Ghost of Jams Past: Summer 2025
I like game jams!
I have just submitted one!
At the beginning of 2025 I gave myself a challenge: enter a jam a month. It was a rather tame challenge at the time, surely? As I was just fresh out of another job. And obviously, rather ill-advised. The bulk of it came from my disappointment at failing to join The Dying Year Jam. Human hubris knew no bound.
In March, I finally got my full-time job back and life happened, so it was pretty tough at times... But... it's July and I'm still around. Somehow, I have managed to stick with that, although it does get rather untenable and I plan to stop in August (I'll be doing programming for Spooktober, but no more personal jam until I've gotten enough rest). This seems like a good place for me to review everything I have submitted to itch.io for 2025.
I need restrictions to work, so I usually mash 2-3 jams together. Do not submit to multiple jams when your work is not made with the jams in mind! That is considered spam and very rude!
Make a Visual Novel Assets Jam
- Ren'py Alt Scanner
A super helpful jam run by Devtalk, aiming to pool free resources for VN Devs. Even if you don't make VNs, the entries here should be helpful for just about any gamemaking endeavor. I made a super simple tool to help me put alt text in The Butterfly Dreams and I was just itching to contribute something. In the end, the tool was very naive in its approach and I don't think it's going to be of much use, so I hide it from my page until I know how to make it run better.
Magical Girl Game Jam #11
also submitted to Amare Games Festival 2025
A game jam about magical girls! You're free to choose your engine and genre, so you'll find a mix of everything here. I tried to popularize the concept of game jams in a D&D server I was in, and this was the result.
It proves to be one of the most popular games in my catalogue by far, and the most popular one this year. I'll be straight to the point: I don't like it. The development caused me no end of headache, I had issues with the script (but it wasn't my area and I promised not to intrude), and the end result was pretty messy since I was forced into a crunch. However, I do concede that the bright visuals invite people in, and it might have struck a chord with some people.
If anything, this release was the first for many people in the team, and I'm happy for them. I also learn many Ren'py scripting tricks to speed up my workflow.
bitsy jam #90: Supermarket
also submitted to Amaze Berlin 2025: Aging
That was an... unwieldy title. As you may surmise, bitsy jam is a monthly jam for the little engine that could, Bitsy. I used one of the many derivatives, mosi, which has neat features such as stacking sprites. A MAZE is an annual indie/alternative game exhibition that has been around since 2008. I did this entry in one day, feeling melancholic of the Hungry Ghost Festival and my relationship with my late father. This was later accepted into Indiepocalypse #65 and paid for my grocery bills for June.
Low Effort Princess Jam
also submitted to Flickjam 2025
Low Effort Princess Jam was conceived as an April Fools joke by the people running Magical Girl Game Jam, but it was a fun enough idea that people joined anyway. Flickjam is a jam for this really neat cute engine Flickgame, which is best summarized as MS Paint meets Powerpoint? You have 16 slides to link together using 16 colors. The creator of Flickgame is really nice and once he got wind of the jam, he joined in the community forum and listened to feedbacks and even made some adjustments! It was really fun and I would be happy to do some Flickgames in my downtime (no more drawing on a touchpad tho, my wrist really suffered in the days after).
By the way, if you are interested in Bitsy and Flickgames, I'm happy to inform you that flicksy exists.
Blossom VN Jam
Blossom VN Jam was a chill jam in spring, about spring! I didn't plan for this but I needed something to unwind from Listen to My Song and I stumbled upon Downpour. I just really wanted to try Downpour (which I reviewed here), so the day I was down with a fever I decided to put together an entry. It was honestly very rough. The Downpour camera crashed when I tried to adjust brightness and contrast, my handwriting was super small on screen, and I could not put a proper ending screen showing all combinations of lines... but it was a nice experience.
Mystery Game Jam 2025
also submitted to Dialogue Jam
Mystery Game Jam is... a jam for mystery games. Uh. Dialogue Jam's restriction is a game with no narration. Monologue does pass muster, and we leverage it a lot here. LAD was developed with my circle Avenue Q, and it was a breeze. I liked the game, the process went smoothly, and I liked the result. Definitely one of my most visually coherent VNs. All the tricks I learned earlier came in handy here, so we actually finished quite early for MysJam.
However, we soon found out that for some reason we got delisted by itch.io, a situation that was only rectified recently. LAD had almost no attention (as a pattern, everything I personally like tend to be publicly invisible). At the end of Dialogue Jam though, someone from IFDB took notice and left us a very nice review.
The speedy workflow allowed me time to experiment more with shaders and scene composition, and I could feel the improvement. I was hoping to build LAD for web, but had to give up because WebGL quirks drove me insane. Probably one day?
Battle Action Fantasy Jam
Make something that could be out of Shonen Jump. That's your mission in Battle Action Fantasy Jam. We at Avenue Q are fans of shonen battle and toys played entirely too seriously, so it was a no brainer for us to join this jam. I suffered badly from executive dysfunction over the course of this jam and had to cut back a lot, but this is still something I like. Like LAD before, YYO was undiscoverable upon release, though it was less disheartening since we did plan to do some substantial revamp and adding the second and third act. The initial plan was to make it in time for Summer Novel Festival, but in light of my friends' schedules and my health, we're taking this easy.
Only One of Any Asset/O2A2 Jam
O2A2 this year is run by Devtalk. It's a strict asset jam that's very good for beginners because it's inherently small-scoped. You can only use one BG, one sprite, one SFX, one BGM, one VA, and 1000 words (GUI excluded, anything generated in-engine via code is excluded). It's one of the most interesting jams in the year due to how limited it is. Browsing O2A2 entries is a good way to see the breadth of creativity exhibited by the community, and provides plenty to learn. My entry was mostly done in a day, followed by four days of nothingness as I struggled with the script. The idea came by when I was about to sleep, and somehow I was able to list everything I had to do aside of the plot (or a semblance of a plot). This is one of the rare projects where I did the technical parts first without having even one scene thought out (not recommended).
The UI pack I use for this game is unfortunately image-based, including the buttons, so the Android and Web version has a non-working Quit menu. It would take me ten minutes to edit the image and script but I don't think it's necessary since the game is just so short. Additionally, with the timeframe I don't get to include all the niceties I usually include (text speed setting, font size setting, ...). I do, however, try to have good enough defaults, and it's only 3 minutes per session...
Well then, that's a wrap! A good year creatively, for sure. I have learnt a lot in just six months and I'm feeling good, so I don't think I have to put myself through this till the end of the year. I could use the time to rest and tinker with some stuff without any real deadline.
Next: come jam with me! I'm compiling a list of cool jams I missed and cool jams you can still join, probably done in Monday or Tuesday. Get your feet wet and show me what you make!