Visual novel jam
A VN Jam, or a Visual Novel Jam, is a type of game jam, an event in which participants try to make a game from scratch within a limited duration of time. VN Jams are game jams that exclusively focus on visual novels or visual novel-like games.
Duration
Visual novel jams are commonly one to two months long events with exceptions that may last for shorter or longer periods of time (e.g., O2A2). Many VN jams start as one-offs, but upon success often convert to annual events. Occasionally jams may also come back after a break of some years based on renewed interest, or a new group of hosts.
Participating
Why participate
Originally, VN jams were primarily designed to enable people to start and finish a small VN. However as many jams have grown in popularity, and many also allow partial works like demos, as well as submission to multiple jams at the same time, the reasons for joining a jam have expanded. People joining jams can thus have a variety of motivations, such as:
- starting and finishing a self-contained work
- jumpstarting development on a larger work (e.g. creating a demo)
- team-building exercise for a group looking to get to know each other before committing to a long term collaboration
- trying or challenging oneself in a new genre or VN type
How to join
Jams usually don't require any formal statement of participation. Though it's often encouraged to join a jam (i.e. click the "join jam" button as a logged in user) on platforms like itch.io before the submission period, it is also possible to join the jam while the submission period is open. At the very latest this needs to be done before the actual submission, as it is not possible to submit a VN to a jam without joining it first.
Submission period
When talking about jams hosted on itch.io, the jam's duration is effectively the jam's "submission period", which is the window of time during which people can submit their works to the jam page. This is signified by a countdown until submissions are open (before the jam), and another countdown until submissions close (while the jam is ongoing).
Time zones
Centralized jam platforms use one specific time zone (that of the jam host) and recalculate deadlines for other participants around the world. This will lead to jams starting a few hours "earlier" or "later" (occasionally giving the false impression that the jam is starting a day off) depending on the time zone, however on the other end those time zones will have their deadline be adjusted to compensate for this effect, leading to an equal amount of hours for each time zone.
Common Rules
One of the main selling points of jams is their limited time and often artistic or other constraints within which the participants must operate. Rules are therefore one of the key elements of jams, and their specifics will differ significantly from jam to jam.
Pre-Jam
In case VN jams do not specify that participants can submit previously worked on projects (e.g., Winter VN Jam) and the jams request creating a VN from scratch, there are a few activities that most jams will allow:
- Team recruitment
- Story outlines
- Character sketches
- Searching for readily available or Creative Commons assets
- Project planning
Often the formula used to describe these general restriction is that "no work which directly leads to the the creation of final assets is allowed".
Themes
Visual novel jams are not necessarily themed. Some jams such as NaNoRenO do not restrict participant game topics. Others such as Spooktober VN Jam maintain rules on allowable content and topics (in the case of this example, "spooky or Halloween themed"). Check the specific jam's rules to double check on genres, themes, rules on adult content, and other potential restrictions.
Themes can be varied, and often are based on categories like:
- Genre (horror, romance...), e.g. Valentine's VN Jam, Spooktober VN Jam
- Mood / Visuals (seasonal, areas of interest...), e.g. WinterJam, Shoot for the Stars Jam
- Characters (identity, representation...), e.g. AceJam, AroJam
- Relationship (FxF, friendship...), e.g. YuriJam, OtomeJam
- Technical restriction (assets, engines...), e.g. TyranoJam, O2A2
Engines
- Main article: Visual Novel Engines
Engine choice (e.g., Ren'Py, NaniNovel) is typically not restricted in visual novel jams. Check the specific jam's rules to double check.
Submitting to multiple jams
As rules for VN jams have been extended, they can often allow for one game to be present in multiple jams. This practice is generally accepted, and doesn't go against etiquette. Many jams explicitly allow or invite VNs not to be exclusive to their original jam. Statistics of jam entries will have this fact as one of their caveats, as two different jams may share a portion of submissions. Main forms of multiple submissions are:
Cross-submitting
Most jams allow works made for them to also be submitted to other jams. If there are parallel jams and a work fits both criteria, it can be submitted to both. Usually a work will be done for a restrictive jam (such as O2A2), and as such will also fit criteria for other parallel jams (such as SuNoFes or YuriJam, or both).
