What is Game Off?
Game Off is our annual game jam challenging folks to build a game based on a theme.
How to participate
- Create a game based on the theme.
- Sign up for a free GitHub account if you don't already have one. It's free and I assure you I’m not on any sort of commission!
- Join the Game Off on itch.io. If you don’t already have an itch.io account, you can sign in with your GitHub account.
- Create a new public GitHub repository to store the source code and any assets you’re able to share for your entry and push your changes before December 1 13:37 PT.
- Submit your game through itch.io.
Voting
Voting will open shortly after the jam ends and is open to everyone who’s submitted a game. Entries will be rated on the following categories: Overall, Gameplay, Graphics, Audio, Innovation and Theme Interpretation. Voting will end on Jan 5th at 13:37 PT.
As always, we'll highlight some of our favorites games on the GitHub Blog, and the world will get to enjoy (and maybe even contribute to or learn from) your creations.
Help—I’ve never created a game before!
With so many free, open source game engines and tutorials available online, there’s never been an easier (or more exciting!) time to try out game development.
Are you…
- Into JavaScript? You might be interested in Phaser, or Sprig.
- Comfortable with C++ or C#? Look at Godot, Unity and Unreal Engine.
- Raving about Rust? You might like Bevy.
- Proficient with Python? Check out Pygame or Godot (Godot uses GDScript, which is similar to Python).
- Dangerous with Java? Take a look at libGDX.
- In love with Lua? Check out LÖVE or Defold. Like retro games too? Drop everything and check out LIKO-12!
- Fond of Flutter? Take a peek at Flame.
- Gearing up with Go? You might want to look at Ebitengine.
- Do you really like retro games? Maybe you can…
- Hack on a Roguelike dungeon crawler in JavaScript or Haskell.
- Crank out a text adventure in or some interactive fiction with Clojure or Ink (similar to Markdown).
- Craft that 8-bit console game you always fantasized about with PICO-8, Pixel Vision 8, TIC-80 (Lua), BASIC8 (Basic), or Pyxel (Python).
Help—I’ve never used version control, Git, or GitHub before!
- Git Documentation: everything you need to know about version control and how to get started with Git
- GitHub Help: everything you need to know about GitHub
- Any questions about GitHub? Visit the GitHub Community Forum