Game Off is GitHub's annual game jam challenging individuals and teams to build a game during the month of November. Use whatever programming languages, game engines, or libraries you like. The use of AI tools to help generate code, assets, or anything in between is also welcome.
- Create a game based on the theme (announced on November 1st and 13:37 PDT).
- Sign up for a free GitHub account if you don't already have one. It's free!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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, 2025 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…
- Hack on a Roguelike dungeon crawler in JavaScript or Haskell.
- Crank out a text adventure in or some interactive fiction with Clojure or Ink (similar to Markdown).
- Craft that 8-bit console game you always fantasized about with PICO-8, Pixel Vision 8, TIC-80 (Lua), BASIC8 (Basic), or Pyxel (Python).
Help—I’ve never used version control, Git, or GitHub before!
- Git Documentation: everything you need to know about version control and how to get started with Git
- GitHub Help: everything you need to know about GitHub
- Any questions about GitHub? Visit the GitHub Community Forum