Gaming Like It's 1925: There's Still Plenty Of Time To Join Our Public Domain Game Jam!

from the mine-that-domain dept

Sign up for the Public Domain Game Jam on itch.io »

We're just over a week into our third annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1925, and it runs until the end of the month so there's still plenty of time to sign up and start working on an entry! We're looking for analog and digital games that are inspired by and/or make direct use of materials from works published in 1925, which have now entered the public domain, and giving away prizes for the best ones in multiple categories.

It doesn't matter if you're an experienced game designer or someone who's never tried it before — the beauty of the public domain is that it supplies a growing wealth of inspiration and assets for you to use, and the beauty of modern game design tools is that you can dip your toe in without any particular expertise or technical knowledge (and we've got links to several tools that can help over on the game jam page). Entries can be as simple as a one-page set of rules for a game to be played in person (or perhaps over Zoom, given our current circumstances) or as complex as a full-fledged video game, and anything in between. There are six categories to compete in (the winners of the 2020 jam are linked below, and you can read our judges' thoughts on them here):

• Best Analog Game (Previous Winner: The 24th Kandinsky)
• Best Digital Game (Previous Winner: You Are The Rats In The Walls)
• Best adaptation of a 1925 work (Previous Winner: The Hounds Follow All Things Down)
• Best remixing of multiple sources (Previous Winner: 192X)
• Best “Deep Cut” from a work not listed on any of the round up articles (Previous Winner: Legends of Charlemagne)
• Best Visuals (Previous Winner: Hot Water)

Sign up for the game jam on itch.io where you can also read the full rules and find links to lists of 1925 books, plays, films, art and music, including stuff from many notable 20th century creators like Aldous Huxley, Gertrude Stein, Zora Neale Hurston, Pablo Picasso, Charlie Chaplin, Irving Berlin, and Louis Armstrong. You've got until January 31st to submit your entries after which they will be played by our amazing panel of judges from both the game design and copyright worlds.

Check out the winners of the 2019 and 2020 jams (which used works from 1923 and 1924 respectively) then sign up for the jam and get designing. We've already got a few entries this year, and we can't wait to see more and play everyone's games!

Sign up for the Public Domain Game Jam on itch.io »

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Filed Under: game jam, games, gaming like its 1925, public domain