September 12, 2025 marks the two year anniversary of TBFighters- an online community of Nerdfighters and global health activists who are committed to fighting the structural causes of tuberculosis, the world's deadliest infectious disease. To celebrate, we're hosting our first ever game jam!

What is the theme?

Our theme is TUBERCULOSIS. 

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by a bacteria called mycobacterium tuberculosis. In 2023, 10 million people were diagnosed with TB and 1.25 million people died of it -- more than malaria, typhoid, and war combined.

Yet it’s fully curable, and has been for over seventy years. Testing and treatment are prohibitively expensive, and access to appropriate care is inequitably distributed. One in four people with TB will never be diagnosed, and one in three will never get treatment.

This game jam is dedicated to using gaming and other creative means of storytelling to educate about tuberculosis and highlight the ways we can (and currently are!) fighting this disease of injustice. Your game can be themed around the bacterium itself, past TBFighter campaigns, John Green's Everything Is Tuberculosis, things that have been affected by/caused by TB (like cowboy hats or vampires), or anything else you can think of!

What is a game jam?

A game jam is an online event where people create games at the same time around a certain theme. Over the course of the next month, you and many others around the world can create a game in our theme and submit it to our jam. When you do, it will be showcased on our jam page, where other TBFighters and gamers can download and play your game. 

All kinds of games (or even not-games) are welcome! Some ideas to get you started:

• a video game
• a one-page TTRPG (table-top role playing game)
• an adventure for an existing TTRPG system like Dungeons and Dragons or Call of Cthulhu
• a board game, card game, or party game (or a hack of an existing one!)
• a choose-your-own-adventure novel
• a journaling game (like The Book Of Good Times)
• or something else entirely!

Wait, How Do I Make A Game About Tuberculosis?

If you're interested in learning more about the intersection of gaming and public health education, you can learn more from some of the following links:

• http://blogs.springer.com/ijph/food-for-thought/public-health-fun-the-use-of-gam...
• https://www.thehastingscenter.org/social-change-games-can-help-us-understand-the...

If you're looking for examples of gamifying global health education, take a look at:

• The Last Straw - A board game about the social determinants of health.
• A Snakes and Ladders hack that helps show the journeys of TB and HIV patients' treatments.
• A ping pong activity that Tamia TB uses to educate kids about how TB is spread through the lungs.

If you've never made a game before, here are some great places to get started!

• You Have Two Stats - a guide to making one page table-top role playing games (TTRPGs) by Litza Bronwyn.
• Ten Things Every Game Needs by Mark Rosewater, the head designer for Magic: The Gathering. 
• A guide to making a choose your own adventure story in a Google Form. (If you want to use a slightly more advanced, dedicated choose your own adventure maker, you can check out Twine!)
• How To Design A Card Game by Duck Sauce, frequent hosts of game jams! This guide is geared more towards creating Magic The Gathering/Yu-gi-oh style card battlers, but has some great wisdom for card games of all types!

Your game can be as big or as small, as detailed or as simple as you want. We encourage you to get creative!

The Boring Stuff

• This is an NON-RANKED game jam, meaning there is no ranking criteria or winner of this jam. 
• Your game does not have to have been created specifically for this jam in order to be submitted.
• If you use any elements that belong to someone else, make sure to give them credit! We also ask that you do not use generative AI.
• If you choose to make your game paid, we encourage you to donate some or all of the proceeds to organizations fighting TB, like Partners In Health! We also ask you to consider adding community copies or using a pay-what-you-can model so that those who many not be able to afford your game can also enjoy it.
• Please list any relevant content warnings for your game, if applicable.
• We ask that you aim to keep your games family-friendly (PG-13). Any submissions that go against our activism guidelines may be removed.

Have fun! And, as they say in our hometown, Don't Forget To Be Awesome!