RE:Start! The 2022 PSP Game Jam is a PSP Homebrew contest starting tomorrow brought to you by Iridescence and the PSP Homebrew Community. The contest has now raised $550 in prizes (to be awarded to the creators best homebrews of the competition) thanks to donators, up from $175 when we first talked about it. What this means in particular is that now the homebrews that end up between the 4th and 10th positions will get $25 each (was $5 each initially).

This is now shaping to be the biggest PSP homebrew competition in years! The contest now has a donation campaign if you want to help increase the prize pool even more.

What’s the PSP Game Jam 2022?

RE:Start! The 2022 PSP Game Jam is a homebrew contest open to everyone. You’ll have to create a game for the Sony PlayStation portable, and submit it to the contest between October 7th 12PM EST and October 21st 12PM EST. The three best entries, as judged by the community, will be awarded prizes as follows:

• 1st: $175
• 2nd: $125
• 3rd: $75
• 4th to 10th: $25 each (was $5 before)

This year’s theme: It’s not a glitch, it’s a feature!

From my perspective, the theme should be inspirational to get you started, but then it’s up to your own interpretation. You could build a platformer, an RPG, a sandbox game, etc… There are already 13 participants so it’s already shaping to be a good competition this year 🙂

The contest rules have been slightly updated since our last article, in particular the organizers have added the precision that you can use any game engine to make your homebrew, not onlythose for which they provide links or guides.

From the official page of the contest:

All games must be compiled and ready to be played on the Sony PlayStation Portable. If your game runs in an emulator, but not the hardware, your entry will be disqualified. You are allowed to submit a game that is cross-platform. Be sure to use the #testing channel on our discord server! You can use any tool to make a game on PSP, including visual editors and prebuilt engines like RenPy, Quake, and more.

You cannot start creating your game assets or developing code* before the specified start date. 

*You are allowed to create an engine or utility library, so long as said engine or utility library does not implement your game’s actual mechanics. This engine or utility library can have things that may set up components like sprite drawing, tile mapping, generic physics, etc. that can be used. An example of a disallowed engine or utility library would be in a final submission that was a flight simulator, the engine defines an object called Plane that has all or most of the features in the final version. 

Submissions will be evaluated democratically based upon the following criteria:

Adherence to Theme: Does the submission reflect the stated theme?
Creativity: How unique is a given submission?
Visual/Aesthetic Quality: Does the game have a coherent and pleasant visual theme?
Soundtrack: Does the game have a quality soundtrack (sound effects, music, etc.)?
Clarity: Does the game make it somewhat obvious what you’re intended to do? (Make sure it’s not confusing for an end user)
Enjoyability: How much do you personally enjoy this game?

Additional Info For Entrants:

It would be appreciated if your code was open sourced and hosted on a service like GitHub or GitLab for others to contribute to your game if they wished to continue your idea. The PSP Homebrew Community encourages open source development! Join the discord! We will set up a channel soon for the gamejam!

It’d also be nice if your projects on GitHub or GitLab were set up to be Hacktoberfest repositories! Find out more here: 

Below will be useful links, tutorials, and tools to use: https://hacktoberfest.com/

Toolchain:

PSP Toolchain: https://github.com/pspdev/psptoolchain 
Rust-PSP Toolchain: https://github.com/overdrivenpotato/rust-psp
Zig-PSP Toolchain (zig v0.8.1): https://github.com/zPSP-Dev/Zig-PSP
Installing Toolchains: https://psp-dev.org/doku.php?id=tutorial:toolchain_setup

Interpreters:

OneLUA (lua): http://onelua.x10.mx
LuaPlayerPlus (lua): https://github.com/Rinnegatamante/lua-player-plus
StacklessPSP (python): https://code.google.com/archive/p/pspstacklesspython/
Scratch on PSP Block Editor: https://snap.berkeley.edu/project?username=pspscratch&projectname=ScratchToPSP
Scratch on PSP Interpreter: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/933676293843714068/1018618737550700554/Sc…

Engines:

Gen7 Engine: https://gbatemp.net/threads/gen7-engine-visual-programming-engine-for-switch.522…
Stardust-Celeste: https://github.com/Iridescence-Technologies/Stardust-Celeste

Libraries:

GLib2D: https://github.com/libcg/gLib2D.git
QuickGame API: https://github.com/IridescentRose/QuickGame
OSLibv2: https://github.com/dogo/oslibmodv2.git

Tutorials:

PSP-DEV Text Tutorials: https://psp-dev.org/doku.php
PSP-DEV Video Tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwIRcsl57ziPsDYCi6bgO-W9qqAwuW3Mk
More Video Tutorials (including Graphics, Scratch, QuickGame): Iridescence

If you want to contribute to the funds, donate here: https://www.givesendgo.com/restartpspgamejam22

Iridescence has published an announcement video on his youtube channel to rehash the details available on the contest’s page:

How do I enter the contest?

1. Go to the contest’s page on itch.io then click on “Join JAM”
2. Check the community’s discord server for help and details