Game Off—our fifth annual game jam celebrating open source is officially underway. The theme for this year’s jam is throwback.

Let your imagination run wild and interpret that in any way you like, but here are a few possible interpretations for inspiration:

noun

  • a reversion to an earlier ancestral characteristic
  • a person or thing having the characteristics of a former time
  • a nostalgia for something in the past (fashion, movies, literature, games, technology)
  • something retro—a blast from the past
  • something passé—no longer fashionable or popular,
  • throwing something back—as in a ball or reply

How to participate

  1. Create a game based on the theme over the next month.
  2. Sign up for a free GitHub account if you don’t already have one.
  3. Join the Game Off on itch.io. If you don’t already have an itch.io account, log in with your GitHub account.
  4. Create a new repository to store the source code and any assets you’re able to share for your entry and push your changes before December 1 13:37 PDT.
  5. Submit your game through itch.io.

You can participate by yourself or as a team. Multiple submissions are fine. And of course, the use of open source software is encouraged.

Voting

This year, voting will open shortly after the jam ends and is open to everyone who’s submitted a game.There’ll be plenty of time to play and vote on the entries.

As always, we’ll highlight some of our favorites games on the GitHub Blog, and the world will get to enjoy (and maybe even contribute to or learn from) your creations.

It’s dangerous to go alone

If you’re new to Git, GitHub, or version control…

If you’re new to itch.io or game development…

The itch.io community feature is enabled for this jam—that’s a great place to ask questions specific to the Game Off, share tips, etc.

And don’t be shy—share your progress! The official Twitter hashtag for the Game Off is #GitHubGameOff.