Eclipse Publishing and Game Studios is putting up $500 and reading every single submission. There's no community voting here — no rating rings, no popularity contests, no advantage for whoever has the biggest Twitter following. Our team plays every entry and picks the winners.
We're a small indie publisher and studio, which means we're not looking for polish or scope. We're looking for the one mechanic that made us sit up. The idea that shouldn't work and does. The prototype that's rough as hell but obviously alive.
Submissions open: October 1, 2026 — 1:00 PM ET
Deadline: October 5, 2026 — 1:00 PM ET
Winners announced: October 10, 2026
96 hours. Theme drops when submissions open. Any engine, any team size, any genre.
Not in Eastern? That's 5:00 PM UTC / 6:00 PM UK / 7:00 PM Central Europe.
PRIZES
1st — $[300]
2nd — $[150]
3rd — $[50]
Every entrant gets written feedback from an Eclipse reviewer.
HOW JUDGING WORKS
Eclipse plays and scores every entry. Four criteria, weighted equally: use of the theme, how good it feels to actually play, originality of the core idea, and how much you accomplished in 96 hours.
Scope is not a category. A tight five-minute game beats a broken thirty-minute one every time.
Between the deadline and October 10, we're playing. Winners are announced on the jam page and across Eclipse's channels.
WHAT WINNING ACTUALLY GETS YOU
Cash, a feature on Eclipse's channels, and a standing offer to pitch us the full version. No obligation, no strings. You keep everything.
CONTENT RULES
Ownership and rights
You keep 100% ownership of your game. Entering grants Eclipse nothing except permission to show footage, screenshots, and your game's name in jam coverage, recap videos, and social posts. That's it.
Eclipse claims no publishing rights, no right of first refusal, and no equity. If we want to publish your game, we'll ask like anyone else.
Eligibility
Open worldwide. Entrants under 18 need a parent or guardian to claim any prize.
Prizes paid via PayPal or bank transfer. If we can't legally send money to your country, we'll tell you before the deadline, not after you win.
Eclipse employees, contractors, and judges can't win. They can participate for fun.
Your submission must be
Started after the theme announcement at 1:00 PM ET on October 1. Pre-existing projects, reskins of old work, and "I had this lying around" entries are disqualified. Engine boilerplate, your own reusable code libraries, and prior tooling are fine — that's not the game.
Playable on Windows, Mac, Linux, or in-browser. Browser builds get played faster. That's not a rule, just true.
Uploaded before 1:00 PM ET on October 5 with a working download or embed. Late uploads, broken links, and "DM me for the build" don't count.
Assets
Licensed, purchased, public domain, or your own. Free-to-use asset packs are fine if you have commercial-use rights.
Credit every third-party asset in your submission description or an in-game credits screen. Missing credits = disqualified.
Fonts and music get people sued more than art does. Check your licenses.
AI-generated content
Allowed, but disclose it. State what was AI-generated (art, audio, code, writing) in your submission description.
Undisclosed AI content is an automatic disqualification. We're not policing tools, we're policing honesty.
Entries that are substantially AI-generated end-to-end aren't eligible for prizes.
Not allowed, no exceptions
Sexual content involving minors, or content that sexualizes anyone who appears to be a minor. Instant permanent ban, reported to itch.io.
Real-world hate speech, harassment campaigns, or content targeting real people or groups for abuse.
Content promoting or instructing self-harm, suicide, or eating disorders.
Malware, cryptominers, or anything that touches a player's system beyond what a game should.
Stolen assets, ripped IP, or fan games built on another company's characters and trademarks. We can't award prize money to something we don't have the rights to promote.
Plagiarized code, or games cloned from another entry.
Allowed with a content warning
Violence, gore, horror, adult themes, and mature language are fine. Tag them correctly on itch.io and warn players in your description. Explicit sexual content isn't eligible for prizes even when properly tagged.
Conduct
Be decent to other entrants in comments and in the Discord. One warning, then removal.
Don't contact judges about your entry during the judging window. It won't help and it might hurt.
Eclipse has final say on rule interpretation and disqualification. We'll always tell you why.
