Fanjam

FanJam is a Fancade event that happens usually every 1 to 3 months. It is hosted in the Discord Server formerly by Sounak9434, but now by Spolarium since FanJam 13.

Spolarium made a playlist of games that were submitted in Fanjam..

Mechanics

The organizers announce an upcoming FanJam including the set of rules about a week prior to the event.

FanJam consists of 3 phases:

Development Phase
Voting Phase
Announcing of Winners

There are also 3 categories:

Overall: The best games overall
Art: Games with the most beautiful art
Innovation: The most innovative games

There was a Kit category for games made with kits, but it is now eligible for the 3 categories.

Development Phase

On the start of the event, a selected theme will be announced, then all the participants can finally start to build their own games depending on their depiction of the theme. This phase usually lasts for 3 days. Creators can publish and update games during this period.

When submitting games for FanJam, creators must send it in #showcase, with "#fanjam" on its message. Only one submission is accepted.

After the time period is done, there is an extension for games that need updating due to a critical bug, haven't passed Moderation yet, or for any other reason the participant will give.

Voting Phase

During this time, all people in the Discord server can see all submissions, and it will be posted with their direct links for easy access. People can vote on games by sending .vote. Creators cannot update games in this period or they will be penalized.

Announcing of Winners

This marks the end of the current FanJam. Participants ranked Top 3 in each category are announced. Additionally, participants will also get a reward depending on their position of each category:

Best Overall

Bracket Red: Consists of all the previous winners of FanJam.
Bracket Blue: Everyone else.

Prizes will be separately handed out for both brackets.

1st: (Forever ad-free + 1500 gems) or (3000 gems)
2nd: (One year ad-free + 1000 gems) or (2000 gems)

Best Art

1st: (One year ad-free + 1000 gems) or (2000 gems)

Most innovative

1st: (One year ad-free + 1000 gems) or (2000 gems)

Alongside these, winner of Overall - Bracket Blue will receive the @Fanjam role in Discord.

Winning multiple categories only gives the reward with the highest prize.

History

Note: Dates are in `M/D/YYYY` format.

Name	Period	Theme	Special
FanJam I	3/3/2020 - 3/11/2020	You Only Get One
FanJam II	4/1/2020 - 4/9/2020	The More, The Worse
FanJam III	5/3/2020 - 5/13/2020	Control More than One
FanJam IV	6/9/2020 - 6/17/2020	Control the Environment
FanJam V	7/31/2020 - 8/14/2020	Gap
FanJam VI	10/5/2020 - 10/16/2020	Bad is Good
Annual FanJam 2020 / Fanjam VII	12/18/2020 - 1/6/2021	Secret Santa	Special phase (6 days): 12/18/2020 - 12/24/2020, every participants should submit a theme of their choice before this phase ends, the submitted theme then will be in the date 12/25/2020 given to another participant randomly and will be their theme for their game.
FanJam VIII	3/19/2021 - 4/3/2021	No Instructions Needed
FanJam 10	7/11/2021 - 7/29/2021	Snake Variations
Annual FanJam 2021 / Fanjam 11	12/12/2021 - 1/8/2022	The Kits of Christmas	On 12/25/2021, every participant will receive a random kit as their theme, from Sounak9434 via a DM. They can use the kit or remake the core mechanic from scratch. The only criteria is that, the core mechanic of their submission must be similar to the kit. They are not limited only to the kit they are assigned to. They can mix and match it with any other kits or assets, as long as the core mechanic stays the same. It is highly recommended to add a credits level, to credit the creator of the kit, and any other pre-made assets they are using for their submission.
FanJam 12	6/21/2022 - 7/8/2022	Apes alone weak... Apes together strong...
FanJam 13	6/23/2023 - 7/3/2023	You Cannot Stop
Annual FanJam 2023 / FanJam 14	12/13/2023 - 1/7/2024	Drive Mad!	On 12/25/2023, every participant will recieve "a random theme corresponding to one of the levels in the game, a core idea/mechanic, and a set of ideas to help them get started", from Spolarium via a DM. They can re-roll their theme up to two times if they don't like the theme they received. However, once they have re-rolled their theme, they cannot go back to their previous theme.

Trivia

Fanjam 9 is probably also the first fancade ludum dare in itch.io tho it's not clearly stated
- It is also possible that it's skipped for it's number is sacred in both Hinduism (Being that Sounak is from India) and Nordic Beliefs (Being that Martin is from Sweden) or other superstitious beliefs about number 9 either being sacred or unlucky