Update: 13 March, 2026

Hello again all! Life has been exceedingly busy for us so we didn't get a chance to say this earlier, but CSS permissions has been added to our account! When one of us is more available, we'll look into spiffying up parts of the account.

In other news, we've estimated that a good 10% of CryptPad applications have not actually submitted projects to the jam page! If this is you, please make sure you submit your projects before the deadline. We anticipate getting a lot of entries towards the end of the month and don't want you to miss out on your chance to participate.

We appreciate you thinking deeply about the representation in your game. The form's purpose was more general - "Does your project feature lesbians?," "Does your project feature people with x disability?," etc. 

There's no need to resubmit if you don't want to, but if you truly feel the need to re-do the form to clarify the representation in your content then let us know via email so we can track down your first application and make a note.

As this is a collection of short stories, it would fall under our Books/Novels rule, which does not require individual pages of the work to be customized to a high degree.

By the way, we wanted to note that the name of the pdf has a (2) in the file, so it's "Life's a Zoo (2).pdf" rather than "Life's a Zoo.pdf", which seems unintentional just in case you wanted to fix that!

Hi everyone! It looks like the initial wave of submissions has slowed down a bit. We've begun doing a few early application checks to make sure that the moderation team is able to give enough attention to everyone. Just for fun, we took a look at what the submission stats look like so far.

Please note that these numbers do not reflect the final bundle, as we received a few duplicate applications by accident.

It's very exciting to see a positive shift in trends as far as Representation goes, especially in terms of submissions including Transgender (Masculine) characters. Although we don't have stats to compare to when it comes to bundles such as the Queer Games Bundle, we can say that the Queer Halloween Stories Bundle 2024 only received approximately 13 projects that indicated they included Transgender (Masculine) representation. That's a huge boost in two years! We'd love to see more submissions featuring Intersex, Asexual, Aromantic, People of Color, Disabled, and especially Two-Spirit characters and storylines. If you know any queer creators making such works, please let them know that we want to support them too!

As for stats like the Category and Genre, we're honestly a little surprised to see that Furry is a bit low on the graph. We'd also love to include more comic artists, so if you know anyone, send them our way as well.

In regards to our support ticket requesting CSS customization, we have not received a response from itch staff yet. We'll try to nudge them exactly one week from when we initially sent that ticket and will let you know if they respond.

Until next time!

Hi Team Boke, thanks for your patience!

Filling out the CryptPad form and submitting your project(s) to the jam is everything required from your part at this time. Both appear to be done, so that should be good. Once the "jam" is over, we will be manually reviewing all of the submissions. If your submission is approved for the bundle, you will be informed via email with next steps. We anticipate this happening around the 3rd week of April.

Yikes! Sorry you had that experience. Please feel free to reach out if you need help putting that together, I know that spoons can be extremely variable on a day to day basis.

Uh oh, that doesn't sound right! Can we ask what browser you're using? Most of the moderation team is using Firefox or a variant of that, and we just found the official CryptPad FAQ that has a list of extensions that may break the website. After you've taken some of their recommended steps, try this link below one more time:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/YCmnVL1L4FGVcMB8Iz7mXGynikk7tPsK3buRxtdqT...

If that doesn't work, shoot us an email and we'll see if we can get a workaround going for you.

Hello Acin, this is BáiYù of tofurocks here. It's unfortunate when assets don't have clear licensing and out of an abundance of caution, I might suggest submitting a secondary project that you're more confident about just in case you're unable to find replacements for those music tracks. Worst case scenario, drop us an email so we can figure out what to do for you.

Hi Sero, we shot you an email about this! We're not sure why you weren't able to submit but we're hoping the custom submission link fixes the issue.

Update: 2 March, 2026

CSS Request Email Sent to itchio Support

The bundle team has sent in a support ticket requesting access to custom CSS styling, which we will use to improve the formatting of our pages to emphasize key information and add subtle aesthetic flair. We have also indicated in that email that we intend to use the official jam-to-bundle import method for a bundle running during Pride Month. We hope this will give staff enough notification ahead of time to anticipate our need for their assistance after the moderation period.

