content that has nothing to do with the day and its symbols that is considered halloween like what u see on tv....and this is almost always horror genre. Stephen king movies for examples all seem to be considered halloween worthy regardless of the monster at play...cause its all horror.. The time machine had the morlocks, who would be considered halloween worthy creatures, but without those it probably wouldn't be considered a halloween tv worthy. idk how u make a childrens game with halloween pumpkins and then add the theme of sacrifice to the mix.
I'm trying to think of how to do a 2d vertical scoller shooter like ikaruga. The theme sacrifice is easy, done. Halloween tho...what does that mean? My pilot is a ghost? is that halloween enough? its horror themed, is that enough? the colour scheme? what combination can i do short of making everything pumpkins sprites.
It's not that strict of a theme. It's more just like, use it as inspiration and if it goes off the wall a bit then that's fine. The word "Sacrifice" could be taken in many other ways, for example you could use "Halloween" elements (pumpkins, etc), but then you could interpret the sacrifice as something other than like a ritual sacrifice. With that in mind you could quite easily use the Halloween theme and make it fun, bright, etc. I don't think anybody is going to score you low because it's not scary or doesn't have a ritual scene. It's really just a springboard to get you going.
"Halloween" is a super rough guideline because we didn't want to restrict people to just "Horror" or "Ghost" or anything like that. You can theme the levels with halloween themed creatures and assets, for example, or just have the main character as a ghost. Pretty much anything you yourself consider to be Halloween-themed can work. Also there's a rule which says the game doesn't have to be horror and that we want to encourage people to be creative, so I have a feeling that the majority of the games won't be horror. Hopefully this helped and good luck on your game!
I have a little idea on how I am going to do a sacrifice mechanic in my 2D Pixel RPG but it will not be easy to implement:
My Game is about a Pumpkin that needs to escape the Devil鈥檚 castle and then play mini games with him.
I will be doing a system with objects that you will need to sacrifice objects to the Devil 馃懣 but I will first need to implement an inventory. (Never done one before)