IGDA Finland · Aalto University · University of Turku · 2014–2026

Quantum Game Jams

Since 2014, the longest-running attempt to put quantum physicists and game developers in one room for a weekend and see what survives contact. An observatory, a science centre, a university quantum lab, a Ferris wheel, a sea pool — then, from 2020, the whole world at once.

Roughly half of every quantum game ever recorded was made at an event like these. This is the archive of all of them: 11 editions of the core series plus the jams that grew up alongside it, with venues, themes, hosts, the games worth playing, and the research the organizers published about their own work.

Editions
11
Events archived
19
Years running
13
On-site prototypes
68
Games on itch.io
168

What a science game jam is

A game jam is an accelerated game creation event: teams form on the spot, build to a constraint revealed at the start, and publish whatever exists at the deadline. A science game jam adds a second party. Scientists are in the room, and the work is meant to contribute to scientific practice — directly, by helping answer a research question, or indirectly, by teaching the subject or building awareness of it.

The Quantum Game Jam began in 2014 as a collaboration between the Finnish Game Jam organisation and the Turku Quantum Technology research group, with Aalto University and the University of Tampere alongside. The premise was that quantum physics is nearly impossible to communicate through ordinary outreach, that game making takes years to learn, and that almost nobody has both skills — so the two disciplines had to be physically introduced.

What the organizers found, and published, is that the collaboration is harder than the physics. Physicists want the phenomena depicted accurately; game makers want something fantastic and playable; a weekend rarely leaves room to reconcile the two. Very few prototypes across the whole series scored well on both counts. The value turned out to sit elsewhere — in the networks formed, in physicists learning to frame their research so a designer can build with it, and in a handful of prototypes that became real citizen science tools and gallery installations.

Why it belongs in an art archive

  • Roughly half of all recorded quantum games were made at jams or hackathons — making these events the single largest source of quantum-derived creative work outside the art market.
  • Quantum Wheel in 2019 was the first jam to hand participants real IBM quantum hardware, two years before the Parsons Quantum Design Jam did the same for artists and designers.
  • The framework the organizers wrote — a perceivable dimension of quantum physics, a scientific purpose, the use of quantum technology — is a workable test for whether any work’s quantum claim means something.
  • Several jam prototypes crossed over into art contexts: an installation, a library exhibition, a commercially released card game made with IBM.

The whole lineage at a glance

Every documented quantum game jam from 2014 to 2026
YearEventFormatThemeGames
2014Quantum Game Jam2014On-site—9
2015Quantum Game Jam2015On-site + satellite sites—28
2016Quantum Game Jam 2016November 25–27, 2016On-site + satellite sites—15
2017Quantum Game Jam 2017December 7–10, 2017Hybrid—6
2019Quantum WheelFebruary 15–17, 2019On-siteNoise in the Wheel10
2020IndiQ Quantum Game Jam (+LDJAM46)April 18–21, 2020OnlineKeep it alive—
2020IndiQ Quantum Game Jam (+LDJAM47)October 2–5, 2020Online—7
2020IF Quantum Game Jam 2020October 9–11, 2020Online—8
2021Games Now! 2021 #4 — quantum editionOne week, 2021Online—8
2021Online Quantum Game JamSeptember 30 – October 3, 2021Online—7
2021IF Quantum Game Jam 2021November 12–14, 2021Online—4
2022Quantum Game Jam 2022September 16–18, 2022OnlinePatterns18
2023Quantum Game Jam 2023September 15–17, 2023Online—36
2024Global Quantum Game Jam 2024September 13–15, 2024Online—15
2025Global Quantum Game Jam 2025September 5–7, 2025Online—17
2026Global Quantum Game Jam 2026September 25–27, 2026Online—Not yet run
2019Quantum Game Jam (Qiskit)December 6–9, 2019OnlineQuantum computing — specifically, use Qiskit—
2024QJam2024 — Making Quantum GamesDecember 2023 – January 2024OnlineQuantum games for the classroom11
2025Year of Quantum: Arcade Game JamOctober 20 – December 20, 2025Online—22

Game counts are the figure published in the research where one exists, otherwise the entries archived on the jam’s itch.io page as of September 2026. Where the two disagree, both appear on the event’s own card below. Themes are only listed where they were published — see what we could not verify.

