The 2017 edition of a long running contest kicks off today. The challenge is to write a HTML5 game in JavaScript whose code and assets can be zipped into a package with a 13Kb limit.

Organized annually since 2012 by Andrezj Mazur, CEO of Enclave Games, this competition is for

"HTML5 game developers and JavaScript programmers who want to test their skills in battle with other developers, follow the rules, stick to the deadline, and win some prizes."

The competition is free to enter, although participants are invited to donate via Paypal, with a new theme announced on August 13th every year. This time around it's just one word, Lost, and devs now have until September 13th to code and submit their entries which must fit into 13 kilobytes of a ZIP package. To make this limit even more restrictive no external libraries or resources are allowed.

This year there is an exception to the no-libraries rule with a new category - to build a WebVR game using the A-Frame library and JavaScript.

The 13kb limit, the defining characteristic of the competition, still applies and its website explains why:

The 13 kilobyte limit is very restrictive, but limitations often spawn creativity: you have to carefully think about how to implement your ideas, as every byte really counts.

In addition, the source code has to be hosted on GitHub so that others can learn from it in the future. 

There's plenty of help available for discovering how to shrink an HTML5 game including an article by Andrzej Majur himself which outlines tips for JavaScript code minification, image compression and reducing the size of audio files. Post-mortems for the winning entries in the past two years have now been added to the resources on the website.

There are four categories in this year's contest:

Destop

Mobile     -  for touch devices

Server     -  Node.js multiplayer

A-Frame - Web VR experience

There's a panoply of prizes by way of licences, subscriptions, tools and games, total value $20,000, and every participant will be sent a free t-shirt plus an A-Frame cardboard.

More Information

JS13K Games

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