What is Patch Notes?

Patch Notes is a jam series for broken ideas, cursed mechanics, and prototypes that never made it past the group chat.

v1.0 was a 3-day sprint — wild, messy, and full of experiments. Over 480 games and 5000 votes later, we learned one thing: chaos works.

Now v1.1 takes that same spirit and gives it room to breathe: 10 days, two weekends, and two ways to play.

What’s New in v1.1?

We’re introducing two paths:

• Fresh Builds → Start from zero, chase the theme, and make something unhinged.

• Patch Builds → Take what you made in v1.0 and iterate.

Not everyone ships gold in one sprint — and that’s the point. Game dev is about iteration, and Patch Notes is here to keep you moving.

Whether you’re polishing up old chaos or summoning brand-new bugs, you’re welcome.

The Theme

Not revealed yet. (You know the drill.)

Expect something weird, open-ended, and guaranteed to cause at least one existential crisis in your codebase. Theme drops the moment the jam begins via the Indieformer YouTube channel.

The Details

• When: January 16th (8:00 PM) - 25th (8:00 PM) CET. (10 days, two weekends)
• Where: Itch.io + Discord
• Who: Anyone. Solo devs, teams, veterans, hobbyists. Writers, artists, musicians — you too.

Prizes (Judge's Pick)

For Patch Notes v1.1, we’re switching things up.

While community voting is still a big part of the jam, all prizes this round are Judges’ Picks, awarded directly by Indieformer. These aren’t about polish or popularity — they’re about ideas that stick with us.

We’ll be hand-selecting three games that we believe did something special, strange, or unexpectedly smart.

Prizes:

• 🥇 $500 AUD — Judges’ Pick

• 🥈 $250 AUD — Judges’ Pick

• 🥉 $100 AUD — Judges’ Pick

A few important notes:

• Prizes are paid by Indieformer

• Winners must be able to accept payment via PayPal or Wise

• We’re intentionally lenient — if we can’t decide, we’ll expand the prize pool rather than force a ranking

Patch Notes isn’t about winning at all costs. It’s about trying things you wouldn’t normally try — and rewarding the ideas that make us stop, think, and want to see more.

Bring your weird. We’ll bring the cash.

Finding a Team

• Join the Indieformer Discord to find teammates, pitch ideas, or just lurk until someone ropes you in.

• Try the Jamlytics Teamfinder if you want a smarter way to match up.

• The Jamlytics Discord is where you want to be for all things jam.

The Rules

• You have 10 days to make your game.

• You must incorporate the jam’s theme.

• No NSFW content (no nudity, extreme gore, or real-world trauma).

• Re-use of small code/assets is fine, but no dropping in a fully finished game.

• Browser or Windows build required at minimum.

• Submissions must be in English.

• Upload before the deadline. (We’ll have backup plans via Discord if there's problems — don’t panic.)

AI Usage

• Collaboration with humans is encouraged.

• If you use AI, include a short note on exactly how.

• Clever, supportive AI use = fine. Full end-to-end AI builds = not in the spirit.

• We used it ourselves to tweak copy on this very page.

Scoring Criteria

• Art (5 points)
  
  • How your visuals and assets bring the game to life.
    
• Innovation (5 points)
  
  • Creativity in your gameplay, mechanics, and overall design.
    
• Sound Design (5 points)
  
  • The impact of music, audio, and sound effects.
    
• Theme Integration (5 points)
  
  • How well the game embraces and delivers on the theme.
    
• Presentation (5 points)
  
  • The whole package: your itch page, description, thumbnails, and overall polish.
    
• Accessibility (5 points)
  
  • Options, tutorials, and settings that make the game easier to pick up and play.

With each criteria having 5 points each (30 points total), the total score will be averaged and turned into stars, with 5 stars being the holy grail.

Judging

This jam is judged two ways:

• Community Voting — every participant rates games, surfacing the top-voted entries.

• Judges Panel — indie devs, creators, and troublemakers hand-pick their favourites.

• This round, we’re lucky to have five judges on board:
  
  
  • Josh & Clem (Indieformer): Founders of Indieformer and the brains behind Patch Notes. Big believers in messy prototypes, strange ideas, and games that feel like they shouldn’t work (but do).
    
    
  • Quinten (Jamlytics) — aka the Jam-God: Builder of Jamlytics and a behind-the-scenes wizard of game jams everywhere. If something breaks, he’s probably already fixing it — and also judging your game while he does.
    
    
  • RetroFlock: Indieformer Discord moderator, returning Patch Notes judge, and all-round jam veteran. Has played more jam games than is probably healthy.
    
    
  • Ruijia “Rainey” Huang: Game enthusiast and gameplay programmer at PlayStation (Santa Monica Studio) — yes, that God of War team. Rainey checked out entries from Patch Notes v1.0, was impressed by the creativity on display, and reached out wanting to be involved in the next round. We happily said yes.

• We will communicate judging through the itch email platform, but do our final wrap up via the Indieformer Newsletter.

Bonus Challenge

Logos – Include the Patch Notes or Indieformer logo seamlessly into your game world. No rewards, just for fun. You can find Indieformer & Patch Notes assets here.