Two different jams

QCA documents two separate quantum jam lineages, and they are easy to confuse.

This page covers the Quantum Game Jam — Finnish in origin, games-focused, running since 2014 and still going.

The Quantum Design Jam was a separate art and design programme at Parsons / The New School with IBM Quantum, which ran three editions from 2021 to 2023 and produced a gallery exhibition.

Quantum Design Jam archive, 2021–2023 →

The stack

  • Qiskit · MicroQiskit
  • IBM Quantum hardware & cloud simulators
  • Quantum Black Box (Python, then Unity)
  • Unity · Godot · Pygame · Twine · PICO-8
  • Discord · Twitch · itch.io

Elsewhere on QCA

Quantum Design Jam →Resources & context →Timeline →All artists →

2014–2019

The on-site years

Events
5
Archived games
31

Five events, 68 prototypes, 313 registrations. The original project was a collaboration between the Finnish Game Jam organisation, the University of Turku, Aalto University and the University of Tampere, with the physics supplied by the Turku Quantum Technology research group.

The venues were part of the method. An observatory, a science centre, a university quantum lab, a Ferris wheel and a sea pool — chosen to attract experienced game developers who had no particular reason to care about quantum physics, and to put them in a room where the physicists were unavoidable.

There was no jam in 2018 — the series ran in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and then again in February 2019, and the gap is in the record rather than in our research. The Turku group spent that year developing Quantum Black Box past the prototype stage into a platform for commissioned work, which is where the Quantum Garden installation comes from.

First editionQuantum Game Jam

2014

Quantum Game Jam

The first Quantum Game Jam put quantum physicists and game developers in the same room for a weekend and asked what would come out. It was held at an astronomical observation station, and part of the draw was the venue itself: teams could build for the planetarium’s full-dome projector, and the site is otherwise closed to the public.

The brief was wider than quantum. Alongside the quantum constraints, jammers were offered a theme drawn from another corner of theoretical physics, accompanied by open data on galaxies. Nine prototypes were made. None of them are online any more — the researchers had to retrieve them privately to include them in their later study, which makes this the one edition of the series with no playable public archive.

What was new

  • First science game jam built specifically around quantum physics

Games worth knowing · 1

  • The Hopping Model — PiCycle

    Carried no documentation of its physics, but quantum physicists appear in its credits and a later expert review rated it among the strongest in the series for its representation of quantum phenomena — close enough to a real numerical simulation to be worth connecting to one.

Quantum Game Jam — kiedos.ART ↗
Format
On-site
Where
Tuorla Observatory, Turku, Finland
Games recorded
9

Hosts & collaborators · 5

  • Finnish Game Jam
  • Turku Quantum Technology
  • University of Turku
  • Aalto University
  • University of Tampere
Second editionQuantum Game Jam

2015

Quantum Game Jam

The year the jam went global and the year it produced the most work. Five physical sites ran in parallel — Finland, Denmark, the USA and Brazil — with online participation on top, and the main venue was the Heureka science centre, which again offered a full-dome projector to build for.

Twenty-eight prototypes came out of it, more than any other edition before or since, and the spike is visible in the wider record of quantum games as a whole. One of the design constraints explicitly asked teams to make citizen science games, which set the direction the series would hold until 2019.

What was new

  • First edition with satellite sites and online participation
  • First explicit citizen-science design constraint

Games worth knowing · 1

  • What’s in the Box? — Tempe, USA site

    A street-fighter bout against a cardboard box. You may look inside at any point to see whether the opponent has taken enough of a beating — and in doing so, you decide the outcome. Superposition and measurement as a fighting-game mechanic, with no simulation underneath.

