What is an Otome?

Otome or Otome Games specifically refer to games created for a female audience where the female identifying player character pursues male identifying love interests (via routes or events) and opts for a romantic ending with the chosen character. Otomes are often Visual Novels or VN-Hybrids such as RPGs and simulation games.

The key parts include:

Female Protagonist (protagonist can be chooseable but a fem or fem representing option must be available)
Romance (You have to end up romantically with one of the characters in some way)
Male Love Interest(s) (Female, nonbinary, and other ones optional but not necessarily included, the focus is still a masc representing love interest)

Popular examples of Otome:

Reincarnate as an unimportant background character and foil the plans of a villainous organization — but careful, you might draw the attention of two (very handsome) villains in Thorn for the Villain one of Otome Jam 2023 entries!

Mystic Messenger
Jack Jeanne
Dark Nights
Even If Tempest
And Otome Jam Entries such as: Karamu (2023), Diffraction (2022), Blooming Panic (2021)

If you're looking for a team or team members, be sure to join the Otome Jam Meet and Greets on [April 6th, 2PM EST] and [April 20th, 8AM EST] on the Devtalk Discord Server, a community we collaborated with last year and welcomes indie visual novel developers and people wanting to work on visual novels!

Alongside Otome Jam we also have Josei Jam, a jam for any women-oriented games!

Rules

To have your project allowed for submission, it must adhere to these rules

The game has to feature a female identifying (she/her, she/they) protagonist (chooseable protagonists are fine)
Must have at least one male identifying love interest! Note, if you don't want to make a game focused around male love interest(s), feel free to join Josei Jam!
The game must have some focus on romance and/or establishing a romantic relationship with a love interest in one of the endings.

What is allowed?

1. R18 projects are allowed. However, please tag and label your game properly for any content not appropriate for minors as well as any triggering and sensitive content. This applies to both SFW and NSFW submissions. If found out to be an unlabeled NSFW submission, the submission will be removed.

2. Previously started on otome games are allowed to be worked on during the jam and submitted as entries. Otome demos and unfinished projects are also allowed to be submitted as long as they’re in a playable state. Submissions with no updated builds during jam time will be removed.

3. You can make your entry pay what you want or commercial later on as long as you provide a demo. We discourage using volunteers working for free or rev-share on a commercial project- pay your team if the product will be a paid game.

4. Submitting multiple projects is allowed as long as you are the creator or one of the leaders of a project and fit this jam’s criteria. The more, the merrier, after all!

5. Use of Free to use, Public Domain and Creative Commons License resources are allowed and encouraged if you can’t fill in a position in your team, such as artists or composers. You can always update the game later on with updated materials and a new team. AI generated content is not allowed.

6. You can submit and finish your entry in another jam as long the rules of the other one allow it. Similarly, you can submit games that fit these jam’s submission rules from other jams if they run alongside the time of this one or started before Otome Jam. Feel free to also submit your game to Josei Jam!

6.1. Josei Jam is a game jam running alongside Otome Jam that is there to promote Joseimuke / shoujosei games and games for a female audience. Otome Jam entries automatically qualify as submissions for Josei Jam! If you would rather create BL games for women or Girl’s Love only, Josei Jam is for you! Read more about here and more about Joseimuke in the Community Post Section.

7. Feel free to use the logo in your game to brand it as a product for the Otome Jam (Right Click + Save As) and credit Akua as the logo artist. Additionally, you should credit your team in the game or on the game’s page. If you use resources, do check if they require credits or not to prevent license issues from happening.