Theme: [TBD]

Who is Future Inspire Academy?

Future Inspire Academy (FIA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people learn game development in a way that's fun, convenient, and flexible. We offer services like Daily Unity Challenges, Weekly Game Creations, One-on-One Mentoring, and Beta Platform Access combined with our gamifying leaderboard system. What makes our jams unique are our upgradable prize pool where you can redeem higher rewards by using points you gain from our program. https://futureinspireacademy.com/

Join our non-profit program to improve your game development skills, interact with a growing global community, get access to exclusive beta platforms, and redeem higher rewards in game jams:

UModeler Exclusive Jam Rules

"Welcome to the UModeler X Game Jam! 

We're excited to support this creative journey by introducing UModeler X, empowering developers with efficient, real-time 3D asset creation within Unity. With features like Rigging, Painting, AI Texturing, and 3D Modeling, UModeler X transforms your imagination into immersive experiences seamlessly. 

Our mission is to provide intuitive tools that help you focus on creativity rather than complexity. Join us and explore how UModeler X can speed up your game development process while unlocking new possibilities. 

Learn more and take part in this exciting journey with UModeler X! Visit our website - (https://www.unity.umodeler.com/) and Discord community (https://discord.gg/FJDUYpjRPu) for more insights."

Our main sponsor of this month, UModeler, is a Unity Verified Asset and one of the most popular tools in the Unity Asset Store. We are collaborating with them to promote their beta product, UModeler X, and provide valuable testing and feedback to help them improve.

ALL PARTICIPANTS WILL BE REQUIRED TO USE UMODELER X TO CREATE A 3D GAME! Winners must provide a public GitHub repository containing the project so that the UModeler team can ensure everyone followed the rules. Art for the game must either be created with UModeler X or constructed out of built-in Unity objects and tools (i.e. basic shapes, pro-builder, etc.). We won't mind minor usage of other 3D assets from the Unity Asset Store or other websites, but the majority should be created through our sponsor's platform and suspicion of violating this rule can result in a disqualification. For this specific game jam, you will need to use the Unity game engine because that is what UModeler supports. 

If you have any questions if your specific situation is allowed, you can ask us in the discord server. Use the link above to get UModeler X for free. Questions about UModeler X will be answered on their main server as well as ours. Thanks UModeler!

Prizes

125 points in our program will guarantee that your team can maximize the cash prize.

The winner(s) gets:

1st Place:

- $125 ($100 guaranteed split among team)
- 3 Asset Creator Picks

2nd Place:

- $100 ($75 guaranteed split among team)

- 1 Asset Creator Pick

3rd Place:

- $50 ($25 guaranteed split among team)

Best Community Voted Game:

- $25 (Split among team)

This jam's point to cash conversion is: 5 POINTS = $1 PRIZE UPGRADE

The winning teams don't automatically get all the awarded cash; they are only guaranteed a portion. Our game jams reward our active members that contribute to our community. Members can use points from our program to earn more cash, up to the total prize value. For the cash prize pool, your team's guaranteed amount is shown above for each placed winner. Instead of a calculation that we have done in the past, we are just holding $25 of the prize pool behind our point system to give our winners more even without points. We are allowing teams to collectively gather the required amount of points to upgrade the cash prize (before it was individually), which makes it a lot easier to be awarded the max amount.

Each member of the winning team will be guaranteed a copy of each Unity Asset. We are planning to partner with several Unity Asset creators for this game jam. Instead of stacking all of those prizes for only the first place winner, we will allow teams to pick which creators' tools they want to redeem. The first place winner can pick their asset creators first, then the second place winner, then the third. The prize section above will change as we funnel in all of our new partners in the coming weeks. 

Disclaimer: The advertised prize pool value refers to the total cash value of all of our available prizes combined. The entire prize pool value cannot be attained by one singular individual and the prize pool value may not be distributed in its entirety because of team size and potential inability for some to upgrade their prizes. In other words, we will keep all leftover cash to save for future game jams. The prize value that an individual person receives is dependent on their team size (referring to the cash prize because each member will receive our assets).

Note: The second best community voted game will earn the $25 if the best community voted game is one of the top three winners. This is so that we give someone else a chance to shine!

Asset Creator Picks

This is the list of assets winners can obtain from our sponsors. Some sponsors limit the options while others keep it more open to the developers:

1. Hot Reload from The Naughty Cult
2. Quest Machine from Pixel Crushers
3. ANY ASSET from Kubacho Lab

Payment

Each team will have a "team captain" that will submit the game on behalf of the team and will receive the cash prize from FIA. The team captain will be responsible for distributing the cash to their entire team however they want to. 

We prefer using PayPal. That is our primary option. For international developers, we will prefer using Xoom because it is very simple to send money to any country. If there are issues with these platforms for your country or situation, we can talk about it; we WILL get you the money you deserve no matter what.