Quantum Game Jam — kiedos.ART ↗
Format
On-site + satellite sites
Where
Heureka science centre, Vantaa, Finland — plus sites in Denmark, the USA and Brazil, and online
Games recorded
28

Hosts & collaborators · 4

  • Finnish Game Jam
  • Turku Quantum Technology
  • University of Turku
  • Aalto University
Third editionQuantum Game Jam

November 25–27, 2016

Quantum Game Jam 2016

Held on Aalto’s Otaniemi campus, and advertised on the promise of access to the university’s quantum technology laboratories — the venue as recruitment tool, a pattern the organizers used deliberately across the series.

Five locations ran in total: four in Finland and one in Georgia. Fifteen prototypes are archived on itch.io.

Games worth knowing · 2

  • The — Gates

    A set of puzzles built on the principles of quantum optics and the actual instruments of an optics bench. One of the few jam games to model laboratory practice rather than quantum imagery.

  • Quantum Asteroid Miner

    Mine through asteroids that may turn out to be enemies. The tension comes from the statistical nature of quantum measurement — though, like many jam games, the effect is a stand-in for the physics rather than a calculation of it.

Quantum Game Jam 2016 — itch.io ↗
Format
On-site + satellite sites
Where
Aalto University, Otaniemi campus, Espoo, Finland — plus three more Finnish sites and one in Georgia
Archived on itch.io
15 entries

Hosts & collaborators · 4

  • Finnish Game Jam
  • Turku Quantum Technology
  • Aalto University
  • University of Turku
Fourth editionQuantum Game Jam

December 7–10, 2017

Quantum Game Jam 2017

The most conventional venue of the on-site era — a game cowork space that had hosted other local jams — paired with the first fully open online track on itch.io.

This was the edition that introduced Quantum Black Box, a tool written by the Turku research team to hand jammers a real quantum optimal control problem without requiring them to learn the physics first. The idea was to spend the weekend on game design rather than on quantum mechanics.

What was new

  • First jam to ship the Quantum Black Box simulation tool
  • First open online participation track

Games worth knowing · 2

  • The Adventures of Zeno Pixies

    A puzzle game about guiding pixies through a coloured network, teaching the quantum Zeno effect and entanglement along the way. Underneath it runs a model of a quantum random walker on a quantum network — an active research topic, and the team included two physicists who work on it. It stayed a prototype, but it is the clearest case in the series of real research mechanics carrying a real game.

  • Uncertainty Principal

    You are the principal of a daycare, checking corners of a room where something is always about to go wrong. The physics is buried under the pace of play, which is arguably the point.

Quantum Game Jam 2017 — itch.io ↗
Format
Hybrid
Where
HIVE game cowork space, Finland — open to anyone online via itch.io
Archived on itch.io
6 entries

Hosts & collaborators · 4

  • Finnish Game Jam
  • Turku Quantum Technology
  • University of Turku
  • Aalto University
Fifth editionQuantum Game Jam

February 15–17, 2019

Quantum Wheel

The capstone of the original project, and the edition most relevant to anyone interested in quantum art. Quantum Wheel was invite-only, built to guarantee experienced participants: award-winning indie developers and seasoned jammers were recruited alongside quantum physics researchers, with the rest admitted by application.

It was also the first jam in the series to put real quantum computers in participants’ hands. IBM Research arranged dedicated cloud access to its machines and mentoring to go with it, and Quantum Black Box arrived rebuilt as a Unity plugin with an example game and source. Half the games presented ran either IBM simulators or calculations on the hardware itself; the other half ran the citizen-science simulation.

The venue did real work here too. Teams jammed at a sea pool with a sauna, in freezing weather, and the theme — Noise in the Wheel — was drawn from riding the Ferris wheel on day two. Attention was paid to the participant list: this edition reached 33% women against 25% across the series as a whole, and drew people from Germany, Italy, Russia, Estonia, Austria, the USA and South Korea alongside the Finnish majority.

