Theme

Keeping it simple for the first game jam, the theme is the USSR. Home of the first successful communist revolution and workers' state, the Soviet Union seems a good place to begin. How you engage with this theme is up to you. Games based on Soviet literature and cinema, games featuring events and figures from Soviet history, games that might have been made in the Soviet Union if computer gaming had taken off there, the possibilities are many.

If you want to make a retro-style game, you may find these resources useful:

Submission Requirements

  • Submissions must be posted publicly in the submissions subthread below.
  • Submissions must be turned in on time (by 5PM Eastern time on March 18)
  • Submissions must follow the Jam's theme
  • Submissions must not promote reactionary ideas (bigotry, imperialism, etc.)
  • No pornographic works (sexual themes may be fine, but explicit sexual content is not)
  • For safety purposes, submissions must include source code

Awards

Submissions will be eligible for the following awards, based on community vote:

  • Best Overall: The best overall game for both theme and engagement.
  • Most Thematic: The game that best exemplifies the jam's theme.
  • Most Engaging: The game that offers the best gameplay experience, whether that be through mechanics, artwork, story, etc.

Voting will be done in a dedicated voting thread, to be created near the end of the submission deadline. To minimize the risk of sockpuppeting/ballot stuffing, each user will post their votes under their username and an account must have had at least 10 posts as of March 1 to vote. My initial plan was to have votes delivered to my privately to avoid any game emerging as a frontrunner early, but ultimately I decided that it wouldn't be worth the loss in transparency.

Commenting Policy

To keep things easy to follow, I've created separate subthreads for entry submissions and donation announcements. Please put submissions/donations in these subthreads or I might miss them.

Donation Drive

The community has decided to use this game jam to promote the good work of Doctors Without Borders in Ukraine and elsewhere.

You can donate to DWB here. To have your donation counted toward the total, post a screenshot of your donation into the subthread below (with personal information scrubbed, of course!).

To kick things off, here is my own contribution.

So far, Hexjam has raised $360.92 for Doctors Without Borders.

  • BeamBrain [he/him]
    hexagon
    ·
    3 years ago

    SUBMISSION SUBTHREAD: Game submissions go here.

    • Tychoxii [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      I made something in RPG maker.

      Features: multiple endings! walls of text because leftism! original artwork! music by our very own @WhyEssEff! in and out 10 min tops experience!

      JRPGs are not my cup of tea but I wanted to see how flexible the engine is for those of us who don't know what a code is. Verdict: it's pretty flexible thanks to resources other users have created, the main drawback is the very limited resolution.

      • BeamBrain [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        3 years ago

        I get an "rpgvxace rtp is required to run this game" error when I try to run it

        • AlyxMS [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          One solution is for the user to download and install RPGVX RTP. Better solution is to include the RTP while packing the game. Haven't used RPG VX for years but I'm fairly sure there's an option for that while packaging.

          Once packed, rpg vx will generate a self extracting zip in the form of an exe file. The content can be extracted with something like 7-zip without running the file. If the user doesn't trust the game.exe within, a game.exe from any rpgvx game should work.

        • Tychoxii [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          OK, uploaded a new version: https://tychoxi.itch.io/hexjam It should work now.

          "rtp" are the default assets, turns out you have to tell the engine to export them as well. I was able to play the version i uploaded to itch because I have the default assets installed with the engine so i didnt notice the issue.

    • AlyxMS [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Literally still finishing things up 5 minutes ago. Deadline in 6 minutes, don't have time to play test. Might not work at all. Let me know if there's an error and game is unplayable.

      https://alyxms.itch.io/luna-program

      • BeamBrain [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        Deadline's been extended, you still have half an hour for last-minute touches!

        EDIT: Game runs, at the very least. Looks cool so far!

        • AlyxMS [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Thanks for the extension. Found a few major bugs. Updated. I think it should be completable now. I hope.

      • sgtlion [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        This plays pretty slick, actually one of the coolest looks on Twee I've seen. Got the hang of it after blowing my whole budget in a couple weeks, Mishin's alcoholic madness is pretty great, and the story is compelling thus far~ I will be back this evenin' to land my army of cosmonauts and find what the heck's goin' on up there.

        • AlyxMS [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          Story event is gonna get less and less frequent as you progress. Ran out of time while making mid to late game content.

          Thanks for the praise! :meow-bounce:

          I haven't actually got the time to play through it even once, so let me know if you got stuck and can't reach the end.

          (Testing now. I have confirmed the "Cosmonaut drawing enemy attention away from injured comrade" action do not work and would give an error. "Cosmonaut patching up comrade in critical condition" works but would throw an error. Fixed both and uploaded as a separate bug fix file.)

          (Took a coupe hours to play through it, can confirm the game is indeed completable. Found a few minor bugs, but one of them actually benefit the player so won't bother fixing it.)

          • sgtlion [any]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Dang, this game goes further than I thought, sweet beans, and how the hell did you have time to make this much content?! Only bugs of note I got was when ye 'Stop tracking' the last site on the list, and my cosmos kept shootin' 'til their remaining bullets went negative.

            Really cool, if only I knew salty pizzas were the ultimate answer. 196 weeks. Woulda been like 170 but my 6-man team got wiped :< Boppin' fun.

    • sgtlion [any]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      WELL FUCK, this is lame. I was 100% sure I had one more day, I thought we had 7 days exactly from the post date, but that post date turned out to be the edit date, so I assumed I had like 18 hours yet. I literally just browsed this thread in bed and jumped out to get it here today at least.

      Whatever. Better late than never, I don't need to abide by no stinkin' deadline. I enjoyed making it and I learned a lot of fun facts about the space program. I wanted to clean up and balance some, I probably still will. But this totally still functions and I think makes for a half-decent game with fun facts. I dedicate it to my hatred of timezones.

      https://sargeant-lion.itch.io/soviets-in-space

      • BeamBrain [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        3 years ago

        Oof, that's rough. Sorry to hear that. You'll be ineligible for awards, but I'll go ahead and include you in the thread so that your game isn't overlooked completely. Part of the purpose of this jam was to produce proletarian art, after all, and it'd be a shame if your contribution got buried because it missed a deadline by a few hours.

        • sgtlion [any]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Thanks, appreciate it <3 'sall good, I still had fun and learned, as I say.

      • AlyxMS [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Lost a few times to the americans on Lunokhod 1. :ussr-cry:

        Once I figured out building things directly is faster than special parts, it worked out.

        Other than I couldn't figure out how to use research points on parts, game's super intuitive.

        Kinda cool how we both chose the space program as our theme.

        • sgtlion [any]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          Poor robawts, game definitely jumps in difficulty at the one point. And yeah, pretty sure research->parts is bugged, alas.

          Appreciate the play and the nice feedback <3 on yours right now. Hell yeah to our psychic link, space likers unite :sputnik:

    • Sam [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      https://samskelly.itch.io/hexjam-comrade-pig Password is "hexjam"

      • BeamBrain [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        3 years ago

        I'm not sure what the fuck is happening in this but it made me chuckle