For those unfamiliar with the logistics of leading co-op bundles involving multiple creators, the primary organizer of a co-op bundle can adjust the revenue share across participants by automatically applying it as evenly as possible or manually adjusting the sliders. Unfortunately as of this time, they are currently unable to split revenue share amounts into the decimal percentages, meaning that any bundle that includes over 100 participants who opt in for revenue must have someone from itch staff adjust it for them.

We will let you know when we receive a response on this matter. Thank you for reading!

This thread will be used as a sort of public blog for updates pertaining to the bundle, which may not always require an action for our applicants to take. All important communications with next steps & action items will continue to be sent via email, whether that is through the itchio Jam Email function or our new newsletter using EmailOctopus. To ensure that you don't miss an update, be sure to add powerofpridebundle@proton.me and powerofpridebundle.proton.me@send.eomail5.com to your email contacts and/or whitelist these so none of our emails go to your Spam folder by accident. We value your time and faith in us, and hope that this added transparency increases your confidence in the process.

Please note that we may not be able to respond to every comment in this thread, though we appreciate your support! If you have a general question for the bundle, please use the Public Q&A Thread to ask. Thank you in advance.

Images and formatting counts! We're ultimately looking for anything that shows time and care went into the document, so it sounds like you're good in that regard.

Hey Taylor, thanks for checking in! Since the artbook is bonus content for HFTGOOM, we can make an exception and include the base game in the bundle. We'll note it down for when the review process is under way. Happy to have you!

Howdy The Falling Dream, this is BáiYù of tofurocks here! We're open to original artbooks and music albums and see that we forgot to fix the wording that makes that clear. That's been fixed now, so please feel free to submit those types of projects to the bundle!

Hey aliengeometries, this is BáiYù of tofurocks here.

1. This rule is meant to encourage creators to customize their works to make it more appealing to potential customers. We've unfortunately both seen and received many comments on sites such as Reddit about how large scale bundles (both charity and mutual aid) on itchio are "full of shovelware," which we highly disagree with on principle alone. Our aim with this rule is to hopefully discourage such misconceptions because we know our participants put a lot of care and love into their projects.
2. Customization does not necessarily have to be super extensive, especially since we know not everyone is a graphic designer. A change in font can do a lot to increase the polish of non-book PDFs, and embellishments such as borders can elevate the presentation. The following resources are fantasy-flavored so I'm not sure if it'll necessarily fit your projects, but I hope they provide some inspiration!
   1. https://kenney-assets.itch.io/fantasy-ui-borders
   2. https://ko-fi.com/alderdoodle/shop
   If you worry that the font that you choose may not be dyslexic-friendly, you can still offer a version of your project with an easy-to-read typeface for accessibility purposes.

Hi Spiral Atlas! This is BáiYù of tofurocks here. The last question in Section 02 is "Would you like to opt in to receive revenue from the bundle? If you opt out of receiving funds, you understand that you are waiving all financial compensation and this decision cannot be reversed." If you answered No to this question, then the form will not lead you to Section 03 which will ask "How do you intend to use funds raised from the bundle? Please write in as little or as much as you would like."

Reasonable answers to the Section 03 question are generally something like "Gas for my car is expensive where I live, so this will help me get to work," "I'll use it for groceries," or "I'd like to upgrade my drawing tablet." I hope this gives an idea of the types of answers we get and usually approve!

The Power of Pride Bundle Team appreciates your trust in us as Pride Month rolls ever closer. We tried to be as thorough as possible on the main jam page, but if you have a question that wasn't answered there, please feel free to ask here! Chances are that someone else may be wondering the same thing.

Alternatively, if you would like to ask a question privately, you can email us at powerofpridebundle@proton.me with a subject line starting with "[PoP2026 Question]". Thank you!

Howdy folks~👻

Our lovely bundle is now on sale until October 31, 2024! Shoot these links to all of your friends and supporters and let them know that your work is in great company with tons of other queer creators~

• $60 Fright Edition
• $10 Treat Edition

We've also put out a few social media posts already to spread the word about the bundle. It'd mean the world to us if you could share these posts around wherever you hang out!