What was new

  • First Quantum Game Jam to use real quantum computers
  • First invitation-only edition, curated for experience and for diversity
  • Quantum Black Box released as a Unity plugin

Games worth knowing · 3

  • Q|Cards⟩

    A card game where players lay cards on the table to build a quantum circuit — the same notation used to express real quantum operations. Developed further after the jam and released in collaboration with IBM and the Finnish studio MiTale.

  • Hamsterwave

    Taken further for a game exhibition at Oodi, the Helsinki central library, as part of an Aalto University showcase.

  • QSpell

    Became the inspiration for QWiz, a VR citizen-science prototype in which you play a quantum wizard’s apprentice solving a numerical optimization problem.

Quantum Wheel — itch.io ↗Quantum Wheel — event site ↗
Format
On-site
Where
Allas Sea Pool, central Helsinki — with inspiration rides on the SkyWheel Helsinki
Theme
Noise in the Wheel
Participants
48, invitation and application only
Archived on itch.io
10 entries

Hosts & collaborators · 5

  • Finnish Game Jam
  • Turku Quantum Technology
  • Finnish Centre of Excellence in Quantum Technology (Aalto University)
  • University of Turku
  • IBM Research Zurich

2020–present

The online years

Events
11
Archived games
104

The pandemic forced the format online in 2020, and it stayed there. After three online jams run by others, IGDA Finland, Aalto and the University of Turku relaunched the series in 2021 as the Global Quantum Game Jam, hosted on a Discord server that has since grown past 650 members.

The redesign was evidence-led: the organizers surveyed participants, published what they found, and fixed the format around it — learning materials in advance, talks moved before the jam, mentors rostered so that a physicist and a game developer are always reachable, and team formation run in the open rather than left to chance.

Adjacent jam

April 18–21, 2020

IndiQ Quantum Game Jam (+LDJAM46)

The first online quantum game jam, run in the opening weeks of the pandemic by IndiQ, a student-initiated quantum computing community in India. It rode along with Ludum Dare 46 and inherited its theme, "keep it alive" — which, as the organizers pointed out, is a gift if you are making a Schrödinger’s cat game.

The rule that made it a quantum jam was strict and technical: the game had to run on a quantum computer. A local Qiskit simulator counted, as did a cloud simulator, real IBM hardware, or MicroQiskit ported into the engine’s own language. Judging covered quantumness — the accuracy of the physics implemented — alongside theme, fun and graphics.

What was new

  • First Quantum Game Jam held online
IndiQ Quantum Game Jam (+LDJAM46) — itch.io ↗
Format
Online
Where
Online — Qiskit Slack, #qiskit-games
Theme
Keep it alive

Hosts & collaborators · 1

  • IndiQ
Adjacent jam

October 2–5, 2020

IndiQ Quantum Game Jam (+LDJAM47)

IndiQ’s second jam of 2020, again paralleling a Ludum Dare event, and the first of the three online jams the Finnish organizers formally studied when designing what became the Global Quantum Game Jam. Seven games were submitted.

The survey data from this weekend and the Pisa jam a week later is where the online format’s central problem shows up: over half the respondents had university-level quantum physics behind them and no game development experience at all. Teaching physics to teammates during development time turned out to cost the projects more than it gave them.

IndiQ Quantum Game Jam (+LDJAM47) — itch.io ↗
Format
Online
Where
Online — IndiQ Discord
Games recorded
7

Hosts & collaborators · 1

  • IndiQ
Adjacent jam

October 9–11, 2020

IF Quantum Game Jam 2020

The Internet Festival’s annual game jam went quantum for its 2020 edition, run jointly with the Finnish research groups and open to anyone in the world. Professors and researchers joined senior developers as mentors, and teams could build against a real quantum computer.

A scientific board set the themes: Maria Luisa Chiofalo, Andrea Ferrara, Sabrina Maniscalco, Marcos Valdes and James Wootton. Eight games were made during the event; a ninth entry on the jam page came across from the IndiQ jam the week before.

