Hello and welcome to the 54th weekly Portfolio Builders Jam! I hope this gives everyone a good start to the year!

Optional theme:

Submarine

Rules:

• No AI! You must not have used AI at any stage, including creation of assets, text, thumbnails, and code, or in research and development. You may be asked to show some evidence of work in progress if something in your submission appears to be made with AI.
• No racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, and ableism. Your submission may still deal with these themes if done sensitively and appropriately.
• NSFW / 18+ age-rated submissions must be clearly labelled as such.
• You must have worked on your submission during this week's jam. It can be something new, something started before the jam, or even a submission to a previous jam, as long as you've worked further on it during this week.
• You may also submit to no more than two other jams (this doesn't include other weeks of this jam - you can submit to any number of Portfolio Builders Jams!)
• Your project must be free, so anyone can play or view it in full without paying.

Submissions that break the rules will be disqualified.

Community

We now have a discord server you can join! https://discord.gg/9ae5XCxYNe

If the link doesn't work, please post in the jam's itch community and I'll update the link.

About the jam:

This jam is for anyone who is working on a portfolio, be it for game design, programming, voice acting, sound design, or any other field, to create pieces that showcase specific skills. You are welcome to create a new piece or pieces for the jam, or add to or improve existing pieces. You are encouraged to work on or towards playable demos but you are welcome to submit anything such as audio or images only.

The jam is weekly to give regular targets to work towards, and to help you develop skills such as managing scope, time estimation, and working to a schedule. This may also help you move into an Agile environment in the future and give you a talking point for interviews.

Take whatever approach you want, but I recommend defining what you want to work on at the beginning of the week. Set a goal or goals that can be defined as completed or not completed. So rather than 'make 10% of my game' (what IS 10% exactly?), you might say 'design 3 levels of the game', 'compose 5 minutes of background music', or even just 'outline the structure of a readme file'. This gives you a chance to reflect on how things went at the end of the week. If you didn't achieve your goal, that's not a failure but a chance to learn. Did you underestimate how long it would take to complete, or could you improve how efficiently you work or what hours you put in? Of course you are welcome to work however you like, and taking a more free or casual approach is also ok!

Start working and submit at any time, it need not be from Monday to Sunday.

Have fun!