• https://cohost.org/QueerHalloweenStories/post/7921891-br-div-style-text
• https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/5380413
• https://www.tumblr.com/queerhalloweenstories/763106706615140352/the-queer-halloween-stories-bundle-2024-is-live
• https://gamedev.lgbt/@queerhalloweenstories/113230169893423609
• https://bsky.app/profile/queerhalloween.bsky.social/post/3l5gdkgovsx2q
• https://x.com/QueerHalloween/status/1840965236435698109

The following is the same from our previous email, just in case you missed it. We recommend saving this email so you can have those resources on hand!

[excerpt trimmed to save space]

Announcements for the bundle are live!

• https://cohost.org/QueerHalloweenStories/post/7921891-br-div-style-text
• https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/5380413
• https://www.tumblr.com/queerhalloweenstories/763106706615140352/the-queer-halloween-stories-bundle-2024-is-live
• https://gamedev.lgbt/@queerhalloweenstories/113230169893423609
• https://bsky.app/profile/queerhalloween.bsky.social/post/3l5gdkgovsx2q
• https://x.com/QueerHalloween/status/1840965236435698109

Salutations, everyone! 🎃 We've got fantastic news for you all, as well as some tips leading up to our launch so you can tell folks about the bundle.

BTW, you might be getting this email twice (once from itch.io, the second as a BCC) since we've heard from some folks that they aren't getting the itch emails. Please be sure to subscribe to our public Bundle Organizing Updates thread in the Jam Community board!

itch support response

itch support was able to get back to us in time to add the 5 projects we weren't able to put in manually, bringing us back up to 144 projects in the bundle! We're grateful to them for getting this done before launch, and we're hoping that they can help us adjust the revenue splits evenly down the the decimal percentages as well.

We've since updated all of our promo images back to say "140+" instead of "130+" Projects too. Speaking of which...

Promotional Graphics for Sharing

Just like last year, we've prepared a few templates for you to use in order to spread the word about your participation in the bundle! You can find these in a Google Drive folder we've set up, particularly in the Graphics Template folder. That folder includes a document file with instructions on how to edit the image files to add your itch cover image in, as well as a basic text template you can base your posts on.

Where do I Post?

We know that's a difficult question that's getting harder and harder to answer these days. If you aren't already following our official social media accounts, you can find them below:

• Bluesky (NEW!)
• Mastodon (gamedev.lgbt)
• Pillowfort
• Tumblr
• Twitter (or X)

Feel free to share the bundle if you're on other platforms! We use the hashtag #QueerHalloweenStoriesBundle on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Twitter, and #Queer Halloween Stories Bundle on Pillowfort and Tumblr. Please use the hashtag that makes sense on your platform of choice! You can share your posts in our Social Media Posts thread so others can find them too.

You can also share your participation in the bundle by sharing it in newsletters, blogs, your own Discord/instant messaging communities, and even via itch.io's own Email Owners function in an individual page's Interact section (be careful not to over use this!)

Ideas for What to Post

The Queer Halloween Stories Bundle will be available until October 31, 2024, so we have a whole month to ask folks to support it. Besides the initial announcement, here are some idea prompts for things you can write about too:

• Why did you make your project?
• What does horror/the Halloween aesthetic do for you, personally?
• What other stories from the bundle did you enjoy?
• What other stories from the bundle scared you the most?
• Liveblog reading or playing something from the bundle!

We hope that gives you all some inspiration! We'll see you when the bundle goes live!

The Queer Halloween Stories Bundle Team

Hi there! We don't have an official account on Reddit and most of our team don't frequent the site as much, so our low Karma might not allow our posts to be effective. We'd love it if you could share your Reddit threads in our new topic for Social Media Posts!

