The Gamedev.js Jam 2023 starts… NOW! This is the fourth edition of our online web game development competition – you have exactly thirteen days between April 13th, 5 PM CEST and April 26th, 5 PM CEST to build an HTML5 game and submit it through Itch to win cool prizes!

Partners

Let’s thank our Partners who are supporting the existence of this competition. Those are:

• Platinum: CrazyGames, OP Games, Game7, Overlord
• Gold: GitHub, Flux, Arcadia
• Silver: Akedo, Bazaar, Cocos, Poki, 8XR

It wouldn’t be possible to run Gamedev.js Jam 2023 without them!

Challenges

We had Categories in previous years, but now we’re focusing on Challenges which now are top level and independent from each other. We have:

• Open Source by GitHub
• Flash Revival by CrazyGames
• Web3 by Game7
• Arcadians by OP Games
• Overlord’s Arena by Overlord
• Interoperability

All are optional, so you can ignore them, join any given one, or try doing all at once. If you do check them out, remember they offer extra prizes! Now, about those…

Prizes

The list of prizes for overall winners:

• 10 × Phaser Editor lifetime license
• 10 × PlayCanvas Personal plan for 12 months
• 10 × Cocos Store item of choice
• 5 × Aseprite editor license
• 5 × GDevelop Gold license for 12 months
• 5 × WebStorm IDE license for 12 months
• 5 × Jsfxr Pro Solo lifetime license
• 5 × Zenva Academy subscription for 12 months
• 4 × BeJS Conference ticket (1 IRL and 3 online) on May 11th-12th
• 3 × SwishSwoosh Tier1 Kickstart Bundle

We also have prizes for given Challenges:

• Open Source: 500 USD in GitHub shop vouchers
• Flash Revival: publishing deal and 2750 EUR
• Web3: 5000 USDC
• Arcadians: 1500 USDC and 3 Arcadians NFTs
• Overlord’s Arena: 1 genesis Creepz NFT (~$2500)
• Interoperability: 500 USDC and 3 Arcadians NFTs

Decentralized hosting

If you do plan on working with blockchain technologies, remember that Itch is still limiting the capabilities of their platform, thus having all the games embedded in an iframe, which in turn prevent you from using many needed features. To have the freedom to do so, you can host your entry on an external hosting service. Any will work: from GitHub Pages, regular shared hosting or a VPS, to dedicated services like the one Flux is providing.

Experts

Our wonderful experts will be either judging the given Challenges, or picking their favourite top5. We have: Michelle Mannering, Ewa Mazur, Ania Kubów, Raf Mertens, Rafael Morgan, Leon Do, Brett Cleary, Daniel Keller, Tim Sulmone, Paul Gadi, Taufik Sani, Allan Patel, Joe Carnell, and Dominic Smith.

Newsletter and Survey

Don’t forget to subscribe to our Gamedev.js Weekly newsletter, delivering you fresh HTML5 gamedev news every Friday since January 2014. There’s also Gamedev.js Survey with the results from last year, and plans to run the 2023 edition soon.

Theme announcement

Ok, enough distractions – time for the theme announcement!

*drum roll*

Gamedev.js Jam 2023 theme is: TIME!

You can use it to build a game about traveling in time – to the past, or to the future. Speed through the history of humanity. You can manipulate the time itself in your entry, or make one about fixing watches! It’s entirely up to you, take your time to think about an original idea if you want to score high in the Theme criterion. But don’t stress too much, it’s up to you how exactly are you gonna interpret it!

Join the fun!

That’s everything, start jamming! Join our Discord, register on Itch if you haven’t already, and share your progress using #gamedevjs hashtag on Twitter if you’re using it.

Good luck, and remember about the most important thing: have fun!