This sounds fun. :) I've been working on a few games. One of which was so depressing that I thought I could make something more light-hearted for a change. With this specific game, I have a pretty clear idea of what I'm going for and, within the context of the jam, I hope I will be extra motivated to finish it.

Project name: Buuuuuurger

Genre: Comical visual novel

Description: Before you go into town (and get a burger), you can speak with Christie. She is a funny girl who likes burgers.

When it started: Somewhere in June of 2025

Personal due date: End of the jam (hopefully, released much earlier than that)

A message to you guys: every journey is comprised of steps Every step brings you closer to the destination. Make those steps. One by one. Go for it!

Hello to everyone. This is an old concept for the main character, I'm still unearthing all the other material I have lying around in forgotten external disks.

1. Project name: Dark Forest (which i think should change)

2. Description: It's a romantic/adventure visual novel in a fantasy world where two factions are at war. The conflict lights up because the prince/princess of one faction gets abducted. A team is set to retrieve the stolen royal but in their travels they discover some things about the origin of the war that changes things. 

3.  This project is something I started in... 2015 with a friend. I had a lot of work put into it but in the end it was abandoned.  I shall change quite a few things since I can't use my old friend's ideas. 

4. I hope I can make it by the end of the jam. I think I can make it if I cut some stuff and make it shorter.

Thank you robobarbie, this is what I needed

Project name: Our Light Affliction: Spider's Covenant (spent like 2000 years brainstorming this but i might still change it...)

Description: Edelweiss, a young diviner in training, gets roped into a contract with a spider apparition, who wants her help in ruling over the realm beyond that connects to her school. The school's resident exorcist is not about to let them have their way. Shape Edelweiss' thoughts and morality as she fails to heed the warning that all diviners and exorcists alike must know: to intertwine the mortal realm with the realm beyond can lead to naught but misfortune.

It's an otome VN with 1.5 LIs where the choices determine whether the characters have positive or negative development arcs!

When you started the project: This was originally my NaNoRenO 2024 concept...

Your personal due date: I believe I should be able to finish before the jam ends, but let's play it safe and set the jam's end as the ultimate deadline.

Well, I just returned to game programming thanks to some inspiration. I'm planning to make a visual novel this time and am already starting with it. Well, here goes!

1. Project name: Whispers of the Broken Dice: The Final Dungeon’s Guardian is a Halfling Shopkeeper!

2. Description: A tired office worker, whose only escape from reality was his weekly DnD sessions, got accepted into a new game. An "Ultra-Realistic DnD Game Session." But just as he finished filling up the form, things changed. He saw weird things appear before him as he lost consciousness. When he wakes up, he's already inside a banged-up wooden shop within a mystical forest, sealing a dungeon underneath. Other than the details he set, like his name, Corin, he couldn't recall anything about his real life at all. He could not even recognize his own face. In this state, Corin tries to figure out what happened, if there's a way to return... and if there's a way to survive his, or rather, THEIR predicament.

3. When you started the project: August 22, 2025 (Yeah, just last week)

4. Your personal due date: I want to finish the Demo (Prologue and Chapter 1, maybe 2) around September 20, 2025. 

It started as a full single-player RuneScape-inspired experience running completely in Windows Batch (.bat), with ASCII-style graphics, menu-driven gameplay, RPG combat, and a progression system reminiscent of RuneMUD and SanctuaryRPG. Instead of just trying to copy RuneScape 1:1, I’m leaning into a more surreal, “toonified” vibe. Think classic grindy mechanics, but filtered through a playful, slightly offbeat lens. Tons of exploration and NPCs that simulate real-time events that the player can interact with. 

1. Project name - ToonScape (Bat)

2. Description  -  “full single-player 'MMO' experience running completely in Windows Batch (.bat) ” 

3. When you started the project - May 2025, set up the file structure and git. August 2025 rewrote to HTML + JS for itch web version. 

4. Your personal due date -  playable demo by the end of the summer / release stable version with 20 complete quests by January 2026.

