Retro games development competition YRGB 2024 has launched

August 1, 2024, 18:51 Mikhail Sudakov

Great news - today marks the start of YRGB 2024, the fourth retro platform game development competition held under the Yandex Museum banner. The year and a bit that has passed since the end of YRGB v3 was not wasted - the organisers collected feedback from the contest participants, other developers and retro-enthusiasts to make YRGB even better, louder and more attractive.

The improvements are many - there are some small ones as well as some pretty big ones.

For example, the competition has gone back to its roots, meaning that only games made for the legendary British ZX Spectrum computer (any Sinclair and Amstrad models) will now be accepted. Games for other platforms were sent to YRGB v3 anyway not enough, and comparing Spectrum graphics with MSX 2 is a challenge. Multiplatform is in the plans for the future, but YRGB 2024 should be held at least for that.

The prize budget has also grown - up to 215,000 roubles. Moreover, now this money is distributed not for one category "Best Game", but for three categories at once: "Best Gameplay", "Best Graphics" and "Best Sound". The funds are distributed as follows:

• 1st place - 30,000 roubles
• 2nd place - 20,000 roubles
• 3rd place - 15,000 roubles

As a result, the game that manages to take the first places in all three categories will get 90,000 roubles at once! But at the same time, the game, which for some reason is known to be inferior to other participants in terms of, for example, graphics, will have a chance to break into the leaders in terms of pure gameplay or sound.

The prize of audience sympathy has not gone anywhere - it still amounts to 20,000 roubles.

One more important change - YRGB 2024 has a new website on its own domain, two official news channels in social networks and even a chat room for developers!

The site is located at YRGB.ru - it contains a much more detailed description of the contest rules and is the place to apply for participation. After that you will be given access to your personal account, where you can update information about your game, upload related files and even submit new entries. The site is available in four languages: Russian, English, Spanish and Portuguese (thanks to our judges André Leão, Alejandro Ibáñez and Allan Turvey for their help with translation).

News channels are open on Telegram and VK.com - be sure to subscribe to them to follow the progress of YRGB 2024, read interviews with developers, get information about new and previous games, find out how Spectrum games are made and so on and so forth.

Finally, to communicate with other developers, as well as to consult with jury members and its chairman on any questions, we advise you to join special Telegram chat. Or, as an alternative, you can safely write to the chairman of the jury on email or in Telegram, he will answer all questions without exception.

By the way, here's another change - now the contest has two organisers: Yandex Museum and Mikhail Sudakov, the editor-in-chief of Perfect Pixel. The museum will be responsible for prizes and "news coverage" of the contest, and the chairman of the jury will be responsible for everything else. This will allow us to liaise more closely with the developers and do many things more quickly and regularly.

There is a slight reshuffle in our esteemed international jury as well. Now it consists of these honourable people:

• Mikhail Sudakov - editor-in-chief of "Pixel Perfect" and "KG-Portal", former Game.EXE magazine contributor and owner of the largest collection of licensed ZX Spectrum games in Russia.

• Simon Butler is one of the pioneers of pixel graphics in the 80's, an artist at Ocean Software who has worked on such games as Target: Renegade, Sim City and The NeverEnding Story;

• Mark R. Jones is an artist who has also worked at Ocean Software on a huge number of great games: Arkanoid, Arkanoid - Revenge of Doh, Gryzor, Tai-Pan, and Wizball;

• Andre Leão is the founder and editor-in-chief of the website Planeta Sinclair, translator of many games into Portuguese, and author of articles in the Brazilian magazines Espectro and Jogos 80.

• El Mundo del Spectrum, a popular Spanish website about ZX Spectrum that has been around since 1996. Of course, this publication will have only one voice, although there are quite a few people there.

• Allan Turvey - author and publisher of quite a few modern ZX Spectrum games, founder of the indie label Midnight Brew;

• Oleg Senin - employee of "Yandex Museum", programmer, pixel-art artist, musician, co-author of several games for ZX Spectrum.

But let's return to the contest conditions. They are described in detail on the official site, but in a nutshell - the games must run on branded Spectrums, not violate anyone's copyrights and not be direct remakes or demakes of other projects.

The finished game (or games) must be uploaded to the site no later than 28 July 2025, which means that you, dear Spectrum lovers, have almost a year to do everything! Voting for the Audience Choice Award will start on the 7th of August, and the summing up and awarding of the winners will take place on the 30th of August 2025.

Well, it's only a matter of time - remember how to write games for ZX Spectrum (or learn it from scratch - we'll help you), gather a team of like-minded people (or be a human orchestra that does everything by itself), apply for participation in YRGB 2024 and fight like a lion to win the contest!