| ET Eastern USA | CET Central European | |
|---|---|---|
| Jam starts | Wed, Sep 23 — 2:00 PM | Wed, Sep 23 — 8:00 PM (CEST) |
| Submissions due | Wed, Nov 4 — 2:00 PM | Wed, Nov 4 — 8:00 PM |
| Community rating | Nov 5 – 10 | Nov 5 – 10 |
| Rating closes | Tue, Nov 10 — 2:00 PM | Tue, Nov 10 — 8:00 PM |
| Top 5 announced | Wed, Nov 11 — 2:00 PM | Wed, Nov 11 — 8:00 PM |
| Judges play and score | Nov 11 – 13 | Nov 11 – 13 |
| Finalist video due | Fri, Nov 13 — 2:00 PM | Fri, Nov 13 — 8:00 PM |
| Judging Panel + Awards | Sat, Nov 14 — 2:00 PM | Sat, Nov 14 — 8:00 PM |
Every deadline is 2:00 PM ET / 8:00 PM CET — that's 12:00 PM Mountain Time, where we're based. Same clock reading on every date, and the same calendar day everywhere, so there's no midnight rollover.
Simulation is the widest genre in games.
It's the breakout hit that has you optimizing a supply chain you invented for yourself. It's the management game you lose a weekend to. It's the tycoon loop, the survival colony, the vehicle you learn to actually fly.
All of it counts here. Build something that simulates a system — real, invented, serious, or ridiculous.
For six weeks, make a simulation game. The best ones win cash, get feedback from working industry veterans, and demo live on a stream that plays to both the jam community and a room of developers, studios, and educators.
Open to developers worldwide.
Theme: SIMULATION
Join the kickoff stream for design guidance and inspiration.
Your game needs to simulate a system of some kind. Beyond that, the field is wide open: Management, tycoon, colony, survival, vehicle, life sim, immersive sim, sandbox systems, physics toys.
All participants rate on five criteria. Each is written to work across the full range of simulation, from a chaotic tycoon loop to a meticulous systems model.
| Criterion | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Systems | Does the simulation hold together? Do player actions produce meaningful consequences and readable feedback? Do the mechanics interact in ways that create emergent situations? |
| Engagement | Does it hold your attention and reward you for paying attention? Is it fun? Do you want another run? |
| Creativity | Is the idea original? Does it feel distinct? A fresh premise, an unusual mechanic, an unexpected tone. |
| Theme Execution | Does it interpret the jam theme well? |
| Presentation | Art, sound, clarity, and overall polish. Does it feel good to be in? |
Fidelity to reality is not a criterion. An abstracted, deliberately gamey system can score full marks on Systems if it's coherent and generative. A photorealistic model can score poorly if nothing you do matters.
JUDGE
Jason Della Rocca
Game Jam Judge & Mentor
As co-founder of Execution Labs, he was a hands-on early-stage investor to 25 independent game studios from North America and Europe. In parallel Jason helped launch GamePlay Space, a non-profit hub whose alumni have generated over $300M in game sales and funding. Between 2000–09 he served as executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), earning the inaugural Ambassador Award at GDC. In 2009, Jason was named to Game Developer Magazine’s “Power50.”
JUDGE
Jared Yeager
Executive, Creative Artists Agency (CAA)
Jared Yeager is an Executive at leading entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Yeager is responsible for leading FRAME1GAMES, CAA’s newly launched indie game accelerator and investment program.
Yeager brings unmatched gaming credibility, including experience as a partner at Indie Fund, which has funded 50+ titles including Hyper Light Drifter, Night in the Woods, and Hollow Knight, and having co-chaired the IndieCade awards jury for 16 years, alongside major-studio production experience at Walt Disney Games.
JUDGE
Renee Gittins
Studio Head, Stumbling Cat · Chair, IGDA Alumni Board
Renee leads Stumbling Cat, developers of Potions: A Curious Tale, and is a multi-disciplinary leader with expertise in operations, engineering, and creative direction. Formerly the General Manager at Phoenix Labs - Vancouver and the Executive Director of the IGDA, she now serves as the Chair of the IGDA Alumni Board. A staunch advocate for game developers, Renee consults for various organizations and is outspoken about initiatives to increase diversity within games to help the industry grow and improve for everyone.
JUDGE
Dave Crooks
Game Director, Dodge Roll
Dave Crooks has been a game designer for 15 years. Most notably, he directed Enter the Gungeon and Exit the Gungeon at Dodge Roll. Despite a near-unhealthy love of technical art and VFX, he cares most about systems and feel: how simple rules add up to surprising play, and how the tuning, feedback and small details make a game feel alive in your hands. He’s also a hands-on builder who prototypes his own ideas and makes the tools to get there. He’s excited to see what everyone makes for SIM Jam, especially simulations that are small, strange and fully committed to their own rules.
