onegameamonth.com is very proud to celebrate 5 full years of monthly game development funtimes!

This is the 60th month of the one game a month challenge, and we just got our 11,111th game submission. So awesome. Thank you.

This month's optional theme word is: JAM

The word jam can be used in many ways. In addition to being a delicious berry preserve, a jam can mean an improvised musical collaboration. Think of a blues jam; you and some friends get together, pick up their instruments and simply begin playing a song.

You pick notes based on feel, at the moment, but usually stay constrained to the limitations of tempo and chord progression. You bounce idea off your friends, and give them space to explore when the time is right. You have to go by feel. You're making it all up as you go along.

A game jam is much the same. Solo or in a small group, you'll pick up your tools and simply rocket forward, with limited time and a theme to provide inspiration, racing full steam ahead to destinations unknown.

In sports, say you're playing basketball, a jam is the culmination of improvised team collaboration as well, with time constraints and the interplay of moves made up at the moment, complete with the occasional mistake and lots of pivoting. You can't plan what's going to happen moment to moment, but you do HAVE A PLAN.

So set forth this month, on a game development jam, and incorporate such concepts as fruit, berries, toast, biscuits, musical instruments, collaborations, time constraints, themes, teams, balls, nets, and a whole lot of improvisation.

Fly by the seat of your pants and just go with the flow. If you mess up, you have to keep going; the song can't suddenly end if you flub one note of your guitar solo, so you accept the whole project as a sort of LIVE PERFORMANCE, a realtime made-up creative experiment.

Power through to the very end, and when the buzzer sounds and the crowd roars, when the last note has been played and the final build uploaded, take a ig drink of water and rest, for you made it. You improvised. You had a plan. And you executed on it. You made some errors, but the performance as a whole will be something you will always remember.

Make games. Not excuses. That's my jam.

- Christer @McFunkypants Kaitila