Game Off 2021 theme announcement

The theme for this year’s Game Off is…

…BUG!

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to create a game between now and December 1 incorporating the theme somehow, and submit it to the jam page on itch.io. After a few weeks of playing and rating the games by participants, the winners will be announced shortly thereafter.

As usual, you may interpret ‘BUG’ however you wish …

BUG (/bəɡ/)

noun

• an insect or creepy crawly
• an unexpected defect, fault, flaw, or imperfection in code or equipment
• a microorganism (such as a bacterium or virus) causing illness or disease
• a concealed listening device
• a sudden enthusiasm
• a river in Ukraine

verb

• to bother or annoy or pester
• to plant a listening device
• to “bug off” or “bug out”

Or go rogue and ignore the dictionary:

• B.U.G acronyms e.g. Being Unusually Good or Big Urban Game or something
• Dad jokes / puns like deterants / tick tock / spelling bee / flywheel

Note: Nobody’s judging the code quality, so lots of bugs are both expected and accepted. Focus on having fun 😉

Good luck, have fun, and sign up now if you haven’t already! <3

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.
• Comfortable with  C++ or C#? Look at Godot, Unity, and Unreal Engine.
• 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. And if you like retro games, check out LIKO-12!
• Like hacking with Haxe? You’ll have heaps of fun with Heaps.

Find a language you love (or want to learn), and build any kind of game you want: platformers, roguelikes, shoot ‘em ups, text adventures—anything you like. We’ve even had some NES and C64 games submitted over the years 🤯

Have a question about game development? Jump into the Game Off community forum on itch.io, or ask in the Game Off Discord server.

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 Desktop App: for Windows and macOS
• GitHub Support: specific answers to specific questions
• GitHub Documentation: everything you need to know about GitHub
• GitHub Community Forum: find solutions and share ideas

Written by

Lee Reilly

@leereilly

Senior Program Manager, GitHub Developer Relations. Open source hype man, AI whisperer, hackathon and game jam wrangler. I write && manage programs, support dev communities, and occasionally ship something weird just for the vibes.