Authors: you claim a cover by leaving a comment on it containing the word CLAIMED and your name. You do not need to register an account for this.
Claiming relates one author to one image: you cannot claim an already-claimed image, nor can you claim a second image. First come, first served. (The exception to this rule: if you finish your game early and really want to make another one, you can claim another image after submitting the first game. Before doing this, though, consider whether the time might not be better-spent on improving the first game.)
Then you write a game. You must submit your game (magadog, gmail) on or before May 26. There will be a testing period after this before the games are released, but you should aim to have your game finished by the 26th.
Author guidelines:
- Don't hog the covers Don't pick an image until you have some idea about the game you plan to make for it. It will be extremely lame if you grab the coolest image before you have any idea about the game, then realise that you're stuck for ideas: then nobody gets to use that image! So be considerate and don't rush in headlong.
- Stay undercover. Your cover should be more than a pretty face. The point of having a cover is to give some kind of idea about an important aspect of the game, even if it's just about the general mood rather than content.
- Cover your ass. Credit your artist/contributor nicely.
- Avoid discovery. Mess around with the image as much or little as you see fit, but keep it recognisable. (Painting your own image in a totally opaque layer on top of it, or zooming in on four pixels, is not really in the spirit of the exercise.) There's no requirement to add a title to the image; in most of the contexts that the cover art will appear, the player will already know the game's title. You don't have to add text to the image; remember, almost everywhere that the cover art will appear, the game's name will be displayed already. If you can't find a way to add text without making it look terrible, consider contacting the original artist, asking for help on the forums, or just not adding a title to the image.
(I am pretty sure that every image that was submitted is in there now, but there was a last-minute clusterfuck, so if an image you submitted isn't in the gallery or isn't credited appropriately, please tell me. Also, the gallery decided at the last minute to choke on larger images; these images have been reduced to 1200x1200, and are listed at the bottom of the gallery with a 2 at the end of their filename. If you'd like the larger versions of these, ask.)