Whether you're hearing about it for the first time or you're a veteran of previous years, we hope you'll join us for... the Confounding Calendar!
The Calendar is a free community project that I help organize and run. Throughout November we collect small puzzle games made by people in the community, and then every day of December we release one or more games on the Calendar itch.io page for everyone to play and enjoy. So it's a bit like a game jam in spirit, but you're contributing to a larger vision that combines everyone's games into a fun month-long experience. (If you have no interest in making games, then you can just sit back and look forward to playing a whole lot of mini-puzzle games!)
The full list of rules and more detailed information can be found on the Calendar page, but the basic requirements for game submissions are:
- Games must use the color palette we provide
- Games should only be one room/level/screen
- Games must be playable in-browser on itch.io
- The submission deadline is November 30th
Other than that, we love to see people experiment with their submissions. It’s always great to see a wide variety of styles and mechanics represented, and the goal is to keep the games to short experiences that someone can check out for a few minutes each day. So you don’t need to feel pressure to come up with the most mind-blowing or challenging puzzle idea. Even if you’ve never made a game before and have been looking for somewhere to start, we’d love to have you. (PuzzleScript is a great free tool for making small puzzle games!)
This year is the 3rd year running for the Calendar, and we’re trying something new this year: we’re providing a greyscale palette and then letting participants choose one additional color they’d like to add to it. Our hope is this will create a nice effect when the Calendar comes together, with every game having a unique “pop” of color that stands out.
Whether you’re aiming to submit a game or not, you can scroll down the Calendar itch.io page to browse and play all the entries from the past two years, a treasure trove of bite-sized puzzles. It’s a great way to get a sense of the scope we’re looking for in the submissions. We’ll be accepting new games all the way through the month of November, so we look forward to seeing your ideas and we hope you’ll all enjoy this year’s Confounding Calendar!
Disclaimer: Thinky Games is part of the Carina Initiatives and may have professional relationships with individuals and businesses related to the subject of this article. Please see our Editorial Policy for details.
