My Purpose in Posting This
I’ve decided to do a series of posts here on the blog to help others in the community. Specifically, people participating in the 2026 Shadowdark Game Jam. If you’ve followed my writing for a while, you know I’ve designed a number of games. Many were for game jams. Some where developed beyond the origins into something more. Two I was especially happy with and expanded became full projects. The Undying Maiden in particular was from the 2025 SD Game Jam.
I wasn’t a finalist in that jam. I did score in the top 20 however and believe I can offer a few useful thoughts on the matter. So here we are, already several days into the project and I am laying out the means and methods I use. Will it be useful? I hope. Will it prove interesting? I guess I’ll find out when I see the number of views. Regardless, I’ll see it through to the end.
Phase One: Understanding the Task
I am sometimes confused by the number of people who join a jam without reading the rules or understanding the assignment. Before I ever do anything, I try to understand exactly what I am here to do. Amazing talent can overcome this of course, but why shoot yourself in the foot? Worse, why allow a minor error to disqualify your entry! Let’s look over the key aspects then.
Shadowdark
First and foremost, this is a jam for Shadowdark. You need to understand your audience here. Shadowdark straddles a line that draws in the OSR crowd and the D&D5E crowd equally. Some of the key aspects are a tight focus on simplicity. Classes, Races, etc all fit into a very tight page count. Most stat blocks can be expressed in a simple square of page space. Items don’t have lengthy descriptions of abilities, but short benefit and/or curses. Also, as the name implies, light and dark are key elements. Being extremely wordy, having well lit areas, or otherwise deviating from this mold can technically work, but you are creating friction for yourself. Do so mindfully.
Page Count
Tight space limits. Not every jam bothers, but this one always does. Not so tight as a one page dungeon, but you are going to need to keep these limits in mind. More importantly, every page counts as a page. Want a cover? That’s one. Want a page of back story? There goes another. I’ll touch on how to work with this later, but for now I will just state the limits. The two standard ranges are 8 pages of A4 or 16 pages of A5. They added a 3rd option this year due to the theme, but it is considered ‘hard mode’. 16 pages at 5.25 inches by 4 inches! This is to represent the game manuals from the theme.
Theme
So about that theme. 8 Bit NES games! Everyone gets assigned 3 based on their itch.io name. It is randomized from a larger selection, so there can be overlaps, but generally no one gets the exact same set. If the roll of the dice favors you, you get something simple. If not, you get an extremely un-Shadowdark style set.
Sure, it sounds great to get Indiana Jones, Little Samson, and Zelda 2. It’s an easy set of games to create a dungeon crawl for after all. It’s also probably going to be the least creative thing ever. On the other side of the coin, you might cry getting Pinball, Afterburner, and Ice Hockey. It’s a tall order to keep that at all recognizable and still suitable as a playable Shadowdark game.
The reality is, the harder it is to get a workable game from your ‘theme’ items, the more people will pay attention. The more impressive it is when you get something decent. You earn the benefits only by paying the price of difficulty.
Judging Criteria
All the judging is officially on three elements. Inspiration, the way you applied the 3 specific titles you were given. Usage: How playable is the game or how useful is it to someone who picks it up? Lastly, vibe: the overall feel and aesthetic of your work. Does it really feel like it leans into the 8-bit of the theme? Let’s break these down a little bit.
Inspiration
It’s entirely possible to only tangentially apply the 3 games. No one can tell you how you are inspired. Maybe you saw the pinball game and decided to create your entire work solely around trap doors. Sure… okay. You better damned well have the best trap door centered game every created though. It’s a very minor callback.
At the very least, I suggest you put a number of elements from one of your games into the concept. Not just in the vague sense, but tangibly understandable. The more readily a reviewer can glance at the 3 inspirations and immediately recognize how you were inspired, the better. Subtle is fine. Invisible isn’t.
Personally, I advocate trying to incorporate all 3 into your work. At least in some way. It’s been my experience that doing this ups the difficulty. It always does with multiple theme elements. Do it anyway. Others are going to recognize the higher bar you set for yourself. If you clear that bar, they’ll be even more impressed with the product. More importantly, the more you challenge yourself, the higher your creativity. Jams are all about building up your skills. Creativity is a skill too.
Usage
Dear god don’t forget this. It’s cool to have an entire book of neat things. They aren’t going to matter if they can’t be applied to anything. Is the game/book something that is coherent? Is everything cohesive? How likely is someone to take elements from it for other games even if they don’t use it? Do you need that random chart of colored socks? Maybe, but only if it is doing something useful. Never forget this thing needs to be used. Give it value even if someone has no idea about the jam.
Vibe
So subjective. It ties to inspiration, but is more ephemeral. So often, vibe leans heavily on art decisions. It’s entirely possible to have almost no art and still hit the right vibe, but your writing game better be top tier. The biggest benefit here is that vibe and inspiration can tie into one another quite well. A well chosen image or wording can build up the vibe at the same time it displays your inspiration. Let’s take a look at last year for an example.
The Weird Tales (a pulp magazine) theme used last year. Let’s look at nothing but the names of the top two games from that year. The Diabolical Lair of Doctor Memnon and The Awful Amber Doom. Just look at the words lined up there. Tell me those don’t scream ‘pulp magazine story’ to you. Without a single picture or word of content, you already have the vibe on clear display. Something to remember.
Conclusion
So now the task is clear and the limits are understood. It’s time to start working on an actual entry. In the next post, I’m going to get a little deeper into the meat of it. Until then, if you’re new here feel free to dig around in some of the older posts. You can also find links to most of my games and writing over on my main page. Until the next post, I hope this got your mind going and has you inspired to try entering for yourself.
