Chicaghoul is a Chicago community game jam with an emphasis on horror and Halloween related games! For this jam, participants are asked to create a horror, horror themed, or Halloween related game as their entry. The theme for this year is Haunted Castle, but this is entirely optional and more meant to help inspire ideas for entrants! Prompts are also provided below, with more unveiled at jam start time.
At the conclusion of the jam, Night City will host an in-person community reception and showcase (RSVP required) of all of the officially selected games submitted to the jam.
- Entries should be within the horror genre or Halloween related.
- Gore and other more graphic content are acceptable, we just ask that any entries containing particularly sensitive elements be flagged accordingly.
- Participants are encouraged (but not required) to create a movie style poster for their submission’s cover art! Posters should be included as a downloadable file on the submission’s Itch.io page, sized 11 x 17 inches (about 3300 px by 5100 px), at 300 DPI and as a PDF. We will print these for accepted games and showcase them at the reception.
- All entries should be tagged with #chicaghoul2025
- Only games officially selected will be showcased at the in-person reception.
- Games are required to submit the jam entry form to qualify for official selection, and must be available for the live showcase to qualify for prizes.
- Prizes are limited to five members at most per team- while your team can be bigger in size, this is the most that will be afforded per team.
- Any pre-made assets or asset packs used must be credited.
Schedule
- September 26 - 7:00 PM: Kickoff in our Discord with speed meet. Prompts and theme announced, jam begins!
- October 17 - 11:59 PM Central Time: Submissions due
- October 18 - Community Voting opens!
- October 19 - Community Voting closes at 11:59pm CST.
- Saturday, October 25 | 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM: Community reception and game showcase (RSVP required!) held at Night City
Theme - Haunted Castle
For prompts this year, we encourage you to combine TWO from our separate columns: one from the themes unveiled via Dracula's Jam Prompts, and one from our community prompts as voted on by our ko-fi members. Community prompts will be unveiled at jam start time. For bonus points, or if you prefer to just go with one prompt and don't love what's below, throw our Haunted Castle prompt into the mix. But ultimately, follow your spooky whims wherever they lead! We recommend factoring all of these in when voting on a project's theme usage after the jam ends.
Dracula's Jam Prompts:
- Sparkly Vampire Boys
- The King in Yellow
- Bad Moon Rising
Community Prompts:
- Day and Night
- The only way out is down
- Shifting Rooms
- Shape Shifter
Quick Links
PRIZES
This year is also once again generously sponsored by DreadXP! Official selections will receive game keys as prizes according to placement.
Prizes are limited to five members at most per team- while your team can be bigger in size, this is the most that will be afforded per team.
Official Selection
All entries will be reviewed by community vote and additionally by an impartial selection committee. Entries will be evaluated based on presentation values, engagement, playability, and cohesion with the jam theme and suitability for an in-person event.
Official selections are determined as a split between community votes and judge's picks. The top five entries placed via community votes (provided a submitted jam form) are accepted, followed by five judge's selections.
We want to minimize gatekeeping and encourage community participation across all skill levels. All games that comply with the rules below will be included in the jam page on Itch.io. However, due to limited space at the in-person reception and limited availability of prizes, a maximum of 10 games will be officially selected.
Rules for Official Selection
To be officially selected, submissions must fulfill the following criteria:
- Game must be submitted to the game jam on Itch.io.
- Any pre-made assets or asset packs used must be credited.
- Jam entries should be original and created during the jam period.
- One contact person on the team must submit an entry form.
- Games must be within the horror genre, horror themed, or Halloween related.
- Teams are limited to five members or fewer. Participants may be members of multiple teams but may only be the contact person for a single game. Team members (usernames or real names) must be credited on the game’s Itch page.
- At least one team member must be present and able to display the created game for the duration of the showcase reception (we will have at least 30" x 30" of table space for you and outlets, you're on the hook for the rest!).
- Any externally created assets must be credited with links on the game’s Itch page.
- The game must be reasonably functional as determined by Night City and Indie City Games.
- If a game is submitted as playable in-browser, it should also include a downloadable version.
- Game size should not exceed 2 GB.
- The game must be playable without a third-party installer.
- Tag your game with chicaghoul2025.
Community Voting
Please keep comments and critique constructive when voting! It's just as important to let people know what they did well on a project as what could be improved. We trust our community members to be objective, kind, and supportive in their voting process.
Legal / IP Rules
- Developers hold all rights to the games they make.
- Developers grant Night City and Indie City Games the permission to use their game's name, screenshots, and video footage in promotional materials for Night City, Indie City Games, and future events.
- Night City and Indie City Games are not responsible for any games submitted.
- Games featuring text in languages besides English must provide a translation of all submitted materials not in English.
- Night City and Indie City Games reserve the right to not display and / or remove any uploaded games if the game content is broken, offensive or unsuitable as determined by Night City and Indie City Games’ sole discretion. This includes but is not limited to: games with harmful or prejudicial themes related to gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, appearance, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, socioeconomic status, or religion.
About Night City
Night City is a Chicago studio focused on curating community-oriented video game development, festivals, exhibitions, and educational resources.
Night City’s mission is to strengthen community by:
- Reconceptualizing video games as participatory community art.
- Affording diverse, local creators an equitable space to share their work with in-person audiences beyond traditional commercial channels.
More info at nightcity.games
About Indie City Games
Indie City Games is a Chicago-based non-profit working to provide local independent game developers and artists with space to create, share, meet, collaborate, and showcase their work. Our mission is to foster an intentional, mutually supportive community around multimedia, interactive art.
If you want to support us in bringing more jams, events, and resources to Chicago and midwestern indie developers, consider supporting us on ko-fi! You'll get access to our extremely rad zine we publish monthly as part of it! Your dollars goes to help us bring you events like this.
For info on Indie City Games, check out our Discord!