Welcome!

The DSS W-Semester Holiday Jam 25 brings students together across all semesters for a final collaborative challenge and a chance to close the year with something playful, ambitious, and experimental.

The theme will be:  FAILURE IS PROGRESS

Team Setup:

• Teams will consist of members from every semester
• Find a person with a team-card and a free slot for the semester you are in.
• Try to avoid joining a team with members of your semester project.
• Collaboration across experience levels is the point — mix skills, share knowledge, and learn from each other!

Rules:

1. No use of generative AI!
2. The reuse of code and assets is allowed! It is not necessary to create everything from scratch. 
3. You can use everything you’re legally allowed to use.
   Give appropriate credits where required. Don't use any resources you don't have the rights to!
4. No mature or disturbing content. Keep it USK 16 and below. 
5. Your game must be submitted via the Itch.io page of the jam.
6. The submitted game must have been created entirely during the jam period.
7. Your game must be playable as a WebGL build.

Milestone Suggestions

You can use these rough milestone suggestions to make sure you stay on track if you want. Remember to keep it simple!

• After 5% of your time budget: You came up with multiple game ideas on paper and picked the most interesting one.
• After 25% of your time budget: You experimented with your idea a bit and the basic game loop is done.
• After 50% of your time budget: The most important visuals and sounds are implemented. Your game is fully playable.
• After 75% of your time budget: The game looks, sounds and plays even better. It might also have a short tutorial now.
• After 100% of your time budget: Final bugs are fixed,  game is uploaded to a decent looking itchio page.

Voting & Criteria

On the final day, there will be a rating period (starting at 15:00) where everyone can play each other’s games and vote.
Games will be rated in five categories:

• Creativity
• Artwork
• Audio
• Narrative
• Enjoyment

There is no overall combined score — so don’t stress about being “perfect” in every area. This jam is about collaboration, experimentation and pushing boundaries while having fun doing it.