GDEX Game Jam
We’re Jammin’ BeFORE
the GDEX Expo!
Fri. September 27th
Sun. October 6th
Are you READY to take your game dev skills to the next level?
Look no further than the very first 2024 GDEX Game Jam (#GDEXGameJam), starting September 27th! 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 game jam. Ratings will be pull from your peers via the 5 criteria on our GDEX Itch.io (link below).
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. Steam is
followed by team forming and brainstorming.
Friday September 27th 6pm-7pm EST.
Ending Ceremony
Showcase some of your games
before we enter our judging period.
Sunday October 6th 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 September 27th at 7PM EST - Sunday October 6th at 11:59PM EST
We will showcase your games on the following Monday at 6PM EST. You MUST submit by midnight EST Sunday October 6th.
2. To keep it fair, don't start any work until Friday September 27th 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 the 5 point rating system on Itch.io on feedback and Functionality, Visual Design, Gameplay, Engagement, and Representation of Theme. This will occur start Monday October 7th - Thursday 10th end of day EST. We will then do a FINAL total ratings and feedbacks REVIEW on Friday October 11th by game development professionals and do a last live Awards Ceremony on the 2024 GDEX Game Jam October 26th in person!
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.