Spoopy Jam started as a "game jam that can't happen" due to a mashup of the yearly school cycle and the beginning of major development contracts for many in the area. Welp, we're throwing that to the wind by hosting an altered format that lets people work on their own time and come together to put a button on their projects.

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The theme will be announced one week in advance at the monthly Omaha Game Developers Association meetup at Do Space. Everyone will be invited to an event Discord for conversations on work and planning over the weekend before and week-of.

Friday night, everyone loads into the space, and anyone interested in pitching their project so others can join the team will be given a 5-10 minute presentation window. Projects can be at any level of completion, from white-board sketch to play-testing. Need an artist or animator to tighten up the graphics on level 5? Looking for a group of 5 to iron out edge-cases of a deckbuilder? FIND A TEAM AND MAKE SOME FRIENDS, FRIEND.

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Signups for the Friday Project Pitch are open now on the Discord Server!

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Saturday is 100% work time from 9am to 10pm. Snacks and vending on-site. You take care of real chow and when you take a break. There will be gentle reminders to drink water and walk around.​

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Sunday is back to the grind from 9am to 3pm. We'll open the floor for presentations and playthroughs at this time. 3pm to 5pm we're open to the public, so invite family and friends to come play!

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Superlative awards will be given out at 5:30pm in a seemingly random pattern at the whims of event staff and invited professional guests. 

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For folks interested in a bit more info to help make the leap of joining this weekend coven:

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You can make any form of game or interactive experience you want. NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED. Video games, boardgames, text adventures, playground games, rpg modules, artsy-fartsy-interactive-experiences...just so long as you can get it done and you do your best to make a new idea from the Secret Theme. Once the Secret Theme is live, you can work or chose not to work all the way up through Sunday the 20th.

Friday night if you have or haven't already gathered a team on Discord, you can pitch your project in whatever state it's in and try to gather up a coalition to finalize the experience. Sunday the 20th from 3 to 5:30 the event is open to the public to play games. Invite family and friends! Starting around 3:30 everyone will be given the opportunity to present and tell everyone about your game before leaving them out and open for everyone to play.

You can, and probably should, use some form of existing assets. Brand new code is hard. Pressing your own paper or cutting cards is time consuming. Yank junk from old boardgames. Reuse a movement controller for Unity you found on github. The only thing you should NOT use is copyright material that will get you in hot water...like Disney stuff. Even then, Fair Use can cover non-commericial projects along the lines of "art" and "performance". If you want to strike it big with your creation one day though, you'll probably have to excise anything you don't have explicit rights to. Get used to it. Try to use open-source material and follow along with Creative Commons licensing.

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You want more info? CHECK OUT THE BLOG.

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