Participating in a jam has always been something I made excuses to not do, but now that I have a bit of confidence and some experience with the needed tools, I'm stoked for the challenge!
My main toolset will be:
I'm loving a lot of the themes so far, but I figured I'd list my favorites:
Use it or lose it: I love concepts that require the player to make sacrifices and choices that matter, so having a stipulation that means you'll lose an item or resource if you don't use it seems interesting
Breaking the chains: I'm all about stories of liberation, and there are a lot of them, so this one has a lot of potential for self-expression and profound narratives
Leave something behind: again, love sacrifice as a game concept, and there are plenty of narrative variations as well as game mechanics that could come from this concept. First that came to mind for me was a system that encourages players to abandon items, and rewards them with buffs for sacrificing more powerful ones
Overall, I'm really excited. Lots to think about. Probably gonna try to get some generic art assets together this week!
With all the questions and debate around AI art generation going around, I wanted to give my thoughts on the matter.
In terms of the Jam, I'd say that AI art generation is probably fine just because the rules say you can use pre-existing assets, palette swaps, etc, so long as you opt out of the respective art categories. Since AI art gen typically involves the AI being trained off art from artists who didn't consent to their art being used in such a way (correct me if I'm wrong; I'm all for art generators that are trained off stock images, royalty free art, or art that one has permission to use freely), I'd say it fits fine in the Jam. In the Compo tho? Eh.
In the Compo, I've seen some people say that AI art gen is fine because it's effectively the same thing as the audio effect generators that could be used. And, in the Compo rules it does say:
- Content generators are allowed. In fact, they’re encouraged. sfxr, the popular sound effect generator was originally created for Ludum Dare.
However, these sound effect generators have one major difference from AI art gen tools: they aren't "trained" off the work of others without their consent. And, this bullet point follows shortly after the last:
- Texture masks, brushes, drums, loops, sampled instruments, and similar assets are allowed, but only if they are used to create a derivative work. i.e. a Song, a complex soundscape, a unique piece of artwork, etc.
I'd say that if AI art gen is to be used, due to how it's generated, it would probably best fall into the category of a sampled instrument or loop, and should be used to create a derivative work that is sufficiently different from a simple "type prompt, get art." This would mean generating the art, then modifying and incorporating the generated art into a unique piece created by you.
For the record, I am not against AI art gen as a whole. I do actually see it as a potentially great tool that could be used by artists to create unique art, and that's the main thing, right? These generators aren't artists. They don't have artistic vision, because they are tools; you are the artist.
I think that AI art tools can be developed, ethically, in such a way that they don't use the work of artists without their consent. But regardless of my opinion, or the technicalities of whether you can or can't use it (nobody is gonna stop you), I still think you should listen to this: if you care at all about your game being rated well, it might be better just to avoid AI art gen. In my eyes, it's risky because you will be damaging the reputation of your game right out the gate for some people. Worse, if it's clear all you did was pull a "type prompt, get art, done" move, it may damage the reception of your game even more.
TLDR If you use AI art gen, try your best to be as transparent as possible about how you generated the art and how you modified it to make it unique and fit your game. Art generators don't have artistic intent; that's up to you to ascribe. However, if you are just wanting to use it as a quick way to get art, your game's reputation would be better off if you just did shitty programmer art.
Remember RPGMaker? People thought it was a way to quickly and easily make games without skill, even going so far as to just straight steal unmodified assets to cut down on effort. As a result, RPGMaker gained a bad reputation because of the abundance of cheaply made, low-effort games using stolen assets that spawned from it. On the other hand, some people did use it to make unique, memorable gaming experiences. Strive to be like them if you do use AI art gen.
I'm gonna be streaming @ 4pm EST today to test my Jam overlay and do a little prep work, so if anyone wants to drop by and check out how it's all gonna look when I stream the actual Jam this weekend, give advice, or see how I'll be setting up my workspace, i'd love to have ya!!
Here are my votes; I originally voted for 10 secs but tbh, it was one of the themes that I had the least unique ideas for so I changed it lol. Regardless of what it turns out to be tho, I've got all sorts of concepts stewing in my noggin over these so I'm excited to find out what it'll be tomorrow! 
