Text Adventure Literacy Jam
| Text Adventure Literacy Jam | |
|---|---|
| Competition (series of events) | |
| Frequency | Annual |
| |
| Organisers | Chris Ainsley, Garry Francis, Pinkunz |
| Events in this series | |
| Concurso de iniciación a las aventuras de texto, Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2021, Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2022, Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2023, Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2024, Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2025, Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2026 | |
| Edit this infobox | |
Background
The concept of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam is based on the Text Adventure Literacy Project (TALP) launched by Chris Ainsley in 2019. The goals of the TALP were threefold:
- To encourage authors to create text adventures that target beginners to the genre.
- To teach a new generation the skills required to play classic text adventures and, in doing so, encourage them to create their own games.
- To provide an easy acronym (TALP) to search for beginner-friendly text adventures on the internet.
The Text Adventure Literacy Jams address the first and third of these goals. The games produced for the jams hopefully address the second of these goals.
Despite the name, the Text Adventure Literacy Jams are not game jams, but competitions. They are only called jams because they are hosted on itch.io using its jam hosting framework. The entries in each competition are rated on various categories in a public vote and prizes are awarded to the winning entries.
About the competitions
The first two Text Adventure Literacy Jams were hosted by Chris Ainsley, the author of Adventuron. However, unlike the earlier Adventuron Game Jams that were also hosted by Chris, entrants were not restricted to using Adventuron, but could use any authoring system they chose.
In the first year, Chris also co-hosted a Spanish version of the competition called Concurso de iniciación a las aventuras de texto along with Juan José Muñoz Falcó. There were no further foreign-language versions of the competition after the first year.
In the first year, the games had to be suitable for children. In the second and subsequent years, the games only had to be suitable for beginners, but content warnings had to be provided if there was any adult content.
Chris was unable to continue hosting the competition after the second year, because of personal commitments. Garry Francis took over the hosting (with Chris's blessing) in the third and subsequent years, assisted by pinkunz in the third and fourth years.
In the fourth year, the competition introduced an optional theme and this has continued with a different theme each year. Contestants are not obligated to use the theme, but many have chosen to do so.
The rules for the competitions are fairly consistent, but do vary slightly from year to year. The most notable rule is that the games must include a tutorial.
List of Text Adventure Literacy Jams
- Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2021
- Concurso de iniciación a las aventuras de texto 2021
- Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2022
- Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2023
- Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2024
- Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2025
Links
- Excalibur: Sword of Kings (TALP), reference TALP implementation, April 2019.
- The Text Adventure Literacy Project, blogpost launching the Text Adventure Literacy Project, July 2019.
- Adventure Games Podcast, discussion of the future jam concept, May 2020.
- The Text Adventure Literacy Jam, announcement of the first competition on intfiction.org, 10 February 2021.
- Adventuron Classroom, browser-based editor/authoring tool.
Note: The banner image by Mark Harrison is copyright Adventuron Software Limited and used here with the kind permission of Chris Ainsley.