ACM Studio is proud to be hosting Gift Jam 2026! For those who don't know what a game jam is, it's an event where you and your team will have 72 hours to build a game from scratch based on a theme. This is a great opportunity to meet new people, pick up some new skills, and compete as a beginner or even create a more polished portfolio piece! 🎮✨

Gift Jam

  Friday (1/23), 6 PM | Boelter Hall 4760

What is gift jam? It combines creativity and strategy into a three day game jam. You will team up, brainstorm 3 awesome game concepts, and then GIFT them to another team, possibly stealing some themes along the way! It will be a fun, little white elephant draft, so you can choose which gifted idea sparks your game dev passion!  It's all happening January 23rd-26th!

The Gift Jam kickoff will be on Friday, January 23rd at 6:00 PM in Boelter Hall 4760! This is when teams will write down their three unique game ideas. At 6:30 PM, we will begin the white elephant draft. The jam officially starts at 7:00 PM on Friday,  January 23rd and will end at 7:30 PM on Monday, January 26th. Discord text + voice channels for your team will be available in the ACM Studio Game Jams Discord Server. feel free to use them to coordinate your team! 

You can compete solo, with a pre-made team, or be placed into a team through ACM Studio! Everybody is welcome, regardless of experience level. By participating in this game jam you'll gain insight into game development and your passion and skillset can snowball from there!

Theme

You will have a theme chosen by another team!

RULES

1.  Your game must include an axolotl! You can make the axolotl the player, the sidekick, the enemy, or even the final boss, as long as it is included in your final entry! In addition, you must follow the theme!

2. You must submit your game as a WebGL / HTML5 build so that it can be played in browser. Only if you are absolutely not able to do a web build should you create a windows build.

3. Your game must be playable with a keyboard and/or mouse in order to be eligible to be put on the ACM Studio website.

4. In order to receive a prize from the game jam, you need to currently be enrolled as a UCLA  student. You can still participate in the game jam if not, you will just not be eligible to receive a prize.

5.  No using any type of generative AI for game assets! Generative AI is lame! 

If you have any other questions about the game jam rules, ask in the help channel on Discord!