IF Quantum Game Jam 2020 — itch.io ↗
Format
Online
Where
Online — part of Internet Festival 2020, Pisa
Participants
Open worldwide, free ticketed
Games recorded
8
Archived on itch.io
9 entries

Hosts & collaborators · 7

  • Internet Festival Pisa
  • University of Pisa
  • Aalto University
  • University of Turku
  • Qiskit
  • Data Reply
  • AISF
Adjacent jam

One week, 2021

Games Now! 2021 #4 — quantum edition

The fourth in a set of expert-driven jams attached to Aalto’s Games Now! programme, each running over a week rather than a weekend, and this one themed on quantum physics. Eight games came out of it.

It is the mirror image of the other jams studied that year, and instructive because of it: the participants were nearly all trained game developers, five of nine credited on commercial games, and only one had any formal quantum background. Half the rest had no prior knowledge of the subject at all. Good games, thin physics — the exact inverse of the IndiQ and Pisa weekends, and between them the reason the Global jam was designed to recruit for both sides deliberately.

Online Quantum Game Jam — the study covering this event ↗
Format
Online
Where
Online — Aalto University
Games recorded
8

Hosts & collaborators · 1

  • Aalto University
First Global editionGlobal Quantum Game Jam

September 30 – October 3, 2021

Online Quantum Game Jam

The relaunch. IGDA Finland, Aalto and the University of Turku restarted the series as a deliberately global online event, redesigned around what the 2020 surveys had shown: primers on both quantum physics and game development were written and released in advance, so that nobody would have to teach their teammates the physics mid-jam.

It worked as an act of reach. Participants came from every continent except Antarctica, averaging 28 years old, with Indian and Finnish the most common nationalities. It also inverted the usual jam audience — most registrants had no game development background at all, while half had taken quantum physics at degree level or beyond.

The talks programme is a good snapshot of who was working in this space in 2021: Daniel Whiteson on scientific comics, Wen-Sen Lu on quantum arcade games, Noora Heiskanen on quantum visualisation, Natasha Skult on C.L.A.Y., Abuzer Yakaryılmaz on QWorld, and Shaeema Ahmed on the citizen science game Quantum Moves 2.

What was new

  • First edition of the Global Quantum Game Jam
  • Learning materials published ahead of the event
Online Quantum Game Jam — itch.io ↗
Format
Online
Where
Online — Game-Set-Quanta Discord, streamed on IGDA Finland’s Twitch
Participants
42 registered; 17 people credited on the games
Games recorded
7
Archived on itch.io
7 entries

Hosts & collaborators · 3

  • IGDA Finland
  • Aalto University
  • University of Turku
Adjacent jam

November 12–14, 2021

IF Quantum Game Jam 2021

Pisa’s second quantum edition, framed as a non-competitive team hackathon: games could touch the quantum world through gameplay mechanics, through tools like Qiskit, by running on real hardware, or simply by illustrating a quantum phenomenon well.

IF Quantum Game Jam 2021 — itch.io ↗
Format
Online
Where
Online — Internet Festival, Pisa
Archived on itch.io
4 entries

Hosts & collaborators · 2

  • Internet Festival Pisa
  • University of Pisa
Second Global editionGlobal Quantum Game Jam

September 16–18, 2022

Quantum Game Jam 2022

Registrations nearly doubled year on year, and the collaborator list grew to ten organizations spanning research groups, hardware companies and studios. The theme was Patterns.

Two additions made the format stick. Introductory talks moved to the day before the jam proper, so listening to them no longer competed with building; and QWorld issued attendance certificates for the talks, giving participants something to take away besides the prototype. A tie-in with the Quantum Games Hackathon let teams carry a jam game forward into a competitive event with prizes.