Iterative submitting
From a time perspective, it can also happen that subsequent development stages are eligible for submissions in different jams that don't happen in parallel. It can be that an early demo qualifies for one jam (e.g. NaNoRenO), an extended demo that adds romance options qualifies for another (e.g. OtomeJam), an early version of the full game qualifies for another one (e.g. SuNoFes), and the final version with extra routes due to its theme can be submitted to yet another one (e.g. WinterJam).
Individual Jams
List of VN Jams
- Main article: List of VN jams
Overview of all relevant VN jams, organized by month.
Significant VN Jams
Simplified overview of 10 jams whose events have produced most amounts of entries. For details and exceptions check individual jam pages.
| Jam | Description | Game Types | Duration | Partial Completion | Prior Work | NSFW | Theme / Restriction | Most Entries |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NaNoRenO | longest running VN jam, currently hosted by sakevisual, held annually between March and April. | VN | 1 month | allowed | not allowed | allowed | --- | 185 (2022) |
| Spooktober VN Jam | judged VN jam competition hosted by DevTalk, held annually in September in preparation for October | VN | 1 month | allowed | not allowed | not allowed | spooky, horror, Halloween | 112 (2021) |
| O2A2 VN Jam | minimalist jam with restrictions on resources (use only one of any asset). | VN | 1 week | not allowed | not allowed | allowed | --- | 96 (2021) |
| Winter VN Jam | low-pressure jam with a broad theme of winter, the cold, and snow. | VN | 1 month | allowed | allowed | not allowed | winter, cold | 77 (2021) |
| SuNoFes | low-pressure jam hosted by Alte, held annually in the summer | VN and narrative | 2 months | allowed | not allowed | not allowed | --- | 69 (2021) |
| Yuri Game Jam | jam emphasizing relationships between women | any game | 2 months | allowed | allowed | allowed | yuri, FxF | 66 (2017) |
| Valentine's Jam | love-themed visual novel jam | VN | 1 month | allowed | allowed | allowed | romance, Valentine's | 51 (2021) |
| TyranoJam | engine-restricted jam with themes, inactive since 2018 | VN | 1-3 months | not allowed | not allowed | not allowed | TyranoBuilder engine | 44 (2017) |
| Yaoi Game Jam | jam focused on M/M relationships for a female audience | any game | 2 months | allowed | not allowed | allowed | yaoi, MxM | 36 (2020) |
| Otome Jam | jam focusing on romantic games with a female protagonist | any game | 2 months | allowed | allowed | allowed | otome, FxM | 28 (2021) |
Help with VN Jams
Jam hubs
A built-in space for exchange of information and communication is usually given by default at the site where the jam is officially at home, for almost all jams this will be their respective itch.io site. There will be some form of "community" tab or section where questions can be posed and other participants or jam hosts can reply. Additionally, many jams create other, more immediate hubs like their own Discord server, or a special channel in an existing server. For very large jams there may be multiple such places, depending on how centralized the jam is.
It is often common for platforms that allow user names to be changed for the jam hosts to identify themselves as such (e.g. John Smith, XYZ Jam Host), to ease communication.
Accompanying events
For larger jams VN communities may decide to organize various activities to support participants of jams. These can range from outline workshops, resource collecting sprints, to live sessions facilitating team creation.
The DevTalk server typically hosts one or two "Jam Meet & Greet" sessions for jams it officially supports.
- Main article: Jam Meet & Greet
VN Jam resources
General VN creation resources
As time and resources are constrained during jams, freely available or pre-made resources such as VN assets (backgrounds, sprites, music) are in high demand by participants, and sites organizing or collecting VN resources are a key support element.
