So in the spirit of sharing - the game I'm working on is called Bitemarks & Bloodstains. Where The Wretched was my attempt to distill Alien down into a journaling game, this one is an homage to films like Red Dragon and Se7en. 

You play an investigative journalist one the trail of a ritual killer. You're trying to build a psychological profile of the killer to be able to identify them and get a scoop on the killings before the police get there first, but in the process you begin being hunted by the killer.

I'm changing up the formula with this one, introducing multiple oracles and allowing the tower to fall a couple of times before the end of the game. Each time the tower falls the killer strikes again, and you move on to a new set of oracle cards as you investigate the new killing. I know a few other people taking part in the jam have made changes to how the mechanics work - one game I can think of that's being written has the player building the tower from the base rather than pulling blocks from a fully-constructed tower, which is awesome! I'm really keen to encourage experimentation with this stuff, so if you're working on something interesting let us know!

And, as Matt said, if anybody needs any help or wants to throw ideas around feel free to get in touch. There are a lot of people in this jam who have never written games before and I'm more than happy to offer any assistance I can.

Looking forward to seeing what people are cooking up!

I'm really excited to be here, this is my first game jam and i'm really excited to work with the Wretched and Alone SRD. 

The working title of my game is The Returned, about a lone newly raised undead who is attempting to return to their family. The game is them moving through the world encountering opportunities to try and complete/fix themselves from the scraps and remnants of the world around them. I don't mean just physical but also mental or spiritual, finding more anchors to who you are in the world beyond just your family. 

I wanted to move away from a single individual in a contained space to making it someone who is hopeless even among people, with the container separating them from their own enemy being their own form. 

I'm thinking of changing the 10 tokens aspect of the game but still brainstorming exactly how, i think i want to do some sort of called-shot for drawing certain cards at the start of the game to see if someone can really 'complete' themselves. I know this would increase the chances of 'success' but i have a plan for that.

I am pretty excited about my journaling medium, in that i'm thinking of asking the player to either write single words or symbols on their own body, otherwise sticky notes pasted to yourself work just as well. Im thinking about some mechanic to have the player 'muddle' these written notes later on but again, thats half-baked at this moment.

Much like Matt mentions above, the themes of this game could be difficult for a number of different reasons.  I'd rather throw this whole idea out then make something harmful. I'm really afraid I won't hit the right notes and end up making something unintentionally harmful, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

Hello!

My working title is "The Cold Palace". You play as the Empress who has been spurned by the Emperor and imprisoned. Fortunately for you, the Emperor can't just casually murder you - there are traditions that one must uphold and your family are not simple peasants content to wring their hands in their sleeves while bowing their heads. Through connections, luck, and loyalty, you may survive the freezing of the Emperor's heart. But most likely, you'll end up at the end of a silk rope no matter what you do.

I'm considering using a tarot deck instead of a block tower - both because my play space isn't really great for setting up a tower and hoping to keep all the pieces (or, alternately, risking the possibility of damaging my tablet screen when they fall) and because I collect decks for use in solo play and I want any excuse to use them! (Also, as cool as seeing a precarious tower is visually fitting, "the deck is stacked against you" also works.)

I'm not entirely sure if I'll have the time to finish before the deadline, but I'm still very enthusiastic about this and seeing what comes of everyone else's projects!

Hi, I'm working on a few ideas.

Adrift, you are the lone survivor of a shipwreck and drifting at sea on a raft constantly circled by sharks.

Dead Drop. You are spy who has been caught. You are trying to make it through your interigation. Unfortunately they have all your encrypted reports you sent to mother Russia and are playing them back to you one by one.

Ransom note. Send daily instruction to the people you are blackmailing. Use a way of disguise your voice for your daily log.

Cascade. You work for a corporation that has been hacked and it's all your fault. Tower represents the files and systems of your employer been hacked. It's a race against time to save as much as you can, repel the hack and cover up your involvement. Cyberpunk setting.