What was new

  • Pre-jam talk programme
  • QWorld attendance certificates
Quantum Game Jam 2022 — itch.io ↗
Format
Online
Where
Online — Game-Set-Quanta Discord, streamed on IGDA Finland’s Twitch
Theme
Patterns
Participants
78 registered, aged 14 to 46; 44 people credited on the games
Games recorded
18
Archived on itch.io
16 entries

Hosts & collaborators · 10

  • IGDA Finland
  • Aalto University
  • University of Turku
  • IBM Quantum
  • IQM
  • QWorld
  • IndiQ
  • Quantum AI Foundation
  • Finnish Game Jam
  • MiTale
Third Global editionGlobal Quantum Game Jam

September 15–17, 2023

Quantum Game Jam 2023

The largest online edition on record: 36 entries, more than twice the 2022 count and the second-highest total in the series after the globally distributed 2015 jam. Two days of talks and live guest presentations ran alongside development.

Games worth knowing · 1

  • quanTom and Jerry ↗ — AkuVolts

    A cat-and-mouse chase built on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: you hunt Jerry while trying to anticipate where he will be, trading certainty about position against certainty about velocity.

Quantum Game Jam 2023 — itch.io ↗
Format
Online
Where
Online — Game-Set-Quanta Discord, streamed on IGDA Finland’s Twitch
Archived on itch.io
36 entries

Hosts & collaborators · 3

  • IGDA Finland
  • Aalto University
  • University of Turku
Fourth Global editionGlobal Quantum Game Jam

September 13–15, 2024

Global Quantum Game Jam 2024

A conference day on September 12 preceded the jam weekend, the programme around the event growing into something closer to a small festival than a talk track.

Global Quantum Game Jam 2024 — itch.io ↗Global Quantum Game Jam 2024 — IGDA Finland ↗
Format
Online
Where
Online — Game-Set-Quanta Discord, streamed on IGDA Finland’s Twitch
Archived on itch.io
15 entries

Hosts & collaborators · 3

  • IGDA Finland
  • Aalto University
  • University of Turku
Fifth Global editionGlobal Quantum Game Jam

September 5–7, 2025

Global Quantum Game Jam 2025

Held during the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, in a year thick with quantum outreach. The format by now is settled: theme reveal Friday, guided brainstorming and team formation in the open on Discord, talks Saturday, three-minute presentations Sunday.

Global Quantum Game Jam 2025 — itch.io ↗
Format
Online
Where
Online — Game-Set-Quanta Discord, streamed on IGDA Finland’s Twitch
Archived on itch.io
17 entries

Hosts & collaborators · 3

  • IGDA Finland
  • Aalto University
  • University of Turku
UpcomingSixth Global editionGlobal Quantum Game Jam

September 25–27, 2026

Global Quantum Game Jam 2026

The thirteenth year of the series and still open to anyone: no game development experience required, no quantum physics required. Guest speakers run through the weekend, and teams are formed on the night after the theme is revealed.

Global Quantum Game Jam 2026 — itch.io ↗Announcement — IGDA Finland ↗quantumgamejam.online ↗
Format
Online
Where
Online — Game-Set-Quanta Discord, streamed on IGDA Finland’s Twitch

Hosts & collaborators · 3

  • IGDA Finland
  • Aalto University
  • University of Turku

2019–2025

In the same orbit

Events
3
Archived games
33

Quantum jams run by other organizers, outside the Finnish series’ own thread — unlike the IndiQ and Pisa events above, which the organizers studied directly and built the Global format on.

They matter to the record because roughly half of all known quantum games were made at events like these, because the format has now spread well beyond its origins, and because one of them shares its name exactly with the series proper.

Adjacent jam

December 6–9, 2019

Quantum Game Jam (Qiskit)

A separate jam with a confusingly identical name, run online by James Wootton — the physicist who built the first game to run on a quantum computer. The theme was not a secret: make something that uses Qiskit, whether in the design stage to generate assets, in the loading screen to prepare levels, or in the game loop itself.

Non-competitive, with the stated prize being a sense of satisfaction and the host playing your game. It ran inside the window of the IBM Q Quantum Game Award and was hosted by one of that award’s judges, but was explicitly not part of it — worth noting, because the two are easy to conflate in the record.

