🎃 HORROR JAM 2026: Halloween Special 🎃
A private, invite-only game jam between friends.
Hey there! If you found this page, welcome! 👻
This is a small, closed jam made by a group of friends and members of our Discord community. Only invited participants can submit games. But you're more than welcome to follow along, and once the jam ends, all the games will be here for you to play!
📅 Schedule
- Themes revealed: Friday, October 16, 2026
- Jam starts: Saturday, October 24, 2026
- Submission deadline: Friday, October 30, 2026, at 11:59 PM (Brasília time, UTC-3)
- Duration: 7 days
👥 Participants
Everyone that enjoy games are more than welcome!
🎲 How the themes work
This jam has a twist: you don't choose your own theme. A friend chooses it for you.
- Our theme master, who doesn't take part in the jam, randomly drew who gives a theme to whom. Nobody gives a theme to themselves.
- Each participant secretly sent their theme to the theme master. Nobody knows anyone else's theme, not even their own, until the reveal.
- Every theme is different.
- Every theme must have Halloween/horror as its base, plus a sub-theme or context that fits it. For example: "Halloween + cooking", "Horror + changing seasons", "Halloween + you can't look back".
- Any style of horror is welcome: comedy horror, psychological, cosmic, trashy, cute-but-creepy... Creativity is what matters!
- Themes must be fair: nothing impossible to finish in 7 days, and nothing meant to sabotage the person receiving it. The theme master can veto a theme and ask for a new one.
4 themes were chosen, one for each core participant. Core participants must stick to the theme they received.
Themes
- CUISINE
- DRIVE-THRU
- THE LINE
- JOB INTERVIEW
⏳ Before the jam starts
✅ Allowed: brainstorming, design ideas, researching references, studying your engine, picking and downloading asset packs, setting up your environment (installing the engine, creating an empty repository).
❌ Not allowed: starting the project, writing game code, building scenes, creating prefabs, or making any real progress before the official start.
🤖 AI rules
❌ Not allowed:
- Generating any art with AI: sprites, textures, 3D models, concept art, UI.
- Generating any audio with AI: music, sound effects and voices.
- Using AI tools (including MCP) to create prefabs, build scenes or place objects automatically. The world-building is yours! The goal is to use assets and get creative building your own scenes.
✅ Allowed:
- Generating and refactoring code with AI.
- Using AI to organize folders, plan tasks and automate repetitive work.
⚠️ Golden rule: using AI to write scripts isn't the problem. The problem is not understanding what the script does. All code should follow good practices (clean code, organization, clear names), and you should be able to explain any part of your code if someone asks.
🎨 Assets, music and sound
- Ready-made assets (free or paid) from places like the Unity Asset Store, itch.io, Kenney or OpenGameArt are allowed, as long as they weren't made with AI.
- Downloaded music and sound effects are allowed, with or without copyright.
- Assets, music and sounds made by you are, of course, allowed.
- All third-party assets and audio must be credited, either in the game's credits screen or on its page.
💰 Publishing and monetization
- If your game uses any copyrighted material, it must be 100% free: no price and no donations. Nobody profits from someone else's art!
- If your game uses copyrighted material, add a copyright notice on its page, or replace that material with a free alternative.
- A game can only be paid or accept donations if all of its content is yours or licensed for commercial use.
📦 Submission
- Submit your game here, on this jam page, before the deadline.
- Your page should include: a playable build, a title, a short description, controls and credits.
- Also share a post about your project in our Discord forum, #🎃horror-jam, in the same format as your itch.io page.
🏆 Rating
Who votes: everyone in the jam.
Categories (rated 1 to 5):
- Use of theme: did the game make good use of the theme it received?
- Horror atmosphere: was it scary, tense, or at least a little creepy? Comedy horror counts too!
- Fun: did you want to play until the end?
- Creativity: did it bring an idea nobody expected?
What is NOT rated:
- Pretty graphics or technical code quality. A simple asset used well is worth as much as a custom model.
- Small bugs. Only a bug that stops you from finishing the game loses points.
Feedback is required: along with your ratings, write one thing you liked and one suggestion for every game you rate.
💀 Spirit of the jam
This is a jam between friends. The goal is to have fun, learn something and finish a game. If you're unsure about a rule, ask in the Discord before doing it. And remember: a small, finished game is worth more than a huge, half-finished one!
Happy Halloween! 🦇
