The First Border House Virtual Game Jam Starts Today!

by Alex, a regular contributor to The Border House, who posts some of her sewing projects and cosplays on her Tumblr; you can also find her babbling about sewing and games and Parks and Recreation on Twitter.

I'd like to invite you to participate in the first-ever Border House Game Jam, which begins today!

What is a game jam?
If you don't know what a game jam is, basically it is an event where people get together to make a game under very strict time restraints. Most game jams are weekend events where participants spend 48 hours straight just making a game. Since this game jam isn't a physical meetup, I'm giving you one week. Your goal is to make a game using TWINE, a tool that enables the creation of Choose Your Own Adventure-style games.

Why Twine?
First of all, it is very easy to use. Anna Anthropy recently published a great tutorial for it. You don't need to know how to program to make a working game using Twine.

Secondly, the output of Twine is a single HTML file, meaning it is very easy to distribute. TBH will be happy to host your game if you'd like, or you can post it in your own space, and we will link to it in the wrap-up post.

So how does this work?
Starting today, make a game! Submit your HTML file or a link to your game to editors-at-borderhouseblog-dot-com by the following Thursday at midnight (your local time) and we will post it on the blog. Then check out the games the rest of the folks in the community made!

How can I possibly make an entire game in a week?
You can totally do it! Trust me.

The spirit of a game jam is just to make games–any kind of game. It doesn't have to be long, or technologically impressive, or deep, or innovative, or polished. It just has to be yours. Because more personal games should exist for their own sake. For art's sake.

If this interests you at all, please spread the word. Feel free to ask questions or collaborate with others in the comments here or in the TBH IRC channel. And if anyone has any suggestions for an (optional) theme, please leave a comment at the kick-off post.

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