Quantum Game Jam — itch.io ↗
Format
Online
Where
Online — itch.io
Theme
Quantum computing — specifically, use Qiskit

Hosts & collaborators · 1

  • James Wootton, IBM Research Zurich
Adjacent jam

December 2023 – January 2024

QJam2024 — Making Quantum Games

A different shape of jam: not a weekend but two months, opening with crash courses and resource reviews on quantum game development in December 2023, proposals due before Christmas, and finished games in by mid-January.

The theme was narrow and practical — games a teacher could actually use in a classroom. Entries were voted on by the participants of QWorld’s QClass cohort, and everyone who completed the jam earned a certificate.

QJam2024 — itch.io ↗QJam2024 — QWorld ↗
Format
Online
Where
Online — organized by QWorld
Theme
Quantum games for the classroom
Participants
Open; entries voted on by QClass23/24 participants
Archived on itch.io
11 entries

Hosts & collaborators · 1

  • QWorld
Adjacent jam

October 20 – December 20, 2025

Year of Quantum: Arcade Game Jam

A two-month Canadian jam run as part of ICTC’s National CyberDay 2025 and the International Year of Quantum — evidence that the format has escaped its Finnish origins entirely. Twenty-two entries.

It grew out of a crash course pairing game designers with PhD students and researchers, including a visit to D-Wave in Burnaby.

Year of Quantum Arcade Game Jam — itch.io ↗UBC’s Year of Quantum Arcade Game Jam — KnowledgeFlow ↗
Format
Online
Where
Online — Canada, itch.io
Archived on itch.io
22 entries

Hosts & collaborators · 3

  • UBC Geering Up
  • ICTC
  • KnowledgeFlow

Organizers, physicists & jammers

The people who ran it

A small, stable group has carried this for over a decade — game jam researchers at Aalto, a quantum research group in Turku, IGDA Finland for access to working developers, and IBM researchers who opened up the hardware.

Laura Piispanen

Lead organizer since 2019

Aalto University / IGDA Finland

Runs the Global Quantum Game Jam, maintains the List of Quantum Games, and is lead or co-author on most of the research about the series. Works on quantum games and quantum art as a practice, not only as a subject.

Annakaisa Kultima

Game jam researcher

Aalto University

Wrote the definition of a game jam the field uses, and led the study of the on-site series. Her work on design constraints is why these jams offer participants a choice of themes rather than one.

Natasha Skult

Organizer

IGDA Finland / MiTale

Co-organizes the jam on behalf of IGDA Finland and worked on C.L.A.Y., billed as the first commercial game to run subroutines on quantum hardware.

Daria Anttila

Public communicator

University of Turku

Co-author on the Online Quantum Game Jam study and communications lead for the 2021–22 editions.

Sabrina Maniscalco

Professor of quantum physics

Turku Quantum Technology

Presented the quantum themes and design constraints at the jams in person, and wrote in Nature on solving quantum problems through games.

Miikka Junnila

Organizer and co-author

Finnish Game Jam

James Wootton

Quantum computing researcher

IBM Research Zurich

Built Cat/Box/Scissors, the first game to run on a quantum computer, ran his own Qiskit game jam in December 2019, and co-authored the paper defining what a quantum game is.

Marcel Pfaffhauser

Researcher

IBM Research Zurich

Co-author on Defining Quantum Games and The History of Quantum Games.

Abuzer Yakaryılmaz

Founder

QWorld

Brought QWorld in as a collaborator — certificates, courses, and the separate QJam2024 aimed at classroom games.

Maria Luisa Chiofalo

Scientific board, IF Quantum Game Jam

University of Pisa

Jaakko Iisalo

Participant, Quantum Wheel 2019

Designer of Angry Birds

One of the experienced developers recruited for the invite-only 2019 edition.

Arvi Teikari

Participant, Quantum Wheel 2019

Creator of Baba Is You

Toolkit

What teams actually built with

The recurring lesson from the research is that the entry barrier is technical, not conceptual. Every edition since 2017 has shipped a tool and an example project so that a team could touch a real quantum system on day one.

