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Beautiful.

Such a stylish puffin. Great twist ending too!

Great pixel thumbs!

New wizard tech this year with a shnazzy Google Form to help make finding jam teammates easier! Please note that you doing a pitch is optional. If you just want to put what you can do and how much time you have, that should be just fine. And you can peruse results for potential collaborators here. Of course, feel free to use this thread however you like. Shout about your idea, someone else's idea, whatever. Just please let us know when you form a team so we can edit the status on the spreadsheet. Lastly, make sure to check out what ideas folks are having on that second link. It's important to reach out and let people know if you like their stuff (even if you don't know them at all!)

Hey everybody, We've been contacted by a PHD student who is researching game jams and learning behavior with a request to have some people participate in a study by answering some very minor questionnaires before, during, and after Wizard Jam 4. Here are the deets: Sounds kinda cool, no? The results will be presented at various games conferences and will ideally be used to improve education methodologies at game design schools. If this sounds good to you, please use the link above to answer the questionnaires at the 4 times specified. Thanks!

Jam's about to start so make sure you fill in your first survey if you intend to take part!!

Hey all, we've been mulling over some ideas for Diversifiers in the Slack so I thought I'd open it up here as well for people to pitch in. We'll whittle this list down to 5-10 and announce them at the start of the jam. Thanks for your input! ~EDIT~ FINAL DIVERSIFIERS! Mainstream Thumbs - Use an episode title from the Idle Thumbs podcast. When the Thumbs are not enough - Use an episode title from a non Idle Thumbs network podcast. Game Ideas from the Cast - Realise a game idea/joke that has appeared in an episode Idol Thumbs - A past or present thumbs presenter is your player character. Could you repeat that? - Have a character in your game use famous Thumbs quotes in regular dialogue like a real slyboots. One of These Things is Not Like the Other - Ask another jammer to draw a sprite/make a model for your game without showing them the art style of your game. Include this in your game without comment. Wizard Jam Shared Cinematic Universe - Place a small in-game cameo or reference to another game participating in the jam. This could be something like placing a character from another game into your game somehow, or using some art from another game as a billboard sign in your game etc. WJSCU Sub-versifier: Building A Legacy - use a recognizable asset from a previous wizard jam - this could be from one of your games or from someone elses if you ask nicely enough! (Bonus points for loving tributes to everyone's favorite yellow gourmand - Dot Gobbler.) Wrong Thread - Base your game on an Idle Forums thread title Dishonored Holidays - tis the season! make a game about winter holidays, Dishonored, or ideally both. Corvo’s Carve That Turkey Challenge, anyone? Box art - Make a still image to be the ‘box art’ for your game. Do you remember physical retail? (Bonus points if it’s off-style for the actual game, and misrepresents the spirit of the game [see Mega Man 1 & 2 for reference]) Super Briefly - Right when you think the game is over, a super-brief mini-game kicks in. Or it’s all mini-games. Just do it fast! Learn by doing - Make a game with no explicit instructions or tutorial, but that the player can still learn by playing through it. Learn By Doing Sub-Versifier: No Dialog - No written words at all, even tutorials must be pictographs Ludo-Narrative Dissonance - Make the theme and presentation of your game completely at odds with the moment-to-moment gameplay. Bonus points for not just being “normal game protagonist is secretly mass murderer” From the horse’s mouth - Include some kind of developer commentary in your game. This can be an optional secondary mode after the player completes it or something tied more closely to the narrative a la The Magic Circle. Uncle Who Still Works at Nintendo - Your game has a bizarre cheat code or secret that no-one will believe is real, but it definitely is; my uncle who still works at Nintendo told me about it. Whatever you do, don’t post about this secret on your own thread. You may help spread rumors however... Nice Segue - Don’t just cut from level to level. Wipe that sucker! Add transitions that are interesting, stylish, and ideally fit the mood and look of your game. Look at Blendo Games’ first-person work, where the hard cuts are strong narrative and stylistic choices that evoke a cinematic or dreamlike feeling in the player. Game Development 100% Internalized - Stream your game-making adventures. This can be art asset creation, coding, or even your team design meetings!