JUDGE
Adam “doseone” Drucker
Composer, Rapper & Producer
For 30 years, and 50+ full length records, Adam “doseone” Drucker has been spearheading the unfound sound, lassoing it, and wrestling it to the ground. Through hard work and hand craft, the rapper/producer/poet has built up a body of work of both striking quality and impressive quantity. Turning his talents and attention toward Indie Video Games doseone has scored a slew of killer titles such as Enter The Gungeon, Gang Beasts, Sludge Life, and Escape Academy.
Judges receive the five finalist builds on November 11 and have three days to play and score them. Scoring is 1–5 on each of the following. The first three mirror the community criteria; the last two are judge-only.
| Criterion | Question |
|---|---|
| Systems design | Is the underlying model coherent, and does it generate meaningful decisions? |
| Execution | Scope control, polish, and how complete it feels for six weeks |
| Originality | Does this do something we haven't seen? |
| Publishing potential | Could this become a full release someone would pay for? |
| Completion potential | Could this reach a shippable state in roughly six months? |
Final prizes are set by judge vote and confirmed by Game Gauntlet.
First Place
Second Place
Third Place
All five finalists
PRIZE SPONSORS
IGDA
First place prize — a lifetime IGDA membership for a solo winner, or a 2-year IGDA membership for each team member (up to 5).
The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is the world’s largest nonprofit membership organization serving all individuals who create games. The IGDA advances the careers and enhances the lives of game developers by connecting members with their peers, promoting professional development, and advocating for the interests of game developers worldwide.
IGDA and Game Gauntlet are partnering to boost missions that have great crossover! igda.org
Xorin
3 months of premium access for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place (team, up to 5).
Xorin is an AI co-developer that runs natively inside the Unity Editor. It reads your project, writes and edits scripts, wires up scenes and components, and debugs alongside you, all without leaving the editor. It’s built for developers who want to move faster on the plumbing so they can spend the six weeks on what actually makes the game good.
Every SIM Jam participant gets $100 in Xorin credits, usable across all supported models for the full jam window (Sep 23 to Nov 4). No card required. To claim, visit xorin.ai/simjam/get-xorin and use code SIMJAM.
Unity
Unity mentorship — awarded to the top-placing team that built their game in Unity — a 6-month mentorship.
Start Building Your Vision With Unity Today. unity.com
Farclip
$500 prize pool sponsor, plus the Farclip category winner — the top-placing finalist team that built with Farclip. The year of Playtest access goes to all five finalist teams either way; this names who takes the category.
Farclip is a spatial analysis tool for Unity, Unreal, and Godot developers. It gives real answers on flow, pacing, movement, sightlines, dead zones, and navigation paths, directly on your live scene, before you even hit playtest.
Participants get FREE Farclip Playtest access for the duration of the jam. Sign up with this link: farclip.ai/?ref=GGSIMJAM
CraftPix
1-year CraftPix membership for all five finalist teams (team, up to 5).
Craftpix.net is an online store and resource specializing in high-quality premium and free 2D game assets for game developers, indie studios, and hobbyists. craftpix.net
Odin Law and Media
90 minutes of legal services for 1st place — a 30-minute consultation plus up to an hour of work.
Odin Law and Media is a law firm working in video game, digital media, internet and entertainment law. odinlaw.com
Indie.io
For all five finalists: a year of indie.io Premium and a year of Indie Pass. For every participant: free indie.io Premium through November 18, plus a free month of Indie Pass.
indie.io is a games publisher dedicated to bringing exceptional independent games to players worldwide. With a portfolio spanning a wide range of genres, indie.io partners with developers to provide the support, resources, and expertise needed to bring creative visions to life. Developers self-publishing their own games can also use the indie.io Tools Storefront, with marketing and development tools. For more information, visit indie.io.
indie.io Premium gives you the tools to get your jam game seen:
That covers the whole jam, plus two weeks after submissions close to promote what you made.
Indie Pass is the world's only subscription platform built just for indie games. Your free month unlocks the whole catalog, so you can play as much as you want and see what other indie devs are making.
To claim: go to indie.io/redeem?code=SIMJAM26. The code is SIMJAM26, not the Xorin code SIMJAM.
Finalists: indie.io will email you to set up your year of Premium and Indie Pass. You'll just need an indie.io account.
You can join the jam and add team members at any time up to the submission deadline on November 4. After that, entries and teams are locked and rating begins — no late entries, and no members added after the fact.
Why Discord is required: after you submit, we add you to a private review channel for your entry. That's where you'll get community feedback and expert industry review. If we can't match your submission to a Discord account, we can't get you into that channel — so the Discord usernames on your team roster have to match the accounts that joined the server.
Team size: solo, or up to 5 people. Everyone who worked on the game must be listed on the final submission, and every team member must be in the Discord.
Sponsorship support for the Game Gauntlet Game Night x Vital Spaces and SIM Jam.
