What sort of games experience could you deliver within a 13K limit? The results of this year's js13kGames competition provide a demonstration of what is possible.

Organized 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 distinguishing features of this contest is that gives devs a whole month to code and submit their entries which must fit into 13 kilobytes of a ZIP package and no external libraries or resources are allowed. The competition is free to enter but the source code has to be hosted on GitHub so that others can learn from it in the future. 

The js13kGames competition site states:

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.

If you want some pointers about how to minify your HTML code to fit within the limit, Andrez Mazur has provided an article in the Games Development section of the tutsplus.com tutorial site that is intended to help keep your resources light not only for the competition (which is now over for this year) but also more generally day-to-day projects.

This year's contest attracted 129 entrants and loads of prizes - subscriptions from sponsors, ebooks, games etc - have been awarded. The winning games are listed in order and all the entries are available to play.

Organizing a contest like this is a lot of hard work and you don't just get thanks. As Mazur put it yesterday in a tweet:

If having dedicated haters is the measure of success, then I'm finally on the right track with @js13kGames

What the detractors on reddit seem to be complaining about is the lack of feedback from the judging process - which relied on a team of seven seemingly well-qualified experts including  Mazur himself. Let's hope that the difficulties and criticisms he has faced this year doesn't deter him from continuing as this contest, which is intended to be fun, does seem well worth the effort.

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