Regarding rule 13: "13. No generative AI allowed. Entries using generative AI will automatically be disqualified." 

This feels hastily tacked on as an afterthought, and needs some clarification.

Given that generative AI is already integrated into most common IDEs, CLIs and even common dev. tools like photoshop and MS word, there is no way to know whether generative AI is used. Where do you draw the line? For example Photoshop has Generative expand,  so if anyone uses photoshop are they now disqualified?

The rule doesn't make sense in 2025.  Where is the threshold, where is the burden of proof?
The way I see it ALL game devs use GenAI in 2025, one way or another, even if they don't like to admit it, or are possibly unaware that it's Gen AI under the hood.

I'm vibe coder and solo dev, and since GenAI is an integral part of my workflow on multiple levels, so are devs like me simply automatically excluded? 

I do not. At all.

If generative ai is integral to your workflow then you can't participate in a competition with a rule that explicitly states generative ai is not allowed...............

Like every other rule we cannot check and will not check. We rely on people to self report whether they are students, we are not going to phone universities, we are relying on people to follow the spirit of the rule. And the same applies to the use of generative AI.

It is difficult of course to avoid including generative AI in the BROADEST definition in 2025. And obviously we aren’t going to be disqualifying anyone from using autocomplete (or something similar). 

But in the narrow definition of generating large parts of the game based off of prompts, where the work done is not enough garner you the copyright for the game, then you would be absolutely disqualified.

Yes, it’s a fuzzy line. And we’re sorry we wrote the rule with so much grey space.

But you should be able to figure out which side of the line you fall. Just like a team with a mix of students and hobbyists is expected to figure out which category they most fairly fall into.

Though it’s sounds by the description you have provided that you are disqualified.

[I put a reply here in the wrong place so I've deleted it.]

I'd like to throw my 2cents in.

I am very artistically challenged as in I can't really draw much (and the games that I have submitted will show this properly). I am a programmer by day, so learning and writing GDScript for Godot engine was the easy part. Thinking in loops, logic and data structures comes naturally to me. But give me a pencil and a blank sheet of paper and I don't know what the heck I am doing... To work around this problem, I generally make 2d pixel art for my games. Instead of me looking at this as a severe limitation or disadvantage, I use it to make my life easier. I know it is going to be badly animated or badly drawn, so I try and come up with ideas that doesn't require a lot of artistic talent.

Recently I managed to get a 2nd place game in a small game jam with my game Splitality (which you can check on my profile). The two player controlled characters are literally  squares with some color modulation on them. The game turned out to be very fun even with it's very minimalist art style.

When I saw the theme for this game jam, I was racking my brain for probably 2 hours to think about how can I be the monster. Eventually I decided I am going to build a game where you are a great white shark, eating divers that go shark cage diving. But because my artistic skills are what they are, I was thinking about how I could make this actually look like a shark. I decided to get onto youtube and look for some sprite animation tutorials. What I found instead was a video of a guy "rigging" a shark in blender. But I don't know blender, so off to the blender tutorials I went. Long story short, I finally got a low poly shark made, made a basic mesh generator for the seabed, but once I realized how empty things looked. I started modeling more "rocks" eventually I put those rocks into my level and realized that this will take me six weeks to do... I was done for, nothing could save this and 24 hours have already passed by with me modeling sharks, building the mesh generator and going down the blender tutorial rabbit hole.

I then decided that maybe I can salvage my situation by just building a very small city block in blender and having a "monster" destroy that. This is the game that I submitted for the jam. With no art skill (which again shows in this new game) I have managed to submit a game that I essentially built in +-24 hours. The best part about it isn't the game that I delivered, although I quite like it and my kids had fun being voice actors for me, the best part was that I have learned "just enough" blender to start making 3d models and animating them instead of having to struggle with art. For me this is what the jams are about, being presented with a theme, and a timeline and you having to find a way to make those things work.

I have had so much fun in this jam regardless of the outcome. I made a "song", I learned how to do some basic 3d modeling and most of all had some super laughs with my children about their voice acting.

I use copilot at work almost every day, I like to use the jams as a break from copilot and to just goof around with silly ideas. I am here for the learning experience, the fun in playing other people's creations and watching some people achieve such good results in such a short space of time. 

I have seen some jams where AI is part of what is allowed and even some where the whole jam is about using AI to partake. Maybe if your workflow is so heavily dependent on AI, those jams will suit you better. I would probably still have enjoyed playing your creation even if I knew you used AI because I am very aware of how much work it takes to keep AI on track and coherent. But I also feel that you shouldn't exclude yourself because you have a limitation in one area. Most of us have limitations in specific areas if we are honest.

I seem to have lost track of where I was going with this. But I wrote it so I will post it.

Game jams are a great place to get to know other game makers in the community and then team-up with people with the skills you lack. I'd argue that clinging to being a "solo developer" is the problem that you're patching with AI, which simply is against the spirit of participating in the first place.

I encourage you to seek out some teammates.

I took it as a challenge to try relying on AI less as a full-time software developer; so I saw it as a great challenge. Sure, it's everywhere, in every IDE at this point, so it was a tougher challenge. I'm just glad I could get as far as I got while avoiding GPT - shouldn't have decided on a whim to use GDScript though.