Contest Details

The Timeline

Filling Up the Prize Pool July 7th, 2023 — July 21st, 2023

For the first two weeks our main goal is to spread awareness about the contest and collect donations so that our future contestants can get as great prizes as possible. We are starting with a prize pool of $1,000 and a bunch of non-monetary goodies like gift cards and merch (see more in The Prizes section below) but hoping to get to over $3,000.

Submissions Open July 22nd, 2023 — September 22nd, 2023

On July 22nd, we will open the Submission form on this website and start accepting your projects. Throughout this timeframe, you will be able to submit updates or bugfixes too. Any donations made at this time will still be added up to the prize pool!

Public & Judicial Vote September 22nd, 2023 — October 5th, 2023

On September 22nd, the Submission form will be closed and soon after the voting procedure will start and last for a week. Follow our Twitter for announcements and check The Vote section below to learn more about the judgment procedure.

Announcement of the Winners October 9th, 2023

On October 9th, we will announce the contest results on the Results page here and on our Twitter. We will do our best to make sure that all monetary and non-monetary prizes get to their rightful owners before the end of October. We can not specify exact dates because of the potential issues with different countries’ payment systems, customs, etc.

The Process

  1. After the Submissions are opened, each participant will submit their project(s) into one of the 3 categories listed below.
  2. The jury will judge the projects according to the criteria in 'The Vote' section below. Judges' ranking will decide the 9 winners of non-monetary prizes (1-3rd places in each of the 3 categories).
  3. Additional, public vote for a single best homebrew (no matter the category) will be held. The sum of judicial and public votes will decide 3 winners of monetary prizes.
  4. The winners will be announed and shortly after the prizes will be split between the winners.

The 3 Categories

Game

Create an original game, either from scratch or with an engine of your choice, e.g. GameMaker or Unity.

Utility

Create a utility homebrew or a plugin.

Port

Port an application or a game from another system.

The Vote

The jurors will rank the projects by assigning points to each project based on the criteria below. For each criteria, a submission can receive 0 to 5 points.

Original game Utility Port
1. Technical complexity 1. Technical complexity 1. Technical complexity
2. Graphic/sound design 2. Performance 2. Performance
3. Gameplay 3. Common pain relief 3. Optimization
4. Optimization 4. Uniqueness 4. Uniqueness
5. Subjective enjoyment 5. UI/UX 5. Subjective enjoyment

This time, we will include public voting. The public can vote through a strictly moderated Discord channel with specific requirements for the voter's account. This ensures that there will be no bots and no vote manipulation.

The number of votes for top-1 submission according to the public vote is taken as 25 and the number of votes for other submissions is adjusted proportionally so that for public vote each submission can receive 0-25 points.

The Prizes

We will share the prize pool collected on our Ko-Fi (starting from $1,000 USD thanks to our sponsors). This will be divided amongst the top-3 places per the sum of public and judicial vote across all categories as shown below.

1st place

2nd place

3rd place

The non-monetary prize pool will be split between 1-3rd places per the judicial votes in each category. In case the participant had already received one of the money prizes, the non-monetary prize goes to the next participant in line.

Non-monetary prizes
1. Vita Means Life by Sandeep Rai, 50 USD (or equivalent) PSN certificate, FuHEN winner certificate
2. FuHEN- or Vita-themed T-Shirt and phone case of your choice, FuHEN winner certificate
3. Two PSVita games keys, FuHEN winner certificate

The Rules

  1. Number of submissions per participant is unlimited. However, only one prize at best can be awarded to a participant, with monetary prizes having higher priority over non-moneraty ones.
  2. Updates and “fixes” to an already submitted project are accepted throughout the entire time the submissions are open.
  3. Projects publicly released in any form (binary, source code) before the contest start (July 22, 2023) are not accepted as submissions. If you worked privately on your project before that, it is valid. Source code for your project can be released anytime after the contest start or not released at all according to your wish. Binary downloads (VPK, etc.) for your project must appear first on the contest's website after your submission is checked by the organizers. When the submission is published on the contest’s website, you can publish the binaries on other platforms (GitHub, personal website, etc.). Keep in mind that the rules still apply, e.g. you have to keep the splashcreen present (Rule 10)
  4. Projects must be Vita-exclusive until the contest results are published. Does not apply to ports as they are not exclusive by design. A game previously released on different platforms (e.g. PS4 or Switch) must be submitted in the Port category, regardless of its original author.
  5. Projects do not have to be open-source since some of the development tools may not allow that. However, participants must be able to show the source code at judges’ request if there's a suspicion of foul play (e.g. harmful or stolen code).
  6. Piracy is not allowed in any form. If the project has to use copyrighted assets or non-free data files, the developer must not redistribute them with VPK or otherwise, and design a way for players to obtain the required data themselves (e.g. copy data files from a game bought on Steam).
  7. Game mods are accepted as submissions in both Game and Port categories as long as said mods affect their original game in a way they can be considered standalone experiences by themselves. An example would be NZP (Quake mod).
  8. There is no "lower threshold" of effort for a submission to be accepted but keep in mind that e.g. YoYoLoader ports that take three clicks to develop or free Unity demos with your logo may very well receive zero points for all criteria.
  9. A submission for the Utility category can be a PC tool too but will receive lower points for technical complexity and UI/UX.
  10. The submitted homebrew must show the contest splashscreen (below) during its booting process for at least one second. The easiest way to do this is to use this image as a bootscreen in your LiveArea assets (pic0.png), in that case download this pngquanted version so that it would work in a VPK.

Contest splashscreen with sponsors' logos

Contacts

Do you have any questions about the contest? Do you want to have a chat with us?

You can either send a DM to our Twitter @KyuHENcontest or email us at KyuHENcontest@gmail.com.