- Main article: List of VN creation resources
Jam Guides
Due to the popularity of jams, ideas, tips, or useful articles pertaining specifically to VN Jams have been created. These usually come in form of "how tos", or specific approaches on jam participation. Common themes include:
- proper planning (including margins)
- adjusting on the fly (e.g. cutting content)
- smart use of resources,
- pacing oneself
- prioritizing finishing over perfection
Below are specific case studies or full guides designed to give insight and support with jam participation or some of its aspects, usually authored by single individuals.
| Name | Author | Year / Update | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How to survive NaNoRenO | Vimi | 2021 | video showing two teams with different planning approaches and what happens when disrupting events occur | Link |
| Enamored Risks Postmortem | Arimia | 2020 | article detailing the planning, coordination, production and promotion of a NaNoRenO VN | Link |
| The last-minute VN | mikey | 2015 | article on how to create a very short VN by focusing on location first, and characters last | Link |
Statistics
Statistics gathered from jams have multiple caveats, such as one VN submitted to multiple jams, not all team members formally joining the jam, various sizes of resulting VNs, varied parameters of jams, and more. The two simplest statistics are the number of entries and number of participants, which can be determined directly from the jam pages (on itch.io).
Some of these issues are described in more detail in a 2021 article by mikey called What VN statistics tell us.
Most entries in a single jam
| Rank | Count | Jam |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 185 | NaNoRenO 2022 |
| 2 | 112 | Spooktober 2021 |
| 3 | 105 | NaNoRenO 2020 |
| 4 | 96 | O2A2 2021 |
| 5 | 88 | NaNoRenO 2019 |
| 5 | 88 | NaNoRenO 2021 |
| 7 | 77 | WinterJam 2021 |
| 8 | 75 | NaNoRenO 2016 |
| 9 | 71 | NaNoRenO 2018 |
| 10 | 69 | SuNoFes 2021 |
| 11 | 68 | NaNoRenO 2017 |
| 12 | 66 | YuriJam 2017 |
| 13 | 62 | SuNoFes 2020 |
| 14 | 56 | YuriJam 2016 |
| 15 | 55 | YuriJam 2018 |
| 16 | 51 | Valentine's Jam 2021 |
| 17 | 44 | TyranoJam 2017 |
| 17 | 44 | Spooktober 2020 |
| 19 | 37 | YuriJam 2019 |
| 20 | 36 | YaoiJam 2020 |
Most participants in a single jam
| Rank | Count | Jam |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 891 | NaNoRen0 2022 |
| 2 | *** | SuNoFes 2022 (ongoing) |
| 3 | 678 | SuNoFes 2021 |
| 4 | 535 | Spooktober 2021 |
| 5 | 465 | WinterJam 2021 |
| 6 | 450 | NaNoRenO 2020 |
| 7 | 439 | NaNoRenO 2017 |
| 8 | 394 | NaNoRenO 2021 |
| 9 | 368 | SuNoFes 2020 |
| 10 | 330 | NaNoRenO 2019 |
| 11 | 325 | YuriJam 2017 |
| 12 | 320 | TyranoJam 2017 |
| 13 | *** | YaoiJam 2022 (ongoing) |
| 14 | 259 | Valentines Jam 2021 |
| 14 | 259 | YaoiJam 2021 |
| 16 | 251 | YuriJam 2018 |
| 17 | 235 | NaNoRenO 2019 |
| 18 | *** | OtomeJam 2022 (ongoing) |
| 19 | 196 | SuNoFes 2017 |
| 20 | 189 | YaoiJam 2020 |
Cumulative VNs per jam (2021)
| Rank | Count | Jam |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 651 | NaNoRenO |
| 2 | 306 | YuriJam |
| 3 | 183 | SuNoFes |
| 4 | 171 | Spooktober |
| 5 | 135 | YaoiJam |
| 6 | 116 | O2A2 |
| 7 | 100 | WinterJam |
| 8 | 94 | TyranoJam |
| 9 | 47 | NonbinaryJam |
| 10 | 41 | Otome Jam |
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