Interview - The Catamites

The Catamites is a guy who makes freeware games. If you've played at least one of his games, chances are you were inspired to seek out more, or maybe to create your own. The games of The Catamites are funny, surreal, boundary-pushing, and full of wonder over the possibilities of videogames and the worlds they can create. They often feature quirky dialogue, strange characters, handcrafted art (pen and paper, clay, dioramas, Legos), and a tendency to toy with game tropes and genre conventions. The Catamites is building one of the most exciting and original bodies of work in gaming.

Distributions and HTML Integration

You read that right, Game Jolt now supports HTML games! This has been one of the most requested features from developers, so we decided to listen and release. =]

It took us some time to get this implemented just right, and there's mainly one reason for that...

Achievements System Released!

Those active in the community will know we've had an achievements system under the wraps and in closed beta for quite a while. We've taken our sweet time with this one, as we wanted to "get it right first time"™. BOOM! As of right now the Achievements System is released!

Are you ready to stuff your games chock full of Trophies, Online Leaderboards and Cloud Storage features?

Ad Revenue Sharing is Fixed!

We've been working hard at making Game Jolt the best indie gaming site out there for developers. And part of that effort is platform stabilization.

We noticed that a lot of people were upset that the Ad Revenue Sharing system stopped working a while back.

It was unacceptable, and so we worked hard on fixing it! The previous version was looking more and more like a quick hack to get it out quickly, so we stepped back and decided to think about the future.

After a few taps and more than a few clacks later, the platform is much more stable and solid.

New Contest - Music Interpretation

Hey, peeps. I hear there's a new Game Jolt contest runnin' 'round these parts. Catch it if you can!

It's running from August 20th to September 24th, so you have plenty of time (too much if you ask me) to make an entry. If you can't make a game in that time, you should rethink your game dev skills. That's a really long time. Like, seriously. I hear that if you make it to the top 3 games you could win some prizes or something, too. I think that's pretty cool!

The theme is Music Interpretation, or something like that. Either way, check out the contest details, dawg.

LONG LIVE GAME JOLT!

Invention Contest

Well, there's going to be a little change from the usual this time around; this particular contest is being hosted and sponsored by NAL! We figured Game Jolt has been too long without a good contest, and with NAL willing to put in some effort to get one going, why not?

It's already running and will be ending on Valentine's Day, so get a move on!

We hope to see some inventive contest entries, as well as some classic Game Jolt Good Time Fun!

You can view the contest details as well as prizes at the URL below:
http://gamejolt.com/community/forums/topics/game-jolt-invention-contest-hosted-by-nal/730/

Game Jolt's Second Weekend Jam

We've got a Weekend Jam on the way! We plan on running this event from August 6th to August 8th.

What's a Weekend Jam you ask (and even if you didn't)? It's a time to get together on Game Jolt as developers and audio/visual artists to make games over the course of the designated weekend, plus have fun in the process.

If that sounds enjoyable to you, head on over to the official Weekend Jam topic to see the details and extras, sign up for the event, and if you're the kind of person that likes working with a team, find developers and artists to team up with there as well!

See you there!

Indie Game Demake Contest Results

Though quite a few seemed to be thrown off-track at first by my rather confusing description of what exactly an "indie game demake" is, things didn't turn out so badly after all; with the help of a little extra explanation, we still wound up getting lots of participation from many of the familiar faces here on Game Jolt, as well as some newcomers! To any of you that were confused at first by the theme, we'd like to thank you for giving us that chance to explain, and thanks goes out to everyone for helping yet another Game Jolt contest succeed.

Without further ado, let's roll out the winners of this competition!

Indie Game Demake Contest!

I have to say, it was very entertaining watching everyone guess the contest theme, and a couple of you got it right, so kudos to those of you that guessed correctly!

The poster I made was based on the famous indie game Cave Story as many of you already know, but no, it was not a screenshot as some thought. The pixel art tiles in Cave Story were 16x16 pixels in size, so what I did was recreate (or decreate) them as 8x8 tiles.

So let's see here... (1) I took a well-known indie game, and then (2) I demade it... Since those were the two hidden hints in the poster, what would that make the contest theme?

Fifth Contest on the Way!

You may be thinking to yourselves "Well it's about time!", and you're right! It's been way too long since we held our last contest, so we're pleased to announce to you all that Game Jolt's fifth official contest will be staring us in the face come July 1 and will finish up on the midnight of July 8, 2010 EST, so be sure to get those creative minds lubricated and ready to go for an intense week of game development!

We could just leave you hanging and waiting for the starting date to discover the details of our new competition, but that would be more than a little dull, so we're going to leave you with a teaser poster to gawk at that hints at the contest theme.