During the Urban Tree Festival we encourage you to create video games, interactive fiction, web comics, board games, escape games, card games – anything you want! The only constraints are time, the theme and your imagination. You are welcome to join alone or in a team to create digital and analogue games.

This game jam will run throughout the duration of the Urban Tree Festival (15-23 May 2021). If you are a budding jammer, please join this launch event on Saturday 15th May, where we will share inspiring examples of games and interactive digital experiences featuring trees.

We will provide resources and tutorials about free online digital tools and platforms that can be used by jammers, these include Twine and Bitsy. Plus we encourage creative re-use of images from the British Library’s Flickr collection of digitised 19th century books, check out these online Flora and Fauna galleries. There is also a fantastic curated selection of wildlife and environmental sound recordings, which you can use in your creations, these are available via this SoundCloud playlist​.

Programme:

Please join us for our online launch event on the 15th of May at 2pm where we will present the project and the team. The launch will be followed by two optional tutorials on Bitsy and Twine and will be an opportunity to learn how to use these tools and ask questions.

• Sowing the seeds of inspiration - Presentation: 2-2.45pm BST
• Fifteen minute break
• Bitsy tutorial & Q&A : 3pm-3.45pm BST
• Fifteen minute break
• Branching out with Twine tutorial & Q&A: 4pm-4.45pm BST

To join the jam and submit your game go to https://itch.io/jam/games-in-the-woods

Please use #gamesinthewoods on social media to share images and details of your work in progress, and follow the British Library’s Digital Scholarship blog, which will share, showcase and celebrate games created during the festival.

Before and during the Urban Tree Festival, game jammers can meet and chat with organisers and each other on our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/qWXH8NcjHE. So please join and say hello on there!

On the last day of the festival, Sunday 23rd May, please join us for a show & tell event, for jammers to celebrate their creations.