hello! I recently fully realized that anyone can join a jam and it doesn't need to just be professionals doing it! So like... I've never done one before! I don't have the time or skills yet to enter this years jam but I would like to do next years! do the games need to use RPG maker? If not do you know any free and safe alternatives I could use!? I'm sorry if this has been asked before I looked around a bit but couldn't find out! Thank you so much for reading! I look forward to next year!
Yep, this jam is open to all skill levels! RPG Maker is a great way to get started in game-making as a matter of fact, many people worked on their first game projects thanks to these jams!
As for our guidelines, you can use anything you're comfortable with! RPG Maker tends to be chosen (2003 specifically) because it's fairly easy to pick up and it's what the original game was made in, so there's lots of documentation on how to make a fangame in it, but we've had Unity games, games programmed in Assembly, and so on!
As for free, GameMaker and Unity have a free version, I believe! RPG Maker also goes on sale fairly regularly if that helps (RPG Maker 2003 usually goes for $1.99 compared to the standard $19.99, so I highly recommend getting it on sale!) There's also programming from scratch through a programming language, but that requires a lot of prior knowledge
EDIT: Another free engine I forgot to mention was Wolf RPG! I haven’t used it myself, but I’ve heard many suggest it!
