Who I Am:

Wanderjahre Games is a game writing and analysis twitch stream and Jam series hosted and run by Cathardigan (or Dylan, as everyone else knows him). Cathardigan (who is me/Dylan/Wanderjahre. I'm typing this right now.) Is a published fiction writer, having landed short stories in prestigious literary magazines such as Fiction International, Hobart Pulp, Juked, Whiskey Paper, Driftwood Press, and Alcyone. He has completed two novels, one of which was very bad and written in highschool, the second is much better and was his Master's Thesis at Southern Illinois University. He (I) knows a great deal about fiction. Its structure, cadence, and why a piece of fiction is moving. He also knows a great deal about games and their history. It is his (my) dream to be a game writer, and to make writing and narratives in games better, so what better way than to help those single or small development teams! Submit your games to my jam, get free narrative feedback, deal? Deal.

The jam will be ranked by the community. At the end of the voting period, the top ten games will be played and streamed by me (Cathardigan/WanderJahre/Dylan) over on https://www.twitch.tv/wanderjahre_games/ the day after voting ends.

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Criteria:

Wanderjahre wants games featuring great narratives. 

This jam is open to games playable on desktop, browser, and Gameboy (if you can lend me an emulator). The top ten game as voted by the community will be streamed on Twitch, so factor that into your design if necessary! The community's ten finalist games will be streamed on the official Wanderjahre Games Twitch channel https://www.twitch.tv/wanderjahre_games/ after the voting period has ended. The Wanderjahre Games team (Dylan, me, Cathardigan) will serve as the finalist judge and analyze the narrative structure of the community's top ten favorites.

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OPTIONAL THEME

As will be the case in all Jams: an optional theme. These themes will be narrative-centric. As an example: "Use and objective correlative," could be a theme. Don't know what an objective correlative is? Well, tune in to the stream to find out! Or, conversely, check out the YouTube channel for the old VODs (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFVYIHzY02O3KQ4PB2XuHsQ). There will always be an optional theme.

This Month's Theme: A New Beginning.

I write this from a hospital bed in Speyer, Germany after gallbladder removal surgery. And so while it seems like just came up with the theme, it actually is one of 3 I picked from. Wanderjahre came from another jam series I used to run and poured all my time into. It had to end, because I had to move to a new country. On a new side of the ocean. A new language. New traffic patterns. New cultural norms. When surrounded by so much new, it can be easy to go days without thinking about who you were before. And so new is not always better. Or, better put, old and new do not share ideology. If you've just started a new school, or moved to a new town, or new job, I suggest you plumb the feelings you've had. The anticipation and fear and dread of change and frustration and excitement and channel that into your experience. Of course, as is always, this is optional!

RESTRICTION

Sometimes there will be a restriction. This is the non-optional aspect of the Game Jam. Games without utilizing this restriction will be discarded. There will not always be a restriction, however.

This Month's Restriction: N/A

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Rules:

1. Pre-made assets are fine. Just credit the artists in your submission's description.
2. We are open to submissions containing mature content, just don't do any porn, or gore porn, or racist porn, or sexist porn. Why am I saying porn so much? Because porn is using the explicit content in place of narrative merit. It's fine to have a sexist character in your story, it's not fine to porn-ify it and have the sexism be the story.
3. Don't harass anyone. 
4. Works in Progress only! What I mean by this: Do not take that game you finished two years ago and are looking for free advertising via a game jam. Really fast FAQ: "Does that mean I can't finish my game during the jam? I have to stop before it's done?" Answer: NO, you can absolutely finish your game during the Jam. In fact, I will be amazed if you can start, develop, and finish an entire game so that it is publisher ready in the span of 7-14 days, you would be a prodigal developer, and more power to you in that regard. All I am trying to prevent is the flood of games looking for free advertising.
5. Do NOT submit a game with a price. Rule #4 should mostly take care of this, but just to be clear, if you intend to charge for your game, please make a free version (it can be a demo (or a demo of a demo)) available to the Jam participants. If the game has a price, we will disregard the completely and ruthlessly.

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Voting:

Each game will be voted on in the following categories (in no particular order):

1. Most Compelling Narrative 
2. Most Innovative Use of Ludonarrative
3. Most Compelling Character
4. Best Use of the (optional) Theme

The four highest voted games from Most Compelling Narrative as well as the two highest voted game from the following categories will be qualify as our ten finalists.

After Joining the Jam:

Come over to our Discord, watch our Twitch stream, and catch up on old Twitch streams on our YouTube channel! We'll be discussing submissions and finalists all the while. So, come say hi!