Ordinary Game Jam #1

A browser game jam where every entry is stitched together by portals. Players travel from one game to the next without leaving their browser.

• Live showcase: https://callumhyoung.github.io/gamejam/
• Starter template: https://github.com/CallumHYoung/gamejam-starter

This repo is the registry, build spec, and showcase website. It is not where games live — each participant hosts their own game in their own repo created from the starter template, and submits a PR here adding themselves to jam1.json (the real-jam registry). The older games.json is an archived trial-run network — a standalone portal graph closed to new submissions.

Schedule

Trial run — now → Friday, Apr 17 @ 12 PM. Warm-up only. Do not build your real game yet. Use this time to get the starter template working, get comfortable building with Claude, mess around, and have fun. Submit something silly. Trial entries live in games.json and form a separate portal network (see trial.html).

The real jam — Friday, Apr 17 @ 12 PM → Saturday, May 23. Five weeks. The theme and mechanic are sealed behind the gate on the showcase and reveal exactly when the jam starts. Plan your approach after you see them. Submit via jam1.json.

Competitors (trial run): Adam · Cal · Jason · Joel · Prez · RJ · and you!

Participating

→ Start here: GETTING_STARTED.md — the full template-to-PR walkthrough.

The short version:

1. Go to the starter template and click "Use this template" to create your own game repo.
2. Clone your new repo, feed SPEC.md into your coding agent, build your game.
3. Push — the included workflow auto-deploys to https://<you>.github.io/<your-game>/.
4. Edit jam1.json in the GitHub web UI (GitHub auto-forks on save), add your entry, open a PR.
5. Iterating on your game afterwards is push-only — no new PR needed unless your jam1.json entry or thumbnail changes.

Running the showcase site locally

It's a static site. Any static server works:

cd gamejam
python -m http.server 8000
# then open http://localhost:8000

Files

• index.html, style.css, app.js, fx.js — the showcase site
• jam1.json — the real-jam registry every jam game fetches to pick portal destinations
• games.json — the archived trial-run network (standalone, not used by real-jam games)
• trial.html — separate showcase page for the trial-run archive
• SPEC.md — the build spec and portal protocol (the thing friends paste into their agent)
• GETTING_STARTED.md — fork-to-PR walkthrough for participants
• thumbnails/ — game card images
• games/ — each participant's game lives under games/<id>/ on their own fork