It's happening again. Another year of the Costume Jam is upon us, and I'm aiming to go bigger and better!

Once again, if you don't know me already, my name is Theta, and I'm the ghost with the posts! With Halloween coming, everyone’s thinking of a costume - which makes it a perfect time to resurrect a piece of internet history! Dollmakers and dress-up games were a staple of the early days of web games, but they’re still clinging to life even beyond the grave of Flash! So last year, I launched a jam to celebrate the spooky season with some old-school internet flair!

The basic premise of Costume Jam is this: Make a dress-up game with a twist in its game mechanics. It can be something as simple as having the character react to what you put them in, or something as complicated as a whole narrative game where dressing up is the main gameplay. Outfit challenges, minigames to get more clothes, selling to customers, the sky’s the limit! Here's a list of examples I collected for last year's jam.

This year, we have a second optional theme/prompt on top of the regular challenge! It's open-ended on purpose and you can come up with whatever you see fit to go with the theme.

The prompt is "More Like Me".

I'm excited to see how you interpret this for your collab entries! Halloween/horror themes are also encouraged as usual!

Other basic rules:

• Deadline: October 31st at 11:59 PM. Two months should be enough, I think!
• Rules: No shovelware, no hateful content, stick to the NG rules about AI art. Nudity is now allowed for artistic purposes, but no outright pornographic content. A-rated submissions will nonetheless be left out of the video review to keep it suitable for YouTube.
• How to participate: Tag your entry with costumejam2024, and I’ll look through the entries after the deadline has passed!

There is no contest/judging element to this jam, but just like last year, I will do a video review of the entries after the deadline! I'll also ideally be making my own entry again - this time, completely by myself. Last year's fiasco proved to be the kick in the pants I needed to finally start learning to code in an actual game engine.

Alright! Put any questions you have on this post! It’s showtime!

-Theta