Are you worried that you don’t have enough things to do? Have you somehow run out of games to play and want to help make sure nobody in the future has this problem? Try out a game jam! We have a page dedicated to tracking all of the jams coming up so you can brave those wilds if you like, but I also want to take the chance to highlight some interesting jams in case that chart is a little intimidating for some of you.

Scream Empire

When I think of months traditionally associated with horror July isn’t where I jump to first. Or second…. Or third. But that didn’t stop the folks behind Scream Empire because they’re hosting an entire horror-themed jam starting one week from today. Get weird, scary, spooky, or whatever October feelings you’re working through early with this open-ended jam. 

If you have a busier schedule, this jam should be a little more flexible for you as it runs for a week and a half.

Picoware

Alright so if your preferred game jam is shorter, this is the one for you. Taking place over 24 hours starting on the 27th, Picoware challenges participants to develop a game using Pico-8 that would feel at home in a Warioware-style compilation. This jam should be great for folks new to jamming as it’s a lot harder to fall into feature creep because of the limited nature of Pico-8 and the short time limit. 

The best part of this jam is that and the end the hosts will stitch all of the submissions together into one cart that folks can play back-to-back-to-back. Signups are live now.

Tasty Leftovers Jam

So Picoware is accessible for newcomers, but what about the battle-hardened jam veterans with drives full of half-finished projects laying around? Tasty Leftovers Jam is for you. Much like last weekend’s pizza sitting in your fridge, Tasty Leftovers is about taking your half finished projects and making them into something delicious/playable. There are no winners or rankings here, but the possibility for unique entries seems too good to pass up, so I’m really pulling for this jam to become a recurring event. 

Tasty Leftovers Jam runs for 3 days starting on the 25th.