Get ready for Game Off

Game Off is our annual month-long game jam where participants create games based on a theme using their favorite game engines, libraries, and programming languages. Newbies, professional game developers, and everyone in between are welcome to join us on Friday, November 1. It’s a great excuse to learn a new technology, collaborate on something over the weekends with friends, or create a game by yourself for the first time!

Last year, the theme was “hybrid” and over 300 games were created—everything from a post-apocalyptic, pixel art platformer, to a blocky, browser-based puzzle game, to a mashup of arcade classics Snake and Pong.

We’re announcing this year’s theme on Friday, November 1, at 1:37 pm PT and we hope it’ll inspire some amazing ideas. Every genre of game is welcome. Demakes and remakes of classic games welcome too—we’ve seen lots of great takes/hybrids of classics over the years like Tetris games with a twist and mashups of Breakout and Pong.

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

Join the jam on itch.io now

Help—I’ve never created a game

With so many tutorials, open source game engines, and the source for thousands of other game jam games available online, there’s never been an easier (or more exciting) time to jump into game development.

Are you…

• Into JavaScript? You might be interested in Phaser.
• Comfortable with C++ or C#? Unity, Unreal Engine, or Godot might be a good match for you.
• Proficient with Python? Check out Pygame or Godot.
• Dangerous with Java? Take a look at libGDX.
• In love with Lua? Check out LÖVE, Defold, and the wonderful world of fantasy consoles like LIKO-12, PICO-8, Pixel Vision 8, and TIC-80.

Have a repository or tutorial you’d like to share? Share it on Twitter with #GitHubGameOff.

Learn more about Game Off

Written by

Lee Reilly

@leereilly

Senior Program Manager, Developer Relations