Good luck, friends~ I'll be streaming tonight at the start of the jam and throughout the weekend, and I'll try to hang out in and raid the streams of others on breaks and such! Regardless, I hope you all have a good time, make some fantastic games, and I'll see ya on the other side!! (P.S shoutout to @papabirb for stopping by my prep stream, helping out a bit, and talking about the jam with me! Can't wait to see what a fellow nonbinary gremlin manages to make) 
I admit, when I first started the Jam I was incredibly overwhelmed with the task before me. However, knowing that I would be doing a lot of Googling and tutorial following, I came up with a somewhat simple concept:
A tactical roguelike/RPG with deck-building mechanics
Gameplay - Grid-based - Enemies move and act every 10 seconds. - During those 10 seconds, you draw a hand of card actions that you may play in any order, so long as you have the stamina. - At the end of your "turn" you discard all remaining cards in your hand - You gain new cards as you play - You have a limited resource that allows you to freeze time to make tactical decisions
And that's it. I wanted to keep it limited because, as I'm sure you know, tactics games can get quite complex haha! I spent today working through the GDQuest tutorial for tactics movement systems, as well as putting together my own placeholder art for the game just so I don't have to rush it later. My plan is to glue and duct tape together various tutorials that serve the functions I need, get the prototype to work, and then worry about polishing and fine-tuning afterward. I turned in for the night after getting to the point where I got the selection cursor programmed and working, but I am at the end of a work day, my Vyvanse has completely worn off, and I'm out of it, so I'm proud I got this much done at the least focused part of my day. Tomorrow morning though? I'm gonna crush it lol.
Anyway, I leave you tonight with my mischievous-looking green stabby boy and my chaotic cave floor tiles
Annnnnnnd I'm awake lol. Slept a solid 5-6 hours, with a bunch of waking up with grid-based movement systems running through my brain! I also had a dream that Snoop Dogg came in through my back door and started playing violin for me and my family, but what this means for my game is still unclear. Anyway, here's the plan for today:
I'm not sure how much I'll work today, exactly, but I really want to get this done so probably "as long as it takes" lol
Hope everyone else is doing well, and that your day is productive!
I've been hacking away at this prototype since 8am (it's 4:25pm now), and a good majority of that time was spent stuck on a few debugging problems. Progress is slow, but I'm learning a lot. For instance, it took me far too long to figure out that my AutoTiling wasn't working correctly because "Grid snap" was enabled, indicated by a tiny blue icon :))) Next time I have AutoTile issues, I'll be absolutely goddamn sure to check for that grid snapping!!!
Anyway, I finally, finally got the movement system to work. Now, I just need to add the deck-building mechanics, which are essentially just rotating sets of action buttons to be used against enemies. Still, it was fascinating to work with pathfinding algorithms and various arrays to store and calculate grid positions and whatnot.
I'll be back to the grind either later tonight, or early tomorrow morning, depending on how early I fall asleep tonight. I may not complete the game in time, but that's ok, because I am having a ton of fun and I am learning a lot in a short period of time!
Today is, for all intents and purposes, the last day of the Jam for me, since I have work tomorrow. That being said, I'm going to try my absolute best to get something released. If not, though, I have learned quite a lot and garnered a new appreciation for how deceptively complex tactics games can be, even in just the simple mechanics we take for granted like unit selection and movement.
I have the movement system completed, regardless, so all that's left is to try and add some gameplay mechanics on top. From my original concept, here's the plan:
If I can get all that done before the end of the day, or close enough that I can finish it in the 3-hour window I have after work tomorrow, then I'll at least have a prototype for the game, which is honestly not that bad for someone who has a.) never made a full game of their own before, and b.) never taken part in a game jam before lol.
I will not be streaming today, however, tomorrow I will be doing a postmortem reflection stream, and will also spend some time reviewing other games as well! Good luck today, friends, and I hope progress is big!
After being at it for 8 hours today trying to implement some gameplay, I am sore and ready to call it quits lol. I do technically have ~9 hours between the rest of today and after work tomorrow, but I am not close to the end at all and I keep running into bugs that I know I'm having trouble resolving because I'm inexperienced. Regardless, I learned a whole lot, and I think I'll still finish this concept in my free time because I really like it. I'll write up a retrospective with some of the stuff that I finished, things I learned, etc in the remaining time I have and post it tomorrow.
I can't wait to see the games you all made though! I'll be sure to do tons of reviewing to make up for my lack of product lol
