The Itch page for this year’s Short Games Showcase is now up, with all the info about this year’s event!
Submissions open tomorrow, 11/23—you can see what time in your time zone at the page above.
Once submissions are open, I’ll be reaching out to those who expressed interest in volunteering to confirm availability and do further coordination.
We look forward to seeing this year’s crop of short games!
Thanks for organising.
One nit: the Itch page currently says
Voting will run from January 1st through January 25, 2025.
I assume it’s those dates, but in 2026.
Whoops, thanks for pointing that out! I copied most of this from last year and thought I’d increased all the years by 1 but apparently not.
So, the jam wasn’t showing up anywhere on Itch even though it had been over a day. I tried deleting and remaking it, so we’ll see if that works, but if you joined before, you’ll need to rejoin now. The URL is the same, though.
(It still isn’t showing up anywhere, which hopefully is just the normal lag time before Itch indexes it, but it’s possible it still won’t show up and I’ll have done all that for nothing. In which case I’ll reach out to Itch support and if they ignore me I guess it’ll just be a competition for people on this forum only this year. Which would make me a little sad, because I do enjoy seeing some of the stuff from outside the community that comes in, but on the other hand at least it would cut down on spam?)
Edit: Oh, I should also note, submissions are open now!
Update: Deleting and recreating the jam didn’t fix it; it can’t be seen in the public jams listing or even searched for by name, it can only be found with the direct link. I’ve reached out to Itch support but have heard that they are not very responsive, so I do not necessarily expect this issue to be fixed.
This being the case, I highly encourage anybody who has a connection to an IF community outside this forum or an IF-related presence on social media (neither of which I have) to advertise this event using the direct link! I’d appreciate that in any case, of course, but right now that seems to be the only way to try to make it so that this isn’t an insular little event for users of this forum only.
At the bottom of the Edit page, make sure that you’ve selected Published and you haven’t selected Unlisted.
They’re the only things I can see that would prevent it getting listed.
It is published and not unlisted, but thank you.
I tried Googling your issue, and in this link someone says that Itch staff have to approve jams before they get listed and you can only just wait: Game jam not showing up - Game Jams - itch.io
Yes, I’m aware. It used to take like an hour or two, but I have heard it now takes up to several weeks. Since I only run one jam a year, I was not aware that the time for approval had gone up astronomically since last year until someone in the Itch Discord kindly explained it to me (after the same moderator from the thread you linked gave me a condescending brush-off).
One week down, one month to go! Submissions are trickling in at a reasonable rate, but right now the “best puzzles” category is really thin on entries. If you have a short puzzle game lying around—or you feel like making one in the next month!—you could really have a chance to stand out in that category.
Thanks to everyone who’s been sharing this elsewhere!
On second thought, I have been creating a fair number of visual novels for itch jams lately. I think I’ll pick two good ones for the showcase.
I meant to post a ten-days-left reminder yesterday and forgot, so: nine days left! If you’re thinking of submitting and haven’t, or have only submitted one game, or are trying to put together something new for the jam, remember that that deadline’s coming up!
We could still use more puzzle games (though we do have enough that we can meaningfully give an award in that category, so that’s good).
(Also, it never got indexed, because Itch is kind of a mess. There have been other technical difficulties, too; it’s unclear if they’re related. Thanks for bearing with us through this stuff!)
I don’t know how much reach it’ll get, but for anyone else on Mastodon I’ve put out a post drawing attention to the showcase to try and help offset the fact it still hasn’t been indexed over on itch.io. Please do share it if convenient, and if anybody else posts the link then I’ll try and do the same.
I put up a post on the Choice of Games forums. I’ll make a also make a topic for it there when the event begins.
I removed the screen flash effect for my current SGS entry, and also updated the submission question accordingly.
I have another visual novel with a puzzle minigame, fresh off a jam. I can submit that as my second title.
That sounds great, and it was very kind and thoughtful of you to remove the screen flash effect!
Last call for entries! Submissions will close in ~11 hours.
The voting period for SGS has begun! You can rate the games directly on Itch for the Best In Show award, and for other categories, the voting form is here. This year the results of the Google Forms vote will be captured on Itch as manually ranked categories. (There’s no change in how voting works on your end, this is something we’ll do after the fact.)
A few notes:
Also, you have three weeks instead of two weeks for the voting period this year, so I hope that helps with having the chance to get through a good number of games!
@EJoyce The City of Tenebris appears to be listed under Best Previously unawarded game, but I’m not sure of it’s eligibility. It won a best lore award (which carries prize money) in another jam. This was determined by a judging panel rather than by popular vote.
Thanks for letting me know! I’ve removed it from that category. It being a juried competition doesn’t make a difference to the eligibility as defined in the rules:
A game that has not, in any previous competition: placed in the top three overall, placed in the top three in any category, or won any award determined by a popular vote or judging panel.
Whoever vetted that one just missed it.
