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And that's that, the Sinterklaas Slow Jam 2025 has come to an end! Thank you all for participating!! It's literally so sweet to see everyone's projects tonight and I hope you all feel very proud of what you've made! :) I had a good time but I found it hard to scope a game for 2,5 weeks time, so that was a learning point for me!

I hope you enjoyed taking part in the jam! I sure enjoyed organising it. Same time same place next year? I have some other ideas for cute Dutchcore game jams (bittergarnituur jam perhaps?? kringverjaardag jam? Or Dutch mythology?? Who knows?) so stick around if that sounds like fun to you!

Thank you once again and have a very nice Pakjesavond!!

ZOOOOO KRANKZINNIG LEUK!! Lekker gemaakt gek!! Dankjewel voor het meedoen <

OMG ZOOOOOO LEUK!!! ik heb wel 29 wortels gegeten voorsat Ozosnel een knoop werd. Heel tof gemaakt!! Bedankt voor het meedoen met de jam! <3

I've been working on my game almost every day since the start of the jam, and I've felt a bit blocked on a couple areas. The first one was obvious - I'm trying to make a game in Godot for the first time. I've been following tutorials to understand the basics of the engine and eventually decided to make a 2D platformer.  The next thing that arose was that I realised I don't know anything about the game design of 2D platformers, so I'm pushing myself to greybox quickly. But then I also get the itch to work on the art as well, and I went back and forth on what I liked a couple times.

This was my first Sinterklaas I liked. I imagined he would do magic with his staff to conjure up presents as a cute non canon thing. When I started rendering him in colour I didn't like the way he looked at all, so I went with a different idea. I always love the wooden christmas decorations, so I decided to try that out as a style. This is what they look like:

And this is the Sinterklaas design I made:

I really like it! And I think it looks really good. I'm not gonna animate him too much, maybe his hat and the horse's tail will wiggle while walking. We'll see. And I like that it gives some direction regarding the look of the world, I'm thinking to stick to a mix of festive decor (like green tinsel for foliage) maybe some aesthetics of miniatures, and the look of these kind of blocky wooden dollhouses (just imagine its more red than pink)

I think the biggest challenge for me right now is to be realistic about how much time I have and to stop doubting decisions and just march on!

How's the jam going for other people? It's been so nice to read the community posts! Best of luck for the next 9 days!

zooooo leuk dit, je hebt al zoveel gedaan!! Ik weet niet of ik Chat Geniale Piet te eng vind per se, ik vind m vooral niet heel erg Piet-erig, zeg maar, geen pakkie of hoedje of versiering. Misschien zou het minder eng zijn als het gezicht niet op een echt gezicht lijkt maar meer computer-y, zodat de kinderen niet denken van "er zit iemand vast in dat scherm" maar meer "dat is een poppetje die op dat scherm hoort" maar ik vind t echt cool om te zien wat je allemaal gemaakt hebt!! ben benieuwd hoe t verdergaat! :)

Thanks! And so long as you have fun you'll have a good time. I think you can get really far with that skill level - best of luck!!

Sinterklaas has finally arrived, and so has this jam!! 

I kicked off my day by watching the parade in Gouda. It's such a nice energy and everyone is so happy. I saw elderly people dressed as Petes, an animal print Pete fanfare, and I especially noticed how much I liked seeing people wave from the windows. Maybe that could be a prompt for something? I also saw disco Pete, pakjes Piet, and cheese Pete (although it may just be a Gouda thing)

Anyways, best of luck with the jam, and I'm super excited to see all your projects on Pakjesavond December 5th!!

Hi all! To get in the mood of the jam and try out some shapes and colours I did some doodling while watching TV the other night. I think my favourite ones are top left and bottom left.

Excited to get started on saturday!! Godot is still daunting but I'm just gonna do my best and see what comes of it.

wat leuk!! het schiet me ook binnen dat er iets met de boot aan de hand zou kunnen zijn en dat Sint & Piet dat moeten oplossen om goed aan te kunnen meren. point & click heeft veel overlap met escape-the-room style games dus daar schoot mijn brein gelijk naar. veel succes met het maken straks!

HELLO & WELCOME to everyone who already signed up for this jam, it's so nice to see you all come in! 🎁😁🎁

It's only a couple days left until the jam starts. I will be kicking off my jam by watching Sinterklaas arrive in Texel on TV (for inspiration of course!) How will you be starting this jam?

🐎 Fun fact: did you know the name of Sinterklaas's horse has changed a LOT through the years?  The wiki page about it mentions the horse being called everything from Sasmona to Majestuoso to Juan to Bianca (of all things) and the very uninspired Schimmel (the name of the breed). Typically the name was just the horse's name but it wasn't until the 90's that the horse became more of a character and started carrying an official name!

Anyway! Thanks for signing up so far and I hope you all have a good week and a great start to the jam! 🥳

- Maya

So cute!!! love a good dress up game!

Loved this game!! so fun and silly and beautiful art + music!! great job

yippee!

Sorry you had a bad experience! The controls are the arrow keys, but that can sometimes feel a bit janky on web. Perhaps you'll have a better experience on the windows version :) In general it's a very chill game where all you can do is swim, there's not more to it than sitting back and enjoying the ride!

very cute and very juicy! I liked it!!

oh lordy, what a cool game you all made, 10/10!!

all parts of the game fit really well together into an awesome whole! I liked that I had to think about double jumps and dashes as expendable actions. also, drunk hamsters is such a fun idea :)

this game caught my eye before in the GMTK discord, but the game itself is just amazing. exceptional job on this jam!

SUPER enjoyable game, music fits well, gets fast paced and makes you feel like a cool lasso-flinger. I really really enjoyed it!

this game is ADORABLE, the music is great, i liked it a whole lot!!

a long snake in the park is what I wish to be

I <3 mothball!! really fun & cute game and a super polished whole!

this game has such a strong vibe, i love it!

super addicting game!! really cool concept those persistent projectiles!

very enjoyable puzzle game! it's not only astounding how many levels you made for this jam but also how good they are. great job!!

I enjoyed this game quite a bit! You made a lot for how long the jam was, well done!

cute game! I liked the colours and you did a great job on the page!

very cool and very creepy!!

what a cool game loop!! great idea

im losing my mind this is insanely cool follow your dreams.

Very cute game, lovely style! Catching the words with the net is a really cute way to show that the character is nervous :)) I liked it!

Roll up, roll up, dear itch community, and dare answer the question you never knew you were asking!

With this quiz, you will dive deep past the layers of your psyche and uncover the truth within... a representation of your essence as defined by different types of European Medieval peasants. It's a confronting quiz by any standards, but play your cards right, and you might be the one confronting the quiz... Also, there's beautiful art!

Sounds good, doesn't it? And all this in under 15 minutes playtime! 

The quiz: https://bloembolletje.itch.io/what-would-your-life-look-like-if-you-were-a-peasant-in-medieval-europe

About me:

I'm Maya, and this is my first self-published game. I'm an artist by trade but I am navigating myself towards narrative design for games and game design.  If you play this quiz, please let me know what you got and what you thought about it!

My website, if you are curious: http://www.mayabloem.com/