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.

Okay everyone, the announcement...

The Theme is: House Under the Stairs

View the Results of the Theme Poll Here: http://www.polljunkie.com/poll/cntxfs/theme-for-game-jam-3/view

The Restriction(s): [Normal Difficulty]: Less than 150 words of text AND Anagnorisis. [Give Me Dark Souls]: No Text AND Anagnorisis

1. Narrative Restriction: Anagnorisis is like a twist ending, but much, much more powerful. A powerful anagnorisis will recontextualize not only everything the character went through in the story, but for the audience, too! A powerful anagnorisis example is Oedipus Rex or many stories from HP Lovecraft. In Toaster Strooder's Words: "Anagnoresis is like a twist that's set up through the entire story, and then is revealed in end... and then changes one's true understanding of everything in the story."

2. Gameplay Restriction: No Text

Whaaa? No text! But it's a story!

Exactly.

You have to make the mechanics, the world, the visuals, convey the anagnorisis.

However, there are some who may not be comfortable enough with coding to make a complete story-game with no text at all. So, for those of you, there's a secondary option of up to 150 words.

Some other things you ought be aware of:

Anagnorisis will always, always be easier if you're writing in scene format. If you need a quick rundown on Scene format:

A scene is simply: an entering emotion (happy/sad), establishing a goal, introducing conflict, resolving said conflict, then the exiting emotion (which must be the opposite emotion of entering emotion). So that's the equation.

If you haven't already, please join our Discord for more information and also so you can ask any questions you may have. I'm there all day, so it's a lot easier for me to respond there!

As always, the theme is optional. The Restriction(s) is not!

I will make a caveat, here. If you're running out of time, and your fingers hurt, you can use text for things like "new game" and "menu" and stuff. I'm not sadistic haha. Make sure we can play you're game.

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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!