Welcome to
Game Gardens!
A community of game
players and makers.

The first Game Gardens Challenge competition has come to a close. Check out the winning games:

  • #1 and winner of $2,500: Eric Woroshow's High King
  • #2 and winner of $1,000: Chris Nokleberg's Big Two
  • #3 and winner of $500: Tirix's GCPP Haddock
  • #4 and winner of $250: Will Hankinson's Cactus Boom!
  • #5 and winner of $250: Greg Belote and Gabriel Warshauer-Baker's: Phase Rifle
Congratulations to all the entrants and to the winners.


The Game Gardens Challenge is a chance for you to show off your chops as a budding game developer and possibly win some money in the process, not to mention the admiration and respect of your peers.

Your Challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to use the Game Gardens game toolkit to create a game that runs on the Game Gardens website and publish the source code so that other aspiring game developers may learn from and be inspired by your creation. Our panel of judges (made up of indie game loving industry professionals) will then judge your games on three main criteria (in order of importance):

  • quality of implementation (is your code any good?)
  • quality of interface (is it easy to play?)
  • quality of design (is it fun?)

It is not a requirement that your game be a totally original design ("there is no new thing under the sun" after all), but if you base it on an existing game design, you should be adding an interesting twist or interpretation that is of your own making.

The Game Gardens libraries provide a networked, multiplayer game toolkit, so we encourage you to make use of that functionality and make a multiplayer game, but that is not a requirement.



Prizes

Based on the determination of the judges, prizes will be awarded to the top five entrants:

  • 1st Place: $2,500
  • 2nd Place: $1,000
  • 3rd Place: $500
  • 4th and 5th Place: $250

Every participant who submits a playable game will receive a Game Gardens t-shirt.

Internships

We will also be carefully scrutinizing challengers' code, and promising entrants will be invited to interview for an internship (or full-time) position at Three Rings. If you want to work at one of the most exciting and frontier exploring indy game companies, this is a great way to let us know.

How to Enter
  • Head to wiki.gamegardens.com to download the toolkit and start reading the documentation and tutorials.
  • Upload your game to the Game Gardens website no later than 11:59PM on December 3rd and note in the game's description (not the name of the game) that it is a "Challenge 2006 Entry".
  • Provide a link in the game description to the source code for the game. If you have nowhere to host the source code, email a zip or tar file to challenge@gamegardens.com and we'll host it for you.
  • If you wish to be considered for an internship position, mail a coverletter and resume in plaintext to challenge@gamegardens.com as well.
Details
  • Questions and discussion about the competition should take place on the Game Gardens forums.
  • Games must be received by Sunday, December 3rd 2006, 11:59pm.
  • Winners will be announced Friday, December 8th 6pm.
  • Entrants retain full copyright to their games, but must release the source code to their entry under an OSI approved open source license.
Judges
  • To be announced.