Are you just starting out with game development or are you already an experienced game developer? Do you want to create a horror game? Are you looking for a game jam to motivate you to finally finish something? Are you willing to follow a certain theme, in order to find inspiration and maybe try something else you wouldn't normally consider? Whether you plan to make a serious, dark horror masterpiece or a B-movie style game about typical horror movie protagonists going into spooky places where no sane man would ever dare to tread, this game jam is for you! Hopefully, at the end of the game jam you will have something playable you can be proud of!

Theme: Searing Light

Bonus Challenges: Unlike the Theme, these are entirely optional. Feel free to do one, two, all of them or ignore them completely.

For this game jam, the optional challenges are the following three.

1 - Let There Be Light: There is a scene in the game where an area shrouded in darkness suddenly lights up.

2 - Stay In The Shadows: Brightly lit areas are dangerous and staying too long in them has some kind of negative effect. (for example: blurred vision, health drain, enemies spawn, neutral NPCs become hostile etc.)

3 - Shelter in the Darkness: Staying in dark areas has some benefit other than just making it harder for enemies to detect you (For example: regenerating health, increased attack damage, weakening enemies that wander into dark areas etc.)

Discord: Here's the link to the Discord server!

Rules:

- You can only start working on the actual game project after the submission period starts, but you can start planning and creating/gathering assets and other resources before that time.

- There's no restriction on the Engine, Libraries or Framework you can use to develop your game. Feel free to use Godot, Unity, Unreal Engine, Game Maker Studio, Construct, Pixel Game Maker, Adventure Game Studio, RPG Maker or anything else you want.

- Your game must be a horror game, or atleast have horror elements. It doesn't have to be outright scary, so long as it can even remotely be considered one.

- You can use premade assets, so long as you have the rights/license to use them, abide by their Terms of Use and give credit.

- Your game must incorporate the Theme in some way.

- Abide by itch.io's Terms of Service.

- Provide content warnings for your game if needed. This includes marking the game as Adult Content if it's necessary.

 Suggestions:

- Try to include a Browser version of your game if you can. It's not a requirement and you don't have to do so, but you will get a lot more people to play your game if it can be played in a browser.

- If you use Unreal Engine to make your game and it's not a VR game, make sure to uncheck the "Start in VR" option in project settings, just so that it doesn't Steam VR when people try to play your game.

- If you wish to create a game with an optional VR mode in Unreal Engine, you should either include  an option in the Game Settings to turn VR mode on, or include two separate versions for download, one with VR enabled and one with it disabled.