Game Off 2021 Asks Developers to Embrace the Bug

GitHub has announced the theme for this year’s Game Off game jam: BUG. Participants have until December 1 to build a game around the theme and submit it to the jam page on itch.io. After a few weeks of playtesting and community voting, winners will be announced.

The organizing team is intentionally loose about what qualifies as a “BUG” interpretation. The word’s dictionary definitions cover a range of possibilities:

  • An insect or creepy crawly
  • An unexpected defect, fault, or flaw in code or equipment
  • A microorganism causing illness or disease
  • A concealed listening device
  • A sudden enthusiasm
  • A river in Ukraine
  • To bother, annoy, or pester someone
  • To plant a listening device
  • To “bug off” or “bug out”

Developers can also sidestep the dictionary entirely. B.U.G. acronyms, dad jokes, and puns — such as deterants, tick tock, spelling bee, or flywheel — are all fair game. The rules don’t even penalize buggy code: “Nobody’s judging the code quality,” the announcement notes, so actual software bugs are both expected and accepted. The goal is simply to have fun.

Resources for First-Time Game Developers

Game Off is open to developers of all experience levels, and the organizers point newcomers toward language-specific tools to lower the barrier to entry:

Past jams have seen submissions for retro platforms like the NES and C64, so developers are encouraged to pick whatever genre or platform excites them. Questions about development can be directed to the Game Off community forum or the Game Off Discord server.

Version Control and Git Pointers

For participants new to version control or GitHub, the announcement links to several official starting points: the Git documentation, the GitHub Desktop app for Windows and macOS, GitHub Support, the full GitHub documentation, and the GitHub Community Forum. Registration for the jam is open now on the itch.io jam page.