Here’s how to find and join game jams on itch.io
Oh no! You missed last weekend’s Ludum Dare game jam! (Ok, I missed Ludum Dare and yes I’m still salty about it.) If only there was some way you could see all of the upcoming game jams and their dates. PSA: You can with the itch.io Jam Tracker.
The itch.io Jam Tracker is separated out into 2 main sections: a horizontal scrolling calendar and a randomly ordered grid of upcoming game jams. On the top half of the page you can use the calendar to see which jams are happening during your preferred time window and how different jams overlap. This is useful for scheduling and jam hosts can post their events as far into the future as they like.
If timing isn’t your concern you can check out the bottom half of the page which lists out all of the current and upcoming jams alongside a host-supplied icon. This gives you a better sense of what each jam is about and can help excite your creativity. If you use both halves of this page you should fill up your jam schedule in no time.
If you still don’t know where to go, here are a handful of upcoming jams that pique our interest:
Mashup Jam
I firmly believe in the power of mashups. There’s something unique to the 21st century in taking dissonant parts and changing their context to create brand new art. As more and more of our artistic history and culture becomes available through the internet and outside of its original setting I can only see mashups becoming more prevalent. Now we have the Mashup jam to help bring this aesthetic sense to our gaming medium. The jam starts on April 30th and runs for 2 weeks so you have plenty of time to get ready for the jam.
Queerly Representing the Underrepresented
Representation is very important to us at itch.io. We deliberately choose to feature diverse creators and projects on our site and blog, and now we get to feature a diverse game jam. Queerly Representing the Underrepresented is a game jam that asks participants to explore gender and sexuality through developing games. Furthermore, entries in the jam have the potential to be shown at the Freeplay Indie Games Festival. Queerly Representing the Underrepresented begins on April 30th.
The Pippin Barr Game Idea Jam #2: The Museums Jam
Alright I’m a little biased about this one as I’m on the judging panel, but the #museumjam is something I’m quite proud of. This one isn’t so much of a game jam as it is a jam for discrete art projects that will later be added to this year’s digital art museum The Zium Museum 2. Any modeled or audio art is welcome in this jam and could be immortalized in an awesome 3D space. The jam is ending soon so make sure to get your pieces submitted by April 30th.
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