After much amazing input and voting, we have a final list up on that there top post. Honestly it was hard whittling it down with so many good suggestions. I hope you all don't mind having plenty to choose from!

We have our final candidates... https://goo.gl/forms/iKRsWMakDjsVWTJC3 Voting will be open through the weekend and I hope to announce a final list late on Sunday. Enjoy the goofs!

A wild Itch.io appears! Original post edited for welcome mat status! 12 days until jam begins!!!!

In like Flynn

Wowee I love all the good discussion here and on Slack, it's so inspiring!! I wanna work hard to keep this lovely spirit going and have an excellent... WIZARD JAM 4 There were some pretty great ideas along the way (except 'Jizard Wam' what the hell was I thinking) but at the end of the day, branding is king. This will make it as easy as possible for newcomers to get into and should help clear up any time or hemisphere issues as well. The odd-numbered or spring/summer jams will still be squarely focused on podcast titles while even-numbered or fall/winter jams will be a little looser, with no requirement for podcast title. This jam will be more about Diversifiers and people are encouraged to try weird and wacky stuff with ideas/tools/teams/etc. Actually the main theme of this jam seems to be "finding the heart of Wizard Jam" haha! Future jam-lords for even-numbered or fall/winter jams are encouraged to try stuff with the format of the jam itself but for now I think it's enough to figure out how the two jams relate to each other. Seeing everyone's thoughts and passion is seriously cool and I'm incredibly excited to get this party started three weeks from now!

After much good and lively Slack discussion we are considering making the podcast title theme a guaranteed diversifier. This would make that part optional but make diversifiers more important overall. Spring/Summer Jam: Pod Titles + Diversifiers. Fall/Winter Jam: Maximum Diversifiers + Experimental Mystery Stuff. We will keep the core jam stuff in tact for the the 'main' jam and then get a lil weird for this one. Sound good? Thoughts? There are no plans to change anything drastically for this jam but we're a little more free to try stuff before the jam gets started

An interesting idea from the diversifier discussion is that people who are too busy to do the full jam could still participate by making cover art, strategy guides, or fan art for one or more games. Again, there's no requirement that everyone make a video game or assets for a game, all creative participation is encouraged. If this idea appeals to you, please drop your name on that there form!

We had some pretty valid objections to the date due to exams and conflicts with Ludum Dare so I'm going to move the date ahead by a week to Saturday, November 19, 12:00PST/15:00EST/20:00GMT - Sunday, December 4, 21:00PST/24:00EST/28:00GMT (please don't actually stay up till 4am, we will have late submissions) Not sure if I was clear enough on this but the Team Builder form/sheet isn't just for pitching ideas! Everyone should enter skills and preferences there, regardless of game ideas. I'm going to open up the sheet for mass editing too so people can just use that if they want (i hope that doesn't break the form, we'll find out!) Also we have some fun ideas in the cooker for other community & team-building events before the jam kicks off so stay tuned. Don't want to move to admin-picked or auto-picked teams if we can avoid it so let's see what we can do spontaneously, eh? The main theme is now definitely Idle Thumbs Network Cast Titles and winter/holiday stuff has been moved into a potential Diversifier

Speaking of that rascal, how hard would it be to get JKO's facemojis up in here?

Haven't quite heard the cast yet but I chimed in on Slack and may as well do so here. The Master and Margarita was published 26 years after Bulgakov died. He wavered back and forth just a bit on actually wanting it published, mostly for reasons related to the Soviet Union's continued pressure and blacklisting of him... Fun bit from a letter to his wife, two years before he died Of course, he did change his mind in the end, sort of. But maybe this doesn't quite count since he might have published the novel during his lifetime if he could?

OK, I think we're ready to set a date! Saturday, November 26, 12:00PST/15:00EST/20:00GMT - Sunday, December 11, 21:00PST/24:00EST/28:00GMT (please don't actually stay up till 4am, we will have late submissions) Thanks for your input everybody, I'll get to work on resource/team-building threads soon!