Oh man, I have a backlog of unfinished projects going back years, but there's one in particular that I haven't quite given up on:

The Salamancer (working title)
A sandboxy top-down shooter roguelite 
Inspired by Besiege, The Binding of Isaac, Bubble Tanks, Magicmaker, Vampire Survivors

You play as Seraphina Salamancer, a salamander witch who is shrunken down to the size of a mouse in a brewing mishap and lost in the wilds, armed with a special wand. The player physically builds the wand out by growing new branches. Early-game branch types have simple effects like firing a small projectile, but a wide variety is unlocked as the player progresses, including directly offensive ones like bounce and split projectiles, but also support branches that provide special effects to attached child branches, and eventually physics-enabled branches that can rotate independently, detach, and even push or block enemies, allowing for some pretty neat mechanisms. Progression is roguelite-ish, you explore a procedurally generated world, unlocking new branch types and routes for subsequent runs.

I've been working on this on and off since like 2022. I have vaguely playable prototypes for most of the core mechanics, now I 'just' need to put all the pieces together and fill in content. I know the game will be pretty niche, but I'm really passionate about it, and I hope to have something to show before the end of the year.

Project name: Fully Automated Space Capitalism

Description: A minimalist science fiction survival RPG created in Twine, where you can travel with your ship, explore planets and follow a story with about 10 quests.

When you started the project: 2023. It started as a version with graphics from another game I made in 2020 called Space Snacks. I stopped halfway through after some problems with the map and resumed development in August 2025, after spending some time trying to overcome the fiasco that occurred in my attempt to make a roguelike for 7DRL.

Personal due date: By the end of september I should have someting playable.

Project name: Sea Scavenger

Description: In this game you are a scavenger who travels to beaches around the world to collect recyclable plastics to be remanufactured into useful products (and kept out of the ocean). This isn't a very realistic game, but the idea is to get the player to think about the potential value of plastic "waste."

When you started the project: Sea Scavenger is a game that was created by Code for Tucson (a Brigade of the Code for America Brigade Network, which was disbanded in 2023). Sea Scavenger is a web-based game created for The Opportunity Project in 2020. (Note that the web link may not work. It appears that The Opportunity Project domain was taken down by the Trump Administration in June 2025.) The objective of the game is to highlight the issue of ocean plastics pollution, utilizing an open dataset collected and curated by the US State Department. The team created a playable prototype in 2020, but there was a lot of work that still needed to be done to complete the game.

Personal due date: I want to have a fully functional game with improvements to the game play (to make it more fun) by the end of the jam.

I've never done a jam before, and I've barely done a VN before, but I saw this one and immediately knew this was the one for me,,,

1. Project name
Formerly Villainous, Formally Yours

2. Description 
Y'know how the villain becomes the group bestie against their will?  Yeah, it's that, except you kinda get to romance the villain <3
Join Team Aero and stop the Demon King from plunging the world into eternal flame and darkness—while trying to befriend his son who is now kicking it at your hideout.

3. When you started the project 
I actually started at the end of August 2025, so I'm doing okay... but I'm having such paralysis doing any of the assets. I just now finished coding the script, and all my backgrounds are screenshots and manga pages I've saved over the years and I have no sprites. 😩

4. Your personal due date
I want to get it done this year (2025), but by the end of the jam works too!
If I don't finish I'll be so mad, because sure I've learned something, but it's also taken up so much space in my brain I can't do my other projects XD
Alas, I'm just a solo player in this game's creation.

Hoping this jam will be the kick in the butt I need to get moving.

1. Working title is "Vampire Ex-Boyfriend" but I hope to come up with something much better.

2. So what would it be like if you thought you were eternally in love with a vampire... then fell out of love? A visual novel/dating sim where you can explore your relationship with your ex or move on to greener pastures with a werewolf or a succubus.

3. Officially started April 2025 (according to my Ren'Py project files, at least). Got interrupted by Spooktober. Trying to find my drive to finish each character's story well.

4. By the end of the jam, though earlier would be nice. 

Since it has been clarified we can go for more than one game, I'll gladly go for another. I've made a post about how I'm going for "something more light-hearted for a change" as opposed to a "depressing" game I've been working on but I may actually complete the latter first so here it goes...

