This jam is now over. It ran from 2023-11-01 20:37:00 to 2023-12-01 21:37:00. View results

Game Off 2023 has ended - thank you to everyone who took part! View the results or take a peek at some of the games created in the video below:

Game Off is GitHub's annual game jam challenging individuals and teams to build a game during the month of November–using whatever programming languages, game engines, or libraries you like. The use AI tools to help generate code, assets, or anything in between is also welcome.

The theme for this year's jam was SCALE participants rose to the occasion creating over 600 games.

/skāl/

Verb

  • to climb up something steep, such as a wall, building, or mountain.
  • to change the size of something e.g. make something smaller (scale down) or increase the size, amount, or importance of something (scale up).
  • to progress in a graduated series.
  • to remove the small flat hard pieces of skin from a fish.
  • to remove tartar and plaque from teeth.

Noun

  • a device for weighing people or objects.
  • one of the many very small, flat pieces that cover the skin of fish, snakes, etc.
  • a set of numbers, amounts, etc., used to measure or compare the level of something e.g., Farenheit, Richter scale.
  • the ratio between the real size of something and its size on a visualization.
  • a series of notes differing in pitch according to a specific scheme (usually within an octave).
  • an indicator having a graduated sequence of marks.
  • any of the small overlapping usually metal pieces forming the outer surface of scale armor.

As always, you’re welcome to interpret the theme however you like. If you need some ideas to kickstart your creativity, here are a few game ideas that sprint to mind for me:

  • An infinite runner with occasional buildings that you need to scale.
  • A tower defense game where enemies scale in frequency and power.
  • A sokoban-style game with tiles being scales and boxes have different weights.
  • Atraditional game, for example,  Space Invaders that scales to local multiplayer or maybe even tens, hundreds, or thousands of players online.
  • Agame where you have match a musical scale with your voice.
  • A roguelike where you control a penguin search for fish at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE).
  • A Kaiju beat-em up featuring Servants of Creatures Arriving Late to Earth (SCALE)
  • A Factorio-type game where you aim for Supply Chain and Logistics Excellence (SCALE)
  • Any kind of game featuring em… Sea… Creatures… And… L. L? Laughing… Erm… Elephants?



  1. Create a game based on the theme (announced on November 1st and 13:37 PDT).
  2. Sign up for a free GitHub account if you don't already have one. It's free!
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Submit your game through itch.io.


Once submitted, your entries will be evaluated by fellow participants, and you'll also have the chance to play and cast your votes on their games too.

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 January 8th, 2024 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…

  • Just jumping 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).
  • Jiving 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…
    • Crank out a text adventure in or some interactive fiction with Clojure or Ink (similar to Markdown).

Help—I’ve never used version control, Git, or GitHub before!