I actually really like the speed-dating idea and have seen things sort of like that in jams before but the feeling I get is that it needs to be more in-person for that to work well or be feasible at all. At least a couple people left feedback in previous jams that they wished they could have been automatically placed into a team which is why I bring it up. But then, maybe people wouldn't quite love the group they were paired with and drop out? I dunno, lots of imperfect solutions. I'm currently leaning toward the spreadsheet, maybe there could be a thing that would recommend two or three people for you to group with? I'm no google docs wizard but that seems doable. I had an idea where people could submit a single game pitch and then the pitches would be collected and displayed together to help team-forming people say "hey, i like the sound of that. let's do a team." Maybe we could even have a live reading of the pitch ideas on a stream?? Having it be at a set time, ideally the weekend before, would help people focus and make sure they had their team situation sorted instead of just kicking the can down the road until the jam starts and whoops you forgot to do a team" The other thing we're talking about on the Slack is themes. Do we want to do podcast titles for Winter Wizard? Last year we decided to do "holidays" instead of podcast titles in order to keep the spring jam different and special but I'm not totally sure that's necessary. "Holidays" is a lot less exciting for crazy ideas than the podcast titles and I don't think we'd really run out anytime soon...

EVERYBODY! I messed up on that dates poll earlier so please use the new link here or in the main post: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfFOCSK45VriESL_D10Yc2xDMD3IYSLtuSa6y6TiLc4CqbHgg/viewform (don't use google forms after midnight)

zerofiftyone - Thanks, fixed! Ben X - Good thinking. I'm planning on contacting thumbs to advertise the stream before and see about streaming after but there have been other good promo ideas the last couple years, I'll run through them here: A lot of sound folks just want to make effects and/or music, we could have a central thread for them to post their stuff and people would chime in with what they're using Same thing but with sprites / ui icons??? Dedicated playtesting time - everybody (that gets far enough) needs some playtesting in the last few days, perhaps there could be a set time or day where people play early builds and offer feedback/bug reports Keynote Speaker - one of the thumbs or hey even someone from the community could livestream a 5-minute talk meant to inspire folks at the start of the jam (could also be pre-recorded and released then) Dedicated "help!" thread - this usually shows up anyway so I'll probably get ahead of it once the subforum stuff has been archived Post Jam Structure - could definitely be planned or set in stone better. will probably need to draft some help for this and will open up a thread for people to drop suggestions in while the jam is going on. preliminary thoughts: contact people that have streamed in the past (thumbs, jupiter hadley, spenny) with all the info on where and when games will be available - hell maybe i'll figure out streaming too??? seems fun Start Time - current thinking is 8PM GMT - not ideal for our friends down under but this is my best guess at what works for the most people - don't even ask me what this means after daylight saving Mythalore I am very on board with diversifiers, especially the shared universe one. It's fun if it jogs peoples idea parts and can easily be dropped if scope gets out of control. We'll work on that list as we get closer to the date. Regarding "more and better teams" - it's always been spontaneous chat & thread forming but a lot of people have given feedback that they'd like to have that be forced a little more. Timidity is rampant (myself included) so something like an automatic names-in-a-hat sort could be an idea as well as fleshing out the team thread with a google doc that has people's skills and work availability status. I'm spit-balling here so feel free to join in if you have some thoughts on encouraging teaminess

This is way too soon and I am way too excited!!

Oh hey! Forums are still here! I'm crunching like a mad man these days but it's my turn at the wheel for choosing and I think I should have time to execute on one of my very favorite things this weekend... ENCHILADAS I'll most likely be doing the Potato & Kale Enchiladas from the Veganomicon as I've made it numerous times and it's always come out fantastically. Enchiladas seem like they might be a pain in the ass to cook, with the tortilla folding and what not but I've always found that it's relatively easy since most of the work is in the prep. Here are some sample recipes (and photos) to get your cook-brains a thinking: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/enchiladas/ http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetables-recipes/veggie-enchiladas/ http://www.theppk.com/2013/10/nirvana-enchilada-casserole-video/ p.s. bonus points for using chocolate/mole sauce!

I got on board the GB train when Austin started and so I'll probably drop it now, depending on that next hire... Vice is sorta owned by Disney which just pleases the cynical part of my heart to no end.