Project name: No day 99 (working title)

Genre: Experimental/minimalist visual novel

Description: A young woman starts a new job and she doesn't know if she handle it.

When it started: Somewhere in May of 2025

Personal due date: End of the jam (hopefully, much earlier than that)

Alr then

It's called "Platform Bounce", a game about knowing when to GET OUT OF THERE, I started the project in December 2025, my due date for this is the end of the jam

1. Project name

Defeat the Darkness DATE!

2. Description

It's a high-school AU spinoff of my 2014 RPG Maker isekai comedy webseries, Defeat the Darkness, using several of the same characters to tell the story of a new kid in town who has to make friends or be sent to military school. Angst! Drama! Cute nerds who really want you to be happy! An analysis of how media shapes our perception of the world!

3. When you started the project 

I began the Otome Jam script on 2/20/25, two days before my apartment flooded and had to sleep next to an industrial dehumidfier for 46 days. The game was done on time for Otome Jam, however, I wanted to add voice acting and various IRL trouble has continued to push that deadline back in a debilitating fashion.

4. Your personal due date (can be the end of the jam, or earlier)

This Valentine's Day. All the actors recorded Aug-October, I have processed and coded in the lines, it now enters playtesting. Yesterday was the 8th anniversary of DtD's final episode but it's a romance game, I'll settle for Valentine's Day

HEY!

Project name: Snake and ladders

Description : Snake and ladders at its core based, the goal is for the player to get to the last tile with the highest points whitest evading the snakes  and other enemies, you can steal points from other players. The are four different characters each having a one time ability.

When you started the project :  last year mid 2025

Your personal due date:   Jan 28 2026 

1. Pig chomp

2. This game is inspired by pacman. You have to avoid monsters (currently just 2) and collect coins which magically come back. Levels are gained not by clearing the screen but by collecting a growing amount of coins. There's also a black hole that teleports you as well as enemies to random parts of the screen. 

3. Pig Chomp 1 started during the Doodly Game Jam #1 not very long ago. My situation is probably unique, as I've already made a better version called Pig Chomp 2. I ran out of time when submitting Pig Chomp 1 hence why it is incomete but i cotinued to work on the project anyway hoping to update it. The voting period was quite long and I've since submitted the latest version to other jams calling the game Pig Chomp 2.

My aim now is to just make the origional Pig Chomp 1  fun (the gameplay is lacking), not necessarily better just different. 

I know I could delete my game and change the title of my latest version. But I feel I would be missing an opportunity to explore other ideas for gameplay. 

4. I hope to finish the origional version of the game by the end of this jam. 

1. Project name

Kai's Tower

2. Description 

Kai’s Tower is a small gravity-based puzzle game about pulling floors out of a tower to guide falling tokens to safety.

Each round is randomly generated from millions of possible layouts, so the challenge is about planning smart collapses rather than memorizing patterns.

You have a limited number of moves.
Saving all six tokens lets you turn leftover moves into bonus points — clean solutions matter.

This build includes: 

 • Single Player mode
• Pass & Play local multiplayer

This is an early version made during jams and ongoing development.
Some things are still rough, and feedback is very welcome.

The long-term goal is to grow this into both a digital game and a physical tabletop version.

3. When you started the project 

November 2025

4. Your personal due date (can be the end of the jam, or earlier) 

We are almost done with the digital version and we want to be in Cannes next week with a couple of real tabletop games for the LES NUITS DU OFF of the Cannes Festival International des Jeux 2026, where new game developers present their games.

1. Project name

Fort Zombie Rebuilded

2. Description 

Remake of original Fort Zombie (2009). While fans waited Fort Zombie 2 for years I started to make my own, ha-ha. It contains converted materials, unpacked sounds and some parsed models from original game (it's hard).

You - Ben Riley, you peacefully lived in small town until this day. Now you need to find base and prepare well to huge horde after 14 days...

3. When you started the project 

To damn long ago to remember  September 17, 2022

4. Your personal due date (can be the end of the jam, or earlier) 

I barely made main game loop recently