Hello and welcome to the 2024 GDD Spring Jam! This jam is officially hosted by Game Design and Development Club at UW Madison.

Theme:

The theme for the jam will be Luck is All You Have.

Rules:

Timing

• Start building your game only after the start period of the jam.
• Having some pre-built general purpose code is okay. Use at your own discretion. You don't want to make a clone of something you've already made before, but using pre-built code/assets to get started is a great way to free up time to design, rather than debug.
• Using assets from the internet or other sources are okay, as long as they are credited and you have the legal right to use them.
• There will be a maximum of one hour leeway past the end of the jam to account for technical issues with submitting files.

Content

• Absolutely no mature content is allowed in your submission. This includes sex, nudity, graphic imagery, etc.
  • Rule of thumb: Only if you could get away with submitting it for a school project, it would be acceptable to be submitted for this jam.
• The content of your game should relate to the theme in some way. It can be a loose connection, or an unexpected connection to the theme. This theme will be announced at the start period of the jam.

Teams

• You may work in teams of ANY SIZE (or alone), however, it is recommended that your team size does not exceed 4.
  • Note: Large team sizes can result in messy coordination, especially if you haven’t worked together before.

Theme

• The theme will be voted on by members of the discord server. You do not need to participate in the jam to vote here. 
  • Our discord is here: https://discord.gg/PcaydAkTAG
• There will be a suggestion phase, where we gather theme suggestions. Then we will vote on all suggested themes. A tiebreaker vote may be held.
• The voting period will last 5 days and instructions on how to vote will be in the announcements channel.

Submission

• A submission to the jam consists of the following:
  • An itch.io page (must be submitted to this jam page)
  • At least one build of the game on the itch.io page that supports Windows. We HIGHLY recommend you add WebGL as another priority, because people are more likely to playtest and judge the game if they can play in the browser itself.

Scoring (and Winners)

• The submission will be scored by user ratings in x categories:
  • Presentation - Does the game look and feel nice? Consider graphics, sound effects, music, etc.
  • Mechanics - Were the mechanics well designed? Well executed? Was the game overall fun to play?
  • Use of Theme - Does the game follow the theme? Was the interpretation of the theme creative? How was the concept as a whole?
• Only those who have submitted an entry or those marked as contributors for an entry, or individuals given permission to judge from the WUD Games event, can give a rating. 
• Winner will be whoever has the highest average across all categories. They have the opportunity to be featured (with consent) at the next org fair.
  • For teams with multiple participants, every participant of the team must agree to having it shown for it to be shown at the next org fair.