What is this event?

This is a game jam being hosted by Arctic Game at Umeå University. A game jam is like game development speedrunning event; people of all experience levels (yes even newcomers)  form small groups to make a game in a short period of time. Game Jams provide the perfect territory for testing fun new ideas, meeting new people, and building on/ trying out new skills! 

They're amazing. Trust me. They can even be serious pivot points for studios to abandon everything & follow a new project, or the beginning of an entirely new studio (looking at you, Team Cherry). Ours also has some prizes.

Our recent jam in Jörn for example, led to 19 new games being playable & publicly available:

Details

📅 When: May 9-11 Onsite

➕ Extra  Polish Week: May 11-18 Online

🎟️ Tickets: Here

📍Where: Rotunda, Umeå University

💬 Channels: Join our Discord

Theme

Getting Ready

• Form a team (or go lone wolf 🐺)
• Join our Discord, which has dedicated game jam channels! 💜
• Come up with a team name (the more it sounds like an actual studio, the better) 📛
• Come up with a store-ready name for your game! ✨
• Try to have all game design done by the end of the first day! The sooner you start producing, the better! 🔥
• Aim simple! Then polish polish polish 💅

Refresher

• View the opening presentation again here
• This starts as an onsite jam hosted by Arctic Game & Umeå University in the North of Sweden
• All entries should try to interpret our theme uniquely, but understandably so
  
• Participants have 48 hours (May 9 - 11) to develop a basic playable of an entirely new game onsite.
• It then continues as an optional online extension so teams can add extra polish & ready for public consumption

Why an extension?

To keep the ball rolling & give your 

game ideas a proper chance to shine! 

Game Jams go by so fast & with such intensity that it's often difficult to keep things going afterwards. Many brilliant ideas get abandoned and are forever related to existing on a single hard drive in an unfortunately buggy state. We want to give you all a chance to refine them so they can be played by more people & potentially grow to become bigger projects!

Submission

Important Info:

• The final deadline to upload your game is:  Sunday 18th May - 9pm CEST
• Submit as a zipped .exe or WebGL upload or similar
• Can reupload as many times as needed (good to test the process)
• Add admins to share the editing/ uploading process by clicking the admin tab while editing your game on Itch
• Public voting ends 24 hours after the submission deadline

Your game:

• This is a polished prototype
• Focus on it being playable and frustration-free!
• List controls in the description if they're not in the game 
• Can also use the description to provide story setup & background info not covered by the prototype

Uploading a build:

• The final deadline to upload your game is: Sunday 2nd February @ 18:00  CEST
• Submit as a zipped .exe or WebGL upload or similar
• Can reupload as many times as needed (good to test the process)
• Add admins to share the edit/ uploading process by clicking the admin tab while editing your game page
• Public voting ends 1 week after the submission deadline

Voting Process

For this game jam, we're opening up the voting for public voting! Anyone is welcome to come and play! It's expected that the bulk of players will come from the network of us & the jammers, so...

Share! Share! Share!

To keep things as fair as possible, we are also using the recommended rating queue system to minimise cheating, or keep a team with a big social media following from having an advantage. This means you'll have to play 5 games minimum before your rankings are counted.

Voting Criteria

When you are playing these games, pay a little attention to these following categories & try to judge fairly and indiscriminately:

Relevance to the theme!

• Did the game follow the theme?
• Or was it ignored?
• Did they approach it in a clever or unique way

Playability

• Was the game  clear and easy play?
• Did the game work okay, or was it crashing & buggy?

Art

• Everyone has their own taste, so be objective
• Did the art have a good consistency?
• Did it suit the game?

Story

• Did the game have a story? 
• Maybe just in the description?
• Did it work well with the gameplay

Unusualness

• Did this game stand out?
• Or did it feel too generic

Addictiveness

• Could you see yourself playing this game more?
• Or maybe  you have a feeling that it will be a very memorable experience

All of these criteria will be ranked from 0 to 5 stars!

Extra Achievements

There are also achievements that you can tick off as an extra challenge, beyond matching the theme!

Extra achievements (collect 3 to get a badge!):

• Include a pun about restoring
• Don't use Unity, Godot or Unreal!
• Don't make a platformer
• Use unusual controls
• Incorporate one of the UN'S 17 goals
• Add a secret easter egg

Some digital badges/ diplomas will be sent out to the overall winner & for some extra categories, to display on your itch.io page & beyond (Steam, pitch documents, etc.)!

Want To Take It Further?

The winner of the 48-hour jam will get to meet with a publisher.  Get ready for this opportunity by levelling-up your game and submitting a GDD too:

Game Design Document:

• A planning document that gives a big picture of what a full-game version wouöd be lke
• Submit as a downloadable PDF
• Here's a sample GDD for reference

Sharing is Caring

Please tag @arcticgame and @umeauniversitet when sharing on socials! We will reshare posts & give you more exposure! 

There's also a chance for your game to be featured in an article covering the event. Reach out to Harry about this!

There may also be chances for games to be featured in Arctic Game events, such as at a Café på Bit game night!

Hosted by Harry Heath & Dimitra Papacosta!

Thanks to Umeå University, Arctic Game, FutureGames & A Working Lab for making this possible. 

The jam was further funded by the EU as part of the project Game Attraction North.

Sponsors: Algoryx, Latitude 65 & elastisys