What is Game Off?
Game Off is a game-developing competition. This means that various competitors from all around the world make games based on a theme and what is deemed as the best game (through a rubric) by the judges wins.
Although it may seem scary, it’s not. Everyone there is trying to learn with some hands-on experience, so even if you don’t win, you still gain experience, which is pivotal to any type of programming.
What is This Year’s Topic?
This year’s (2022) topic is cliché. So, how do you implement cliché into a game? Well, here is a list made by the judges:
- A shoot ‘em up involving a loose cannon.
- A dating simulator focused on how opposites attract.
- A clicker game prompting you to pluck low-hanging fruit.
- A racing game where you’re skating on thin ice.
- A football game where you frustrate the opposition by moving the goalposts.
- A beat ’em up where you have to throw in the towel.
- Maybe even some clichés from the movies—ammo that never runs out, deceptively fast zombies, exploding cars.
- Or clichés from video games—conveniently-placed exploding barrels, food healing critical injuries.
Did any ideas spark now? If they didn’t, try journaling about everything that comes to your mind when you think about cliché. Maybe it’s a retro game or maybe it’s a reference to Hollywood, with exaggerated apocalypse simulations. Whatever it is, go for it, nothing is stopping you.
Next, make sure your game includes all of these:
- Good sound design (make your own or use royalty-free ones).
- Nice textures/graphics (you should probably make your own, but you can still take them from the web).
- Good playability and working mechanics (this is the most important factor, so make sure your game is working by constantly playing it to run tests).
Also, make sure you have fun and keep it simple. Seriously. Don’t lose sleep over it, but reserve two or three hours per day to work on it. Also, you only have one month for this. It goes from November 1st to December 1st, so make sure you keep your game simple, so you won’t stress that much and so that you can meet that deadline.
How to Participate
To participate, create an account on GitHub and Itch. Then, head to this link. If you created an account on both of the websites, then there should be a button saying “Join this jam” or something similar. Click that. Now you will have joined the jam.
Now that you have joined the jam, download a game editor like Unity or use a module like PyGame to make your games.
Now comes the hardest part of this: learning how to use it (if you haven’t yet learned) and creating the game.
Once you’ve finished, remember to make your project on Itch.io look nice, containing a good thumbnail, title, description, project page, and (optionally, but recommended) a nice gameplay video and screenshots. Also, don’t forget to add your project to GitHub. You can find various tutorials on that in the web.