Near and far, young and old, people of every shape, ability and gender, welcome to Watch+Jam 7: I've Run Out Of Subtitle Ideas At This Point!

What a year, eh?

It's only May.

Nevertheless. We are here again, making garbage with our whole chests.

What's all this about?

You know what the problem with game jams is? Too much pressure to make actually good games. Not so here at the Watch + Jam!

• Can't make assets? No problem! Prefabs are on hand and on brand!
• Can't figure out how to fix a bug? Call it a feature!
• Game's not finished? Submit it anyway! Now it's  "episodic"!

The most important thing here, joking aside, is not to make garbage, but to make something and make sure you learn from the experience. If that sounds like your jam, well- this might just be your Jam.

The Watch+Jam is brought to you by fans of Loading Ready Run's Watch+Play show, where the very best of the very worst games the internet has to offer are inflicted upon Alex Steacy by Graham Stark (typically). Most of the chatter for this Jam will be going on on the Loading Ready Run discord, in the #watch-and-jam channel, so come join us there if you'd like to chat!

Questions and Answers

What's Watch+Play?

As noted above, Watch+Play is one of the many shows brought to us by variety streaming/internet comedy group Loading Ready Run, broadcasting every other Wednesday on their twitch channel. Originally stemming from when Alex and Cameron Lauder were put through legendarily terrible bible-themed FPS "Prayer Warriors: AOFG" completely blind by Graham, they now broadcast fortnightly, bringing us the very worst of steam greenlight and friends, with all of the inexplicably everpresent tropes that brings us: crates, keys, rooms designed by people who have apparently never seen what an actual room looks like, inexplicably placed assets that the developer apparently got in an asset pack and decided "sure, we can put that there", and many, many more.

Why are we making deliberately bad games?

To drop the bit for a moment, we're not requiring people to set out to make deliberately bad games. What we are trying to do is have people set out to make a game, with no expectations placed beyond that. At the end of the day, making games and creating in general is hard, and what we're setting out to do is to make that barrier to entry as small as possible. Through Watch+Play, we've all seen the kind of garbage that people will pay money for in the real world, so the Watch+Jam is simply a reminder that the bar is not high at all for this sort of thing.

I don't/only know how to program/draw/make music/write, can I join in?

You sure can! If join the discord linked above or post in the community forum for this jam, Phillammon (the Jam organiser) is going to be doing some matchmaking to put teams of people together with complementary skillsets so anyone can join in and make something! If you prefer to work solo, though, there's plenty of good tools out there for making games with limited to no programming experience, if that's what you're lacking, and there's also no requirement that what you make be a video game- a board game or game book could work just fine, as might writing your own RPG or a supplement to an existing RPG, to name just a few examples. Want to make a newspaper puzzle page about the prompt? Knock yourself out!

I know how to do all of those things, do I have to be on a team?

Nope! No obligation at all. If you want to be matched up with folks anyway feel free to use the above channels to get matchmade, or come along with your own team on your own, if you don't feel free to just sign up solo. Either way works just fine.

How long have we got to make these garbage games?

The jam begins proper on Thursday the 9th of May, 2025 and will conclude on Tuesday the 27th of the same month, giving you two weeks plus both weekends either side, with some fudging available for time zones. However, there's nothing stopping you getting started early, and if you want to submit late just get in contact with me via the jam forum or via discord and I can open up late submissions for you. We're not here to put you under time pressure, it's just there to try and make you get something completed.

What's the prompt/theme?

The prompt will be announced on the 8th of May, but there may be hints before then if you know where to look!

The theme is But what is "Scale"? Since time immemorial, gamers have walked into rooms and flatly asked "why on earth is that asset so big what were you trying to achieve", "did you not know how to make the doors smaller or was this on purpose", "is that house meant to be far away or is it just tiny", and now it is our turn to elicit these reactions!

Do we have to stick to the prompt?

Nope!

I have a different question!

By all means ask it! You can ask these questions either in the community forum for this jam (found in the links above) or by joining the Loading Ready Run discord and mentioning @Phillammon in a message in the #watch-and-jam channel (or directly messaging me, I'm not fussed)