GDEX Winter Game Jam

We’re Jammin’ This Winter break!
MORE DETAILS COMING SOON!

SAT. December 14th
Sun. December 29h

Are you READY to take your game dev skills to the next level?

Look no further than our second 2024 GDEX Winter Game Jam (#GDEXWGJ24), starting December 14th! Hosted by the amazing team behind GDEX and the GDEX Game Jam. This event is your chance to work with fellow game enthusiasts and bring your A-game. A FREE, casual, and NO game-dev-experience-required prior to the IRL main GDEX event! With the help of the Discord moderators and Jammio, the game jam bot developed by the GDEX team, you can compete for the top spot and be crowned CHAMPION of this year’s winter game jam. Ratings will be pull from your peers via the 5 criteria on our GDEX Itch.io (link below, coming soon!).

Make sure to register to our GDEX Itch.io game jam site and then create a Jammio account via the GDEX Discord as it will be vital for your uploading and communication participation during this event. Join us on the GDEX Discord server and let's make some epic games together!

Watch our LIVE STREAMS!

KICKOFF
Theme reveal and guidelines. Stream is
followed by team forming and brainstorming.
Friday December 14th 6pm-7pm EST.

Ending Ceremony
Showcase some of your games
before we enter our judging period.
Sunday December 29th at 6pm EST.

Curated By Jammio!

Once again, we're bringing back our game jam organizer Discord bot Jammio!

Jammio will be there the whole event to help you setup teams and support your game jamming needs.

Jammio is a bot that helps to Host Game Jams and Hackathons to organize their events and is currently exclusive to Discord. When you start a Jam with Jammio, it will allow your participants to enroll themselves, create their own teams, or randomly get sorted into teams based on skills (Coming Soon), give teams their own channels, and effortlessly teardown everything at the end of the event. It’s the worlds best, and friendliest, tool to help create and organize a great event.

Check out the official Jammio website by using the button below!

GDEX GAME JAM RULES & GUIDELINES

Some folks asked about rules. We're pretty open but have some general guidelines we ask to abide by to keep this jam fun and jammy...

These rules are similar to most online jams but are outlined in the following (which we will go over in our live stream Friday on YouTube).


RULES OF NOTE

Authentic Jamming Effort Policy: Game projects/submissions must be created for our jam! If you have questions about what constitutes a jam project, just ask! We reserve the right to withdraw submissions that we determine were not created in the spirit of game jamming.

Artificial Intelligence Policy: AI is out in the world, and has already been added to many common professional software tools in differing capacities. The GDEX Game Jam intends to be a place showcasing the efforts of sentient organic life -- if you use a tool or resource that involves AI, it must be available for usage/purchase by all other participants at the time the jam starts. Assets generated by AI are NOT permitted in your final submission project.
Things that are okay:
1. Planning/documentation purely outside of the game.
2. "Work-in-progress" placeholders that are replaced before the final submitted version.

When in doubt, over-explain what you are doing and give us enough time to respond before submissions close.
Feel free to email us at gamejam@thegdex.com​ or join us in our GDEX Discord to talk to us live.


GENERAL GUIDELINES

1. Start and stop date to work/submit games is
Friday December 14th at 7PM EST - Sunday December 29th at 11:59PM EST
We will showcase your games that final Sunday at 6PM EST. You MUST submit by midnight EST Sunday December 29th.

2. To keep it fair, don't start any work until Friday December 14th at 7PM EST after the YouTube Kickoff event at 6pm.

3. Dev tools/assets are ok to start with so long as they are legally allowed to do so and is family friendly. No NDA binding content or NSFW content. Please credit required by licensing.

4. It is requested to start with a clean slate game where possible but using free tools and assets to start is ok. Some are included here from Global Game Jam site as a good guide.

5. When the Theme is revealed Friday, please use that as a guide on what to make your game about in any way you interpret the theme for your game.

6. All submissions MUST but uploaded in Itch.io to be considered in the judging process afterwards. Judging process is by peer review by the 5 point rating system on Itch.io on Functionality, Visual Design, Gameplay, Engagement, and Representation of Theme. This will occur starting Monday December 30th - Thursday 2nd end of day EST. We will then do a FINAL total ratings on Friday December 3rd and do a last live Awards Announcement on the 2024 GDEX Winter Game Jam December 3rd!

7. Both digital and physical games are welcomed! They must be in a playable state, able to be uploaded/downloaded, and easy enough to review for the judging period. *We know this can be subjective but we just ask you to do you best and we will help to review your work as we go in our GDEX Game Jam Discord.

8. Rules are subject for review and regulated by GDEX moderators to support your game jam journey. Just ask @Wesley Adams🎨 💭(GDEX) or @Tom Allenbaugh💻💭(GDEX) on our GDEX Discord HERE for any questions or concerns as we join this journey with you.

9. Have fun, don't stress, and be friendly to each other. Also, please abide by the GDEX Code of Conduct: https://www.thegdex.com/about#code_of_conduct

10. Keep staying awesome.