Philly Game Mechanics will be running a citywide game jam, in partnership with the City of Philadelphia and the PHL Gaming Conference, from October 9th - October 18th.

• The winning team will win $2,000, with the runner up winning $500, and three community prizes winning free publishing to Steam.
• A panel of judges will do initial judging, with local celebrity dev @Heather Flowers (she/her), deciding the grand prize onsite at PHL Gaming Conference 2026, on Saturday, October 24th at CYTO PHL.
• We'll have in-person space guaranteed for this event, with a kickoff event on Friday, October 9th at 7pm (brainstorming, team-forming, snacks) and an all-day coworking event on Saturday, October 17th from 10am to 10pm. You will be shocked to learn that these events are in partnership with Indy Hall Clubhouse (what can I say, we love 'em!).
• Participants are encouraged to join the PGM Discord for more information and assistance with team building and collaboration.
• Public voting for the three community prizes (free publishing to Steam) will be open from the end of the jam until 11:59:59 PM on Thursday, October 22nd.
• For judging purposes, builds on Itch.io cannot change after the jam period ends on October 18th at 11:59:59 PM. You are free to update your builds after the conclusion of the PHL Gaming Expo and prize winners are announced on October 24th.

Theme
The theme of the jam is....

250!

Eligibility
This jam and its prizes are directly affiliated with the city of Philadelphia, and thus participation in the jam is limited to residents of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA and the Greater Philadelphia area.

Assets
The core content and design of your game must be created during the jam period (October 9th-October 18th). You may not submit a project started prior to the jam kick-off on October 9th, even if it is heavily modified.

We encourage participants to create as many assets for their game as they can during the jam period and collaborate with other participants as part of that goal, but you are allowed to use external resources, provided you hold the legal right or license to use them:

• Game engines, middleware, and plugins, your own code libraries, generic boilerplate (i.e. input handling or menus), frameworks, tools.
• Purchased/licensed/free asset packs, CC0 or public domain media, stock music, sound effects, shaders, animations, textures, models, fonts, and legally compliant derivative works.

You must credit all external art, audio, and asset packs in your game description.

Participants retain full ownership of their games and all underlying intellectual property (IP) or assets that they made. You may not use work that belongs to someone else or assets for which you do not hold the proper rights.

Clarification on the AI Rule

After much discussion we have come to the conclusion that using AI tools for game jams is a net negative on the process. Using AI asset generation means losing out on an opportunity to learn a new skill or work with someone else. Simply put, the point of a game jam is to make a game, not to have made a game.

• Any game using AI-generated art/audio/text is DISQUALIFIED.
• Any game using AI-generated code must report its use BUT is not disqualified.
  • We would still recommend against using it, but we have no way to police its use.