Submissions open from 2026-02-01 07:00:00 to 2026-03-01 07:00:00
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🔞 Adults only, please! Sexual content ahoy. 🔞

Truly unbelievable that we've been doing this for nine years now.

Let's make some horny games!

Strawberry Jam is a shameless effort to expand the world of horny games!  Spend all of February making a game, then the first half of March playing everyone else's games.  There's rating as well, but it's pretty low-pressure, because there are no prizes!

Quick links:

  • Strawberry Jam Discord — Like the jam forum but more real-time.  Talk to people, ask for help, post progress screenshots, etc.
  • Strawberry Jam finalists — An Itch collection of every game that has placed top 3 in any category in any Strawberry Jam.  Excellent source of inspiration, or just a sense of the vibes.

"Theme"

This year's theme is fusion!  Fuse anything with anything...  or anyone with anyone, in whatever combination you desire.

Or don't!  The theme is only there if you need some inspiration — there's no penalty for not using it, and no bonus for using it.  Except that people who are into fusion will probably like your game more.  Also I am one of those people.

But feel free to do whatever you like!  Yes, that!  That thing.  Show us that thing you like.  Make a game about that.

Strawberry Jam is about horny games, broadly construed.  We've had transformation platformers, physics penetration sims, interactive DVDs, completely abstract puzzle games, wiener-based sokoban variants...  you get the idea.  After eight of these, I have never rejected a game for being not horny enough, or not game enough!  Show us something from the secret corners of your heart that we've never seen before!

Rules

Make your game during February, mostly!  Bear in mind that the spirit of a game jam is to make a new game in a relatively short time.  If you have an existing prototype that you're desperate for an excuse to finish, that's okay and I don't want to discourage it — but please use the field when you submit to let everyone know how much work you actually did during the jam, so we can judge appropriately.  (Planning beforehand is, of course, totally fine, as is using existing generic code etc.  If it's fine for Ludum Dare then it's definitely fine here.)

Be thoughtful!  After all, your fellow devs will be playing your game, and they might not be into your thing.  Try to capture the core of what gets your motor running, and why.  I know it's easy enough to say that monsters in your platformer do unsolicited sex to the player just because, but if someone who's not a casual dubcon fan is playing, some justification can make that more palatable.  Just be self-aware, especially with more intense themes!

If your game is explicit, flag it as NSFW!  There's a checkbox on the "Metadata" tab when you submit/edit a game.

Be accessible where possible!  If your fellow devs can't play your game, they definitely can't rate it.  Cross-platform (Linux/Mac/Windows) is good; a Web player is great.  Please also prefer ZIP over RAR, and check the appropriate platform boxes when you upload your game files — otherwise the Itch app might not be able to run them!

No generative AI!  If no one made it, why would anyone play it?  Not for art, not for references, not for dialogue, not for code.  Do not use it.  If you have to ask, don't do it.  Pretend it is still 2017 and the best we have is a thing that makes weird dreams of dogs.

Ratings

Everyone who worked on a game has the first two weeks of March to rate other games.  (See the FAQ about teams.)

Please make some time to play other games!  And leave a thoughtful comment if you can, too!  You likely won't be able to play every single game, but do what you can.  Definitely make an effort to try out the games that have the fewest ratings, too.

There are too many voting categories and I don't know why Itch lets me have so many.  They're all intentionally broad, so interpret them however you like.  I just want to give everyone as many chances as possible to be recognized for making something cool.

  • Play — Is this a game?  Do you enjoy playing it?  What is a game, anyway?
  • Aesthetic — Do you like looking at it?  Would you like to look at it some more?
  • Sound — Does it make noise?  Is the noise good?
  • Narrative — Do things happen?  Do those things cause other things to happen?
  • Horny — Is this horny?  Is it horny to someone else?  Was this for sure the creation of a horny mind?
  • Kink — Do you get the feeling that there's a very niche art community about whatever's going on here?
  • Stealth — Could you play this at work and your boss would only be a normal amount of mad that you're playing a game instead of working, not double mad that the game you're playing is also obviously some kind of porn game?
  • Harmony — Does the horny mesh seamlessly with the game and its world?  Is this the opposite of those ten thousand Hentai Girls games on the Switch?
  • Novelty — Has this broadened your understanding of what a horny game could be?
  • Ambition — Is this obviously ludicrous to have attempted in a month, even if it wasn't finished?

No matter what ratings you get, please don't feel bad about them!  You still made something, and that's very cool of you.

FAQ

What on earth time zone are the deadlines in? The one I live in — mountin' time  😉

Are teams allowed?  Sure!  Remember to add your teammates as collaborators, so they can rate games too — edit your game, go to More → Admins, send them admin invites, and make sure they accept.  This will also list the game on their Itch pages, which is nice.

Can I use free assets? Sure, as long as they're the work of sentient life!  But mention it when you submit, so we're not giving you credit for making something you didn't make.

Can I fix bugs in my game once judging starts?  Yes!  Please do!  Especially if they're game-breaking!  But hold off on major updates until after the judging is done, so everyone's playing generally the same thing.

Why is my score lower than my "raw score"? If a game gets "too few" ratings (less than the median number of ratings), Itch lowers the scores a bit.  The idea is that if most people didn't play the game at all, that's a sign that something went wrong (like perhaps it just doesn't run).  Unfortunately, this does disadvantage certain kinds of entirely valid entries, like multiplayer games.  I cannot turn this off, so it's all the more reason to play as many games as you can, especially the ones that are low on ratings!

Help I have never made a video games before

That's okay!  Grab something, anything, and give it a shot.  Video games are big and complicated, it's true, but it's surprisingly easy to get something on the screen, and you can keep building up from there.  There are zillions of beginner-friendly game-making thingamajigs now, but here are a few of my favorites.

bitsy — makes teeny-tiny low-res games where you walk around and interact with things.  No programming required, and in fact programming it is pretty difficult.

Twine — makes choose-your-own-adventures with links between sections.  It's ultimately just HTML, so you can do artwork and fancy programming, but you can also just navigate between pages.

Flick — a sort of art-based simple alternative to Twine, where the player navigates by clicking on an image, and the color they click on determines where they go.  Sounds limiting, but I've seen some interesting things done with it.

Inform 7 — makes old-school text adventures where you TAKE BOTTLE and OPEN DOOR and JEREMY, ASK VERONICA ABOUT UNLOCKING THE DOOR WITH THE SPOON.  It's all programming, but the code is designed to read like English text, and making a small world with basic interactions is really easy.  Has an absolutely massive manual full of examples, too.  And you can add illustrations if you want!  No one has ever submitted an Inform game to Strawberry Jam no matter how many times I suggest it, so you could be the first!

And for programmers who've just never tried making a game:

LÖVE — a basic, unopinionated 2D Lua engine that I like a lot and have been using for years

PICO-8 — a retro-aesthetic "fantasy console", powered by Lua, with built-in tools for making art, sounds, music, and levels; it costs money, but also see the TIC-80, which is similar and open source

Godot — a big integrated Unity-style editor that does 5000 things and is entirely open source

Unity — some people like it

Other lists of possible game-making tools for beginners:

This is by no means exhaustive!  Definitely ask around if you need help with any of these, or are looking for other ideas.