Yo, I’ll be making around 2-3 submissions for the jam (ideally 3) based around different 3 different horror genres: body horror/torture porn (Martyrs, The Human Centipede, Tusk, The Guinea Pig Films), home invasion (Funny Games, Inside, Hush, The Strangers), and Asian Revenge thrillers (Oldboy, The Chaser, Lady Vengeance)

I’ll be going super loose with the system so that means no Jenga HA because blocks are expensive here in Malaysia I guess.

Hi, excited to be taking part in this jam. 

My game has you playing the part of a lighthouse keeper alone on an island after your fellow keepers mysteriously vanished without a trace. 

You will have to keep the lighthouse going by yourself while you wait for the boat to arrive and bring you back to the mainland. 

Super excited for this jam.

My submission will be about a hacker who is in waaaaaaay over their head with debt. Mysterious benefactor gives you the supplies to make one last run at one of the biggest megacorps out there. Get the files they request and wipe away the debt. Hope your brain doesn't get fried by your rig, or your body shot up IRL before its done.

Plus boyzie and I have something cooking up for after that ;)

Got a couple of ideas:

Windswept: the diary of a soldier alone at a desert border post/warning beacon, who starts to have an existential crisis in the absence of other people. The four suits would correspond to Fire (glory, dreams, ambitions, hopes), Home (memories and mementos), Tower (the border post, orders, structure, supplies), and Dust (decay, strangeness, breakdown, unreality). I haven't decided what the tower falling means yet.

Paranoir: an audio log representing either dictaphone recordings or an internal monologue, either way by a hard-boiled PI pacing their office reflecting on what they've learnt earlier that day on each day of the case they're working. Slowly, piece by piece, the case grows ever more complicated, and reality shifts to make matters worse—until the tension breaks, the tower collapses, and the detective achieves a moment of pure clarity where they spill out their whole breakthrough. So, that's kind of an inversion (but the fun of the game should be in getting as much evidence onto your corkboard as possible and then finding weird ways to tie it all together into one theory). This idea (and maybe Windswept too) also involves questions—a list of questions you can add to as you go along, and oracle prompts that let you answer them (or un-answer them, or do weirder things with the format).

Ploughshares to Swords: some kind of propaganda by a rural population about to be invaded by a more powerful army, inspired by the English invasions of Ireland in the 1700s. The tower fall is the landing of the ships (or otherwise the sighting of the enemy), but until then you can propagandise and prepare for the invasion and probable guerrilla war.

Last Words of the Digital Polyp: an ancient alien AI in its creators' ruins on a distant planet is reawakened by the presence of human explorers, but their systems are fading fast. Lots of choices in the oracle—whether to use your power (draw a block) to do something (e.g. help the humans explore or understand, drive them off, influence their minds, protect secrets, kill them) or leave things be. The tower falling is the final power failure or isolation of the AI, and the glimmer of hope is when the humans realise there's an intelligence behind the phenomena they're experiencing and actively try to repair the system. This idea still needs a bit of fine-tuning to make it all narratively and emotionally consistent, though.

Unnamed idea!: inspired by The City of the Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith; a human being slips between worlds and finds a strange, alien dimension that's fascinating, beautiful, and potentially deadly. They come under the influence of something awesome and terrible that keeps them coming back again and again, but in the meantime, the alien world is so fascinating that they don't resist the pull as much as they could. The glimmer of hope is that an even more powerful force (or apex predator or whatever) intercedes, or predatorially overpowers the first.

There's like a dozen (ETA: at least!) of great ideas in this thread! Super exited to see all these games.

I think I might want to play with the idea of a person caught in some kind of time travel/flashback scenario gone wrong. Trying to hang on to their memories and find a way to communicate with their loved ones outside of their weird lost-in-time situation. Some touchstones for me are 12 Monkeys, that one episode of Lost (The Constant, I think), parts of The Butterfly Effect, Insterstellar, Memento, The Jacket and so on.

I think the main threat in the scenario is slipping away into oblivion, becoming unable to reach other people, and losing your memories and sense of self.

Hey, I am making Wretched Wasteland. An ode to all my favourite post-apocalyptic pop culture. Adding a little map to use as the Salvation. 
This is my first attempt at something like this. I have written some D&D adventures, but nothing like this. 

