The TU CSE GameJam is a game jam series hosted by the CSE Department and Dr. Jon Denning and run by students at Taylor University. A game jam is a short, fun, and intense party during which students get together to develop a video game from scratch. Regardless of major or knowledge of programming, all TU students are invited to participate!

The Spring 2023 Edition of the GameJam is scheduled for 2023 Apr 27–29. The competition will start with a soft start on Thursday at 6PM and a hard start on Friday at 6PM and end 10PM Saturday evening. The competition will be held in Euler 217/218.

Similar to F2022, each team can have at most 2 programmers but any number of other members (designer of graphics, music, sound, storyboard, character, level, etc.). All Taylor students are invited, from any major, not just CSE students or programmers. Freshmen are encouraged to participate. Bringing friends is also welcomed. The competition has a $10/participant fee to help cover cost of trophies, snacks, and drinks.

We will use itch.io for submitting games.  Ideally, games should be exported so they are playable from the browser (upload as HTML+JS+CSS).  Most game engines support this as an export option.  Other game formats will be accepted, but web-based games are strongly preferred.

Listed below are the judging criteria:

• full game with proper UI (title screen, etc.)
• incorporate novel music
• incorporate novel artwork
• iterative design that incorporates playtesting
• good interaction with GameJam theme
• fun to play
• arcade-able (does it feel like an arcade game)
• implementation difficulty

Any included artwork, sounds, and music must be permissibly licensed!  No copyrighted material!  (ex: CC0 or CC BY 3.0 are good licenses)

The relevant rules for the upcoming GameJam are:

• You may use any permissible (CC0 and the like) graphic assets, sound effects, music, fonts, etc. No copyrighted media.
• You may use any engine, but know that the games will be submitted here and judged from a Windows machine. You will have a chance to test your game on the machine throughout the contest.
• All code for the GameJam must be started from scratch on Friday, April 28 at 6pm! You are free to try out ideas before then (ex: try out various mechanics), but you must recreate that code from scratch after 6pm on Friday. Talk with me if you have questions!
• Each team can have a maximum of 2 coders, but may have any number of artists, musicians, writers, etc.
• All game development should end and presentation development and submissions should begin at the competition's Soft End at 8:30pm on Saturday, April 29.
• Submissions close at the Hard End at 9:45pm on Saturday, April 29.

And finally, teams will have the opportunity to Dr. Denning recently picked up an X-arcade Tankstick game controller that has two controller sticks, lots of buttons (20+), and a trackball (see image below). Also, Mr. Rob Cartwright donated an X-Arcade Dual Joystick controller to the CSE Department. The Dual Joystick is similar to the Tankstick, just without the trackball. Your team is welcome to design your game around these controllers. They will be connected to the judging machine. Click here for more details on the Tankstick controller.