We put out a call for members of the press and content creators to feature our bundle! If you know someone who would love to get their gay hands onto some queer stories for next month, feel free to shoot them a link to this application to request review keys. Here's that post on our social media sites:

• Cohost
• Mastodon (gamedev.lgbt)
• Pillowfort
• tumblr
• Twitter (aka X)

Social media is still a large means of reaching out to new potential supporters, so to make it easy to find and share posts from each other, let's drop them in this thread! As a reminder, the organizing team has official accounts on these sites:

• Bluesky
• Mastodon (gamedev.lgbt)
  
• Pillowfort
• Tumblr
• Twitter (or X)
  

If you use a social media site that's not listed here, still feel free to drop a link to your posts here so others can share it!

We did it! Thanks to everyone for being so quick to respond, as our bundle URLS are now live and ready to go for when October 1 rolls around. You can find those here:

• $60 Fright Edition
• $10+ Treat Edition

So now, what's next?

Social Media & Outreach

Cohost is effectively shutting down at the beginning of October so we won't be able to make any posts there by the time we launch! 😭 As folks who participated in the bundle last year might remember, people coming from Cohost gave us a major boost to the $60 Fright Edition with huge tips, so this is a massive blow to us and everyone who frequented that site.

Cohost was one of the few blogging-style social media sites that don't interrupt logged out users by asking them to join or sign in just for scrolling through user pages, which is another reason we liked it so much. Luckily, one of our pals from Fiendish Fiction gave us an invite to Pillowfort so we've opened up a new account there! Shout out to WhiskeyWorks for being awesome~ If you're there, we'd appreciate a follow!

We've also put out a call for members of the press and content creators to feature our bundle! If you know someone who would love to get their gay hands onto some queer stories for next month, feel free to shoot them a link to this application to request review keys. Additionally, we put this call out on our social media sites:

• Cohost
• Mastodon (gamedev.lgbt)
• Pillowfort
• tumblr
• Twitter (aka X)

Get Your Posts & Newsletters Ready

We're working on getting some graphics templates ready for you so you can promote your projects ASAP! In the meantime, you can head over to our carrd press kit website to grab the fact sheet. Don't send anything just yet, but being prepared early is key to success~

Keep an eye on your inboxes for more instructions in the coming days. Once again, thank you to everyone for participating!

- The Queer Halloween Stories Bundle team

P.S. Are you not getting these emails delivered to your inbox for some reason? Try subscribing to our public thread here! We'll be crossposting important communications there so you don't miss a thing.

Hi everyone! 🍬

We've just shot off our email to itch support asking them to import the jam submissions into the bundles and equalize the revenue splits. Once they've populated our bundle pages, we'll forward the bundle links to all of you so you can confirm your final participation!

What can I do in the meantime?

Now's a great time to polish up your pages on itch.io! We've compiled a collection of resources that'll help you spiffy up your pages, from figuring out the best dimensions for banners and screenshots to some of the backend Metadata that'll help more folks find your projects. Check it out here!

Are you having trouble getting images down to 3MB each? Compress and optimize .webp, .png, and .jpg images using TinyPNG, and your .gif animations with ezgif.

We also highly recommend compiling a press kit for your project as well. A proper press kit easily lays out information like release date and genre for reviewers and writers so they can write articles faster. The following resources are intended for Digital Games, but can give you a pretty great idea of what to include for other media:

• carrd presskit template by npckc
• presskit() 2.0 by Rami Ismail
• Notion PressKit 2.0 by KrisWB
• FeePresskit by Feemagie
• The IndieGameDatabase can also generate a press kit for you, with the added bonus of adding your game to Twitch's stream categories

Game Showcases & Festivals

For our game developers, we've rounded up a few showcases & festivals you can consider submitting your projects to! Please be sure to carefully read each form and FAQ before submitting to make sure you qualify.

• Melbourne Queer Games Festival 2024 — Open until August 30, 2024
• PLAY - CREATIVE GAMING FESTIVAL 2024 (Submission Form) — Open until September 1, 2024
• Queer Indies Showcase — Open until September 6, 2024
• Indie X — Open until September 15th, 2024
• NOVELASIA - South East Asia Visual Novel Showcase 2024 — Open until September 22, 2024
• Independent Games Festival — Open until September 30, 2024

And as always, remember to follow us on our social media! We'll be getting ready to hype ourselves up as we get closer to October, so help us get seen!