No guarantee that I'll be able to get a game done, though I'd really like to. I've shared some of these ideas on Twitter (which is basically where I live), but I'll put them here as well. I'm finding that a fair number of game ideas that were already floating around in my head seem like they'd work well in the W&A format.

ESCAPE FROM DINO ISLAND: Basically just Jurassic Park–make it off a dinosaur-infested island without getting eaten (card draws) and before the army bombs the site (tower collapse). Probably the least divergent from the SRD. Journal entries would most likely be audio recordings, as having a cell phone makes sense.

THE INVOCATION: You've finally found the artefact and are making preparations to summon your demonic/infernal parton. That involves gathering materials, preparing the space, preparing yourself, and losing people/relationships that once mattered (the four card suits). If the tower collapses, the ritual fails. Certain card draws mean you did something wrong and your patron abandons you. Make it to the end, and you're deemed worthy of their love. This idea is inspired by the very NSFW comic The Invitation: Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, and is a metaphor for being transgender–preparing yourself involves body modifications (basically becoming your ideal self), and the people/relationships you lose are those who can't handle your new identity.

ON THE RUN (working title): You're the ward of an important vampire, and, for reasons, are on the run. You've got to keep them safe and fed, avoid detection, and clean up any messes they accidentally cause. Tower collapse means you get caught, and certain card draws mean some other fail state (not sure yet, maybe your ward runs off without you). Card suit categories are Food, Haven, Safety, and Affection. Inspired by my love of YA paranormal romance fiction and the first few chapters of Vampire Academy (which I thought were the most interesting), where there's romantic tension between two vampires who are trying to dodge their keepers–which is why one of the card suits is Affection. The situation's more interesting when you're romantically involved.

SECRET CRUSH SLUMBER PARTY: Again, a romantic one. You're at a slumber party, the last one before people split up for university, and your secret crush is here too. Can you tell them how you feel about them, and how will they react? Tower collapse means the night ends before you're able to tell them how you feel, and certain card draws mean they find out but aren't into you. You aren't alone in this game, but the scenes the player writes about are quiet moments between them and their crush during the night. Also, instead of a die roll to draw cards, you draw and flip over set of four to determine the current group activity (eating pizza, doing hair, watching movies), where you are your crush are (on the porch, in the basement, on the couch), what you notice about them (slightly crooked tooth, stray wisp of hair, how they smell), and what pulls them away before you tell them how you feel (another party member, awkward silence, they get hungry).  Basically a way for me to get the teenage girl sleepover experience (with some blushing tosssed in) that I now feel I was robbed of.

Hi everyone! You all have great themes going on. Can't wait to see what you come up with. The one idea that pop-up when I was reading the SRD is: 

You are a horror novel writer with an history of mental illness. Your editor has been begging you for a fourth book but you've been battling the blank page syndrome and a bad case of the booze for a couple months now. Your spouse had a great idea: "Why don't you go to my parent cabin in Maine to focus on the book? Alone, with your thoughts, in the woods, nothing can go wrong. Heck! You might even breathe some fresh air." You will write that DAMN book even if it drives you mad or you drink yourself in a coma or both... 

Inspired by movies like: In the Mouth of Madness, Secret Window, Misery, The Shinning 

But I still haven't started writing it yet... So wish me luck! :-)  

I have two ideas, one that will be up in a day or two, and the other I am not sure if I will finish in time for the Jam, but will be getting made eventually regardless.

1. The Buried. You are a miner who survives a cave in. Only, you now find yourself in a strange system of tunnels that no human hand dug. Introducing a mechanic for darkness...basically you have a limited number of charges for your headlamp, and you choose when to use it (each charge is good for one card). If a card has the darkness modifier, you have to pull twice. There will be ways to add to your charges (one of the Aces for example).

2. The Forlorn Hope. There were military units called Forlorn Hopes. Basically they got double the pay (unless they were convicts being forced to join), but got sent on all the suicidal missions like being the first wave to attack the walls. Young officers would take the risk leading them however, because if you lived you were sure to move up the ranks. So you'll be playing a young officer trying to keep as many of your men alive as possible, and staying alive yourself, for the duration of the campaign.