Tatiana Vilela dos Santos Opens ALT+CTRL@home Jam
The nine-month itch.io call for games that use a standard controller in weird ways is open now, and household objects count.
- When
- Submissions open through July 10, 2027
- Where
- Online, on itch.io
The brief for ALT+CTRL@home fits in one sentence: make a game that uses a standard controller in a weird, unexpected or unconventional way. Household objects count as controllers too, the jam is pitched at beginners as much as veterans, and the window is enormous. Submissions opened Oct. 10 and stay open through July 10, 2027, nine months to tinker on itch.io's terms, with one instruction on the page: "show us how your game works."
The jam has run since 2020 as the stay-home wing of the alternative-controller scene, built to pull the form out of festival booths and into living rooms. It is the same scene whose festival end Killscreen watched at Wonderville in September, where nine games replaced the gamepad entirely; this is the version anyone can enter without building a cabinet.
Behind it is Tatiana Vilela dos Santos, who has built games with hand-made interfaces under the MechBird banner since 2012, among them Isochrone, BLACKBOX and Nuée. A retrospective of that work, Souvenirs d'Ar(t)cade, is up free at Université Paul-Valéry in Montpellier through Oct. 18.
Killscreen lists the open calls, jams and deadlines that keep experimental play alive, usually long before the entries roll in. The free KS Radar letter puts the next one in your inbox three times a week.