Disclaimer: The cash awarded to the winning team may be deducted to pay for international transaction fees. FIA is not required to use extra funds to account for international fees. 

Sponsors

Thank you to all of our partners who help fund our game jams for the community! Let's hear a word from all of our additional sponsors:

Hot Reload

Hot Reload allows you to instantly apply code changes, without compiling. Works in PlayMode, EditMode, and On-Device! Trusted by solo indie developers and massive studios alike - Hot Reload has already saved developers thousands of hours. 

Get a 30-day free trial at https://hotreload.net/download 

Or purchase the asset here: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/hot-reload-edit-code-without-compiling-254358 

By submitting a game to our competition, you can become eligible to request a trial extension!

Pixel Crushers

"Pixel Crushers' mission is to provide narrative tools to bring designers' stories to life. Our asset Quest Machine is a full-featured, easy-to-use, extensible quest system that lets you design quests in a visual node-based editor and/or procedurally-generate quests at runtime based on the current game world state. 

Pixel Crushers on the Unity Asset Store: https://assetstore.unity.com/publishers/4521 

It's our pleasure to sponsor Future Inspire Academy. Best of luck on your game jam. Go out there and make great games!"

Kubacho Lab

Kubacho Lab creates productivity-boosting tools for Unity.

Check them out: https://assetstore.unity.com/publishers/80066?aid=1100lGLBn&pubref=fia

Submissions (WebGL Builds Required)

For this game jam and possibly for our future game jams, we are requiring all games to have a WebGL build. This is more accessible to the community and it'll let your game be more likely to be played by the crowd. This is NOT optional. We WILL disqualify any games that do not have a WebGL build. However, you may include an executable version.

Judgement

The first three days after submissions close will be open to public community voting. Public voting will not determine the winner of the jam as that will be from the judges, but it will engage our community, hence why we are incentivizing it. The games will be judged by the two founders of the organization. Judging will commence after the community voting period is over and the results will be released the following Monday. Participants are encouraged to rate each other's games and give constructive feedback. We hope that you will use a portion of our cash prize to invest in your game development journey. The categories we will judge are the following, we also look at which game has the most potential to be expanded upon and become successful:

• Theme (How creatively does the game apply the jam's theme?)
• Gameplay (How fun and unique is the game to play?)
• Presentation (How appealing/creative are the visuals and music/sounds?)

Basic Rules

1. We allow teams of up to 4.
2. No NSFW/L or offensive content.
3. Games must not be submitted to other jams.
4. Game must be playable on WebGL. However, you may also include an executable file for the game.
5. You MUST use UModeler X for the majority of your art. You must also provide a public GitHub repository to us.
6. There is a 12 hour grace period if you contact FutureInspireGames up to 5 hours after submissions close.
7. This game jam, other than the featured gimmick, has no limitations on software and tools. You are free to use open source and paid assets and you are also allowed to reuse scripts that you might have used for previous projects. We just don't want fully pre-built games to be submitted.

FAQs

1. Where can I find team members?
   1. We have a discord server where you can talk with lots of people!
2. How am I going to get paid if I win?
   1. After our second game jam, we would like to primarily use PayPal to donate the funds to the winning game. We also accept Venmo. We would use Xoom for international developers. If these platforms do not work for you, don't worry; we can talk. We will ensure that you receive the prize you've earned.
3. How do I gain points in the program to upgrade my prizes?
   1. You can correctly answer daily polls for a small amount of points or you can participate in our weekly game creations to earn a massive amount of points at one time. We also allow you to work on past projects for the normal amount of points. We also give a generous amount of points for sharing your progress as a jam-devlog in our server.
4. Can I submit a game I've previously made?
   1. No, we will not allow games started prior to the game jam. We will not award games that are spam and have been submitted to other competitions before. This is to make it more fair to those who participated on the jam's terms.
5. How can I submit my mobile game to the jam?
   1. As stated in the rules, we will only accept a game built for computers and we require at least a Web build so you'll be able to publish it here. We may accept mobile in the future, but we are not yet accepting that due to complications so sorry.
6. I just missed the deadline! Can I still submit my hard work?
   1. We are offering a half-day grace period after submissions. You must contact FutureInspireGames up to 5 hours after the jam ends to request a special link that will allow you to submit your game late. You will have 12 hours after the jam ends to submit your game. Any games submitted after 12 pm pst Monday will be disqualified. We are doing this to prevent developers from exploiting our grace period and only make it useful for those who really need it.

Terms and Policies

Future Inspire Academy claims no rights or ownership to submitted games, but, by submitting a game to our competition, you give permission for your game to appear on videos or other promotional materials that we may create in the future.