• Cohost
• Mastodon (gamedev.lgbt)
• Tumblr
• Twitter (or X)

Thanks again for joining us~

The Queer Halloween Stories Bundle Team 

Thanks for your patience! Our team has been hard at work reviewing all of the entries we've received, and throughout the month we may have contacted a few of you to ask for additional information regarding your submission. We plan to reach out to itch support on August 29, 2024 to import the jam submissions into the bundle. If you've gotten a different email from us, please be sure to respond before the end of August 28.

In the meantime, remember to follow us on our social media!

• Cohost
• Mastodon (gamedev.lgbt)
• Tumblr
• Twitter (or X)

That's all we have for now. We look forward to working with you!

The Queer Halloween Stories Bundle Team 

Howdy folks~👻

Thanks for your interest in participating in this year's Queer Halloween Stories Bundle! There's less than 36 hours before the application window closes, so we want to remind everyone one final time to make sure to fill out the Google Form and submit something to this jam. If you miss one of these steps, we won't be able to get you into the bundle. Otherwise if you've already got that squared away, you're all set!

We've also set up dedicated social media accounts for the bundle this year, as we heard last year that having posts be so decentralized was difficult for everyone to keep track of. If you're on one of those sites, we'd appreciate a follow~

• Cohost
• Mastodon (gamedev.lgbt)
• Tumblr
• Twitter (or X)

That's all we have for now. If you know any friends who'd benefit from participating in this year's bundle, please feel free to invite them as well.

We look forward to working with you!

The Queer Halloween Stories Bundle Team

Hello there~👻

Thanks for your interest in participating in this year's Queer Halloween Stories Bundle! As the application window closes up, we want to remind everyone to make sure to fill out the Google Form and submit something to this jam. If you've already done that, then kick back and relax!

Why do I have to do both?

As mentioned on the front page of the jam, we use the Google Form to verify that you're a queer creator on itch.io, as well as get detailed information on each submission. We've created several tabs in the resulting spreadsheet in order to collate data and make the review process as swift as possible.

When we were setting up the jam page, we found that itch.io's custom fields sections were a bit funky when it came to single-choice field buttons labeled as "Required," as it "will force the user to select ALL of the available options." This wasn't ideal for our needs, so we stuck to the tired and true Google Form to collect most of the information.

Meanwhile, this jam is the method we'll be using to populate the bundle, as outlined in the documentation. This is how many of the larger co-op bundles on itch.io are created, so it's a process you'll get familiar with when you participate in many bundles.

That's all we have for now. If you know any friends who'd benefit from participating in this year's bundle, please feel free to invite them as well.

We look forward to working with you!

What's different this year?

Switch in Organization

With this being the QHSB's third year running, it was time to expand the moderation team to disseminate tasks among a larger group rather than just a few people. This also means that the QHSB will no longer be formally associated as a solely Project Ensō endeavor; going forward, the Queer Halloween Stories Bundle Team will be its own independent collective whose collaborators may change from year to year depending on their availability. We hope that this will give the team the flexibility to respond to inquiries quickly without burning out any single one individual.

More Precise Questions

The Google Form portion has been reworded, adjusted, and greatly extended to both make moderation of entries and outreach to press, reviewers, streamers, etc. easier. The majority of the new questions help us categorize individual submissions by things such as representation, genre, content, and more. Please be sure to set aside a minimum of 20 minutes to complete the application, or more depending on if you're submitting multiple projects.

Miscellaneous Adjustments

We also combed through the jam page and Google Form to correct instances where it implied that all submissions were games. We'd love to have more Books and Comics this year, so please share them with us!

~~~

If you have any questions or concerns, please shoot us an email at queerhalloweenstoriesbundle@gmail.com and we'll do our best to get back to you soon. We look forward to working with you again!

Hello everyone! Just in case you miss a jam email communication from us, we'll be putting pertinent updates here in this thread. Private communications will continue to be sent via email from queerhalloweenstoriesbundle@gmail.com, so be sure to stay on top of your inbox.