Summer 2014, many indie developers were surprised with the sudden announcement that RPG Maker and Humble Bundle were teaming up to host one of the year’s biggest indie developer contest, Indie Game Maker Contest 2014.  With a $10,000 grand prize and another $10,000 split amongst smaller prizes it’s was a competition that had a lot of people’s interest, as was seen with over 700 entries into the thirty day competition.  Participating in the contest, even if they didn’t win, jumpstarted a lot of people’s careers into video game development.  This year the contest is coming back with even more to offer and a step back away from its role-playing game focus to encourage developers of all backgrounds to participate.  It’s expected that over 1,500 games will be entered into this year’s competition.  Who will win?  Will one of the winners be you?  Let’s see what IGMC 2015 has in store for us.

Rules

All the rules are listed in detail here, but a quick summary of the contest rules is this…  Your game must be made between July 7th and August 7th 2015.  Giving you roughly thirty days to make the game.  The games are judged by three main criteria.  Presentation, Gameplay, and Engagement.  Each are worth up to twenty points for a total score of sixty.  Games can lose five points for every major bug in the game or be disqualified completely if a bug renders the game unplayable.  There is also up to ten bonus points for adhering to the “twist” announcement that they will make in the first day of the competition.  Including the “twist” in your game, whatever that twist may be, will give you some room to have bugs or go beyond the “perfect” score.

Prizes

Now a lot of the information isn’t revealed about the contest until the day it begins to try and prevent people from starting early but it is likely that there will be other smaller prizes besides the grand prize.  It has been stated there will be a top three overall with each genre having a prize of its own, but the specifics won’t be released until the contest begins.  What the grand prize is isn’t exactly clear either.  According to Nick Palmer it will be “…a significant amount of cash” but his additional comment of, “we haven’t settled on an exact prize this year” suggest that the prize could either be smaller or larger.  Here’s to hoping it is the later.

Change

As mentioned before the people behind RPG Maker were co-host of the contest in 2014 and because of their background with RPG games they favored the genre with a prize pool just for role-playing games and then another category for “everything else”.  This year we’ll be seeing familiar faces from IGMC 2014 but the RPG focus has been removed according to the head judge of the contest, Nick Palmer.

Now the contest is being held through a new site called Game Dev Fort which you can visit here.

Extra Information

Some additional information mentioned that is useful to know is listed below.

• You can be a part of up to two projects.  For example you can work with a team and have your own solo project.

• There is no limit to team size.  Be as big or as small as you want just know that it’s up to you to split the prize money.

• 18+ aged content is forbidden. (Avoid sexual or extremely violent content)

• You need to credit everyone on the team as well as people you purchased resources from unless stated otherwise

• The game must be developed in engine and not a mod of another game (e.g. Garry’s Mod)

• Games must be playable on Windows

• Prize winners are responsible for taxes (just because you won $10,000 doesn’t meant you get to keep all of it)

Conclusion

What do you think of contest made games?  Do you play them?  Have you ever participated in a developer contest or game jam before?  What do you like about these contest?  Let us know in the comments below and stick with GamerBolt for all your gaming news, reviews, and more.