Halloween, and its month, are still both well over six weeks away at the time of writing. Plenty of time to make plans, practice pumpkin carving, and all that fun stuff. But in little over two weeks, September comes around, and with it, the second annual visual novel-focused game jam/competition, Spooktober, during which… spine-chilling tales shall be crafted!
Now, while this particular month-long game jam isn’t the strictest in terms of rules, I can not stress the importance of one particular bit enough: “all submissions be made without explicit sexual content”. Seeing how a rather high percentage of visual novels tend to feature this type of content, it’s fine if participants “change it after the jam”. Just leave it out of the submitted build and everything will be fine. That is if you remember to tag it appropriately: violence, substance abuse, mature themes, etc. – tag it! If not for the sake of those who end up playing your creation, then do it to avoid potential trouble during the judging. There are other rules too, so be sure to check out the Spooktober 2020 website on itch.io for more details on those.
All that said, how about some cash prices? Should probably have opened with that to really get everyone’s attention. Anyway, dates first: jam ends September 30th and judging ends October 31st.
- Judge Favorite: Receive the most votes from the judges! 1st Place: $500, 2nd: $350, 3rd: $150.
- Itch.IO Favorite: Receive the most votes from the public!
- Best Logline: Judged to have the best log line (1-3 sentences with what your visual novel is about.)
- Best Thumbnail: Judged to have the best thumbnail in your submission!
- Best Monster/Costume.
- Best Unity Engine Submission. Eligible for a free copy of Naninovel!
That pretty much just leaves one little tidbit: team building, resource sharing, meet and greets, August 22nd and August 29th, over on the Devtalk+ Discord. See ya there?