IMPORTANT: THE THEME HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED! THE THEME IS... 

OUTBREAK!

In this Game Jam, we are inviting both high schoolers or other beginners who have little to no major game development experience and more advanced developers who are more comfortable with the process. Our goal is to bridge the gap between amateur and experienced game developers by offering a competitive environment where amateur developers still have the incentive to participate while keeping in close contact with more experienced developers. 

As opposed to most hackathons, game jams often have a specific theme that participants usually need to align their game with. This is to ensure that people all begin the jam at the same time, as well as breed creativity through limitation. The theme for MelonJam will be announced on August 6th at 8:00 AM Pacific Time (11:00 AM Eastern). Submissions will close on August 9th at 6:00 PM Pacific Time (9:00 PM Eastern Time). 

There are two categories for prizes: novice and advanced. The novice prize is opt-in; only high school stuudents and younger may compete for this prize. The advanced prize is open to anyone—both amateur and experienced game developers may compete for this prize. Both amateur and experienced developers will make use of the same theme, which better enables them to offer advice to each other on the Devpost Discussions section or on the Discord server. 

Our prizes include Bugsee Credits, AoPS coupons, and HyperX gaming equipment.

For more information visit our website!

By including echoAR into your game, you are eligible for the echoAR sponsored prize. If you decide to do so, you can sign up for echoAR at our dedicated login page. Signing up here will grant you business-tier echoAR services for the duration of the jam. 

Schedule

August 6

8:00 AM: Game Jam Starts

8:00 AM: echoAR workshop

August 9

6:00 PM: Game Jam Ends

Interested in sponsoring us?

Here's our sponsorship prospectus!

MelonJam is fiscally sponsored by Hack Club Bank, a project by the The Hack Foundation (d.b.a Hack Club), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN: 81-2908499).

$1,762 in prizes

• Gameplay
  How well the game squeezes out value from its mechanics. Good gameplay should give the player limitations, and give the player to opportunities to explore those limitations.
• Graphics/Polish
  How impressive the project looks. Objects of importance should be easily differentiable from other objects, and in general the game should be visually appealing.
• Game Feel
  How appropriate and appealing the controls feel (snappy platforming, impactful heavy attacks, or the like).
• Innovation
  How “new” a concept in the game is (avant-garde graphics, new gameplay concepts, new interpretations or combinations of old concepts, etc.)
• Theme
  How well the game interprets the theme. The more creative the interpretation that still reasonably matches the theme, the higher your game's score in this category.