OUR SPONSORS & PARTNERS
GOLD TIER
SILVER TIER
PRIZE SPONSORS
| Unity | Farclip |
| CraftPix | Odin Law and Media |
| Indie.io |
MENTORS
| Execution Labs | CAA · FRAME1GAMES |
PARTNERS
| IGDA | |
| Oncade | Vital Spaces |
| Player Found | NM State Esports |
| Sorcery & Might | Rio Grande Games |
| The Army Painter | Reaper Miniatures |
| Santa Fe Community College | Ideum |
Every submission must include:
.exe or browser. Browser builds get the most plays and ratings, and travel best internationally.
The core design, code, and content of your game must be created during the jam period, September 23 – November 4.
Permitted, as long as they're credited:
Not permitted:
Attestation. Every submission requires a signed attestation confirming the above (see the submission form). Submitting a false attestation is grounds for disqualification and forfeiture of any prize — including after results are announced.
You keep everything. Games and all underlying IP remain fully owned by the participants who made them.
AI-generated art, code, music, and text are permitted. You must disclose them, aligned with Steam's requirements — this keeps your game shippable later.
Disclose:
You must hold the rights or permission to use everything in your game, AI-generated content and third-party assets included. That means you created it, or you licensed it for personal or commercial use.
This jam covers a wide range — a chaotic tycoon loop and a meticulous systems model can both be excellent, and both are welcome here.
Rate each game against what it's trying to do, not against what you'd have made.
Every submission includes a one-line statement of intent. Read it first. A tense survival colony isn’t trying to be a laugh, and a physics toy isn’t trying to be accurate. Ask whether the game achieves what it set out to achieve, then rate accordingly.
Rating runs November 5–10, closing Tuesday, November 10 at 2:00 PM ET / 8:00 PM CET (19:00 UTC). Every participant must rate at least 3 entries — teams that don't rate are ineligible for prizes. Three is the minimum, not the target: the more entries you rate, the fairer the top 5 is for everyone.
Do not solicit ratings or coordinate vote-trading. Entries that do will be disqualified.
Uploads stay open during the rating period, but only for one reason: fixing game-breaking bugs. Crashes, softlocks, builds that won't launch, save corruption.
If you push a fix, post what you changed in your submission's devlog or in the jam community thread. Keep it short — one line is fine.
Not permitted during rating:
Everyone is rated on the same six weeks of work. Fixing a crash keeps that fair; shipping improvements while people are voting does not. Undisclosed changes are grounds for disqualification, and we check upload timestamps against devlogs before finalist builds go to the judges.
Avoid the problem entirely: browser builds are the least likely to strand you with a launch failure you never saw on your own machine.
The top 5 are announced Wednesday, November 11. If you're in, two things happen.
1. Submit a 1–2 minute video — due before the panel. Introduce your team, describe your game, show gameplay. Due Friday, November 13 at 2:00 PM ET / 8:00 PM CET (19:00 UTC).
2. Show up and demo live. This is the one that matters.
The Judging Panel + Awards is a livestreamed online call on Saturday, November 14 at 2:00 PM ET / 8:00 PM CET (19:00 UTC). Finalists demo their game to the judges live and answer questions. Results are revealed on the stream.
Your video is the fallback if your team genuinely can't make the call — it gets shown in your place. But be clear about the tradeoff: in our experience, judges weigh live attendance heavily. A team that demos its own game and fields questions gives the panel far more to score than a recording can. If you can make the call, make the call.
Everything is online — no travel, ever. Wherever you are in the world, you join the same stream. We coordinate over Discord.
The awards video and the finalist games then screen at the Game Gauntlet Game Night x Vital Spaces on Saturday, November 21 (venue TBA). Your game reaches the online jam community on the 14th and an in-person audience on the 21st — without you going anywhere.
The jam is open to developers worldwide. Trophies, CraftPix memberships, mentorship, and promotion are available to every winner regardless of location.
Cash prizes are distributed by Oncade:
Target ESRB "T" (Teen) or lower. Entries rated "M" (Mature 17+) will not be accepted. No NSFW content, explicit sexual content, extreme violence, or hate speech.
Late submissions will not be accepted. Submissions may be removed by admins for rule violations.
By entering, you consent to your submission, gameplay footage, and any recorded video or audio being used for Game Gauntlet promotion and social media. In-person attendees consent to being recorded at the event.
Be respectful. No harassment or discrimination. Report concerns to organizers. Violations may result in disqualification or removal from the event and community.
At the Game Gauntlet Game Night x Vital Spaces on Saturday, November 21, we will screen the awards video and have the finalist games available to play on demo stations.
Game Gauntlet is bringing Community, Mentorship & Funding to indie game development. Our upcoming SIM Game Jam brings developers together for a six-week challenge to create original simulation games, with opportunities to learn, connect, get industry feedback, and get discovered.
Game Gauntlet is backed by industry leaders and foundation partners who believe indie developers deserve more than just a place to make games — they deserve a community and a path forward.
Presented by Cosmic Forces.
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