Quantum Black Box (QBB)

Turku Quantum Technology

Simulates a quantum optimal control problem the Turku group was actively researching, so that a team could build a citizen science game without first learning the physics. Introduced in 2017 as Python, rebuilt for 2019 as a Unity plugin with an example game. Eleven of the 68 on-site-era games used it, and it went on to power the Quantum Garden installation and the QWiz prototype.

Qiskit

IBM

The open-source SDK most jam games reach for, either simulating a quantum computer locally or calling real hardware in the cloud. MicroQiskit ports the basics into other languages for engines that cannot host Python.

ibm.com ↗

IBM Quantum (formerly IBM Q Experience)

IBM

Cloud access to real quantum processors, opened to the public in 2016 and arranged specially for Quantum Wheel in 2019. The queue is the design problem: a call can take a while, so games tend to fetch their quantum data up front.

ibm.com ↗

List of Quantum Games

Laura Piispanen, kiedos.ART

The running census of the field, maintained since 2017. Over 270 games recorded, of which roughly 126 came out of game jams and 33 out of hackathons — which is the case for taking jams seriously as a source of quantum art and quantum games.

kiedos.art ↗

Research

The organizers studied themselves

This series is documented better than almost anything else in quantum art, because the people running it are academics who published peer-reviewed papers on their own events — including the parts that did not work. All five are open access.

Quantum Game Jam — Making Games with Quantum Physicists ↗

Annakaisa Kultima, Laura Piispanen, Miikka Junnila

The account of the five on-site jams, with every game from 2014–2019 evaluated by a physicist and a game designer independently. The honest finding: very few prototypes were strong on both gameplay and physics, and the friction is structural — physicists want accuracy, game makers want the fantastic, and a weekend is not long enough to iterate past the conflict.

2021

Academic Mindtrek 2021

doi:10.1145/3464327.3464349

Online Quantum Game Jam ↗

Laura Piispanen, Daria Anttila, Natasha Skult

How the online series was designed, with participant demographics for 2021 and 2022 and a set of guidelines for running a science game jam online. Includes the line that best explains why any of this works, from a participant with no background in either field: quantum physics is too difficult to understand in three days, but strange enough to become a game idea.

2023

ICGJ 2023

doi:10.1145/3610602.3610610

The History of Quantum Games ↗

Laura Piispanen, Edward Morrell, Solip Park, Marcel Pfaffhauser, Annakaisa Kultima

Traces quantum games from Atari’s 1982 arcade cabinet Quantum through citizen science and on to games that run on quantum hardware, across 260+ titles. The section on jams is the clearest statement of their weight in the field.

2023

IEEE Conference on Games 2023

Defining Quantum Games ↗

Laura Piispanen, Marcel Pfaffhauser, Annakaisa Kultima, James Wootton

The three dimensions a game can connect to quantum physics through — a perceivable dimension, a scientific purpose, and the use of quantum technology. Useful well beyond games: it is a workable test for whether an artwork’s quantum claim means anything.

2023

Preprint

Known unknowns

What we could not verify

Listed rather than smoothed over, because an archive that hides its gaps is less useful than one that names them. If you can close any of these, we would like to hear from you.

  • The themes for 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Each is revealed live at the opening ceremony and does not appear to be published afterwards; 2019 (Noise in the Wheel) and 2022 (Patterns) are on the record, and 2023 submissions reference motion.

  • Per-event participant counts for 2014 through 2017. The published table records a range of 19 to 146 across the series and 313 registrations in total, but we have not verified the individual years.

  • The nine games from 2014 and, in most cases, the 28 from 2015. The earliest work predates the series’ use of itch.io and is no longer publicly playable.

  • Full team credits for the on-site era. Only 13 of the 23 games across the three jams studied in 2020–21 credited their creators at all, a gap the organizers closed from 2021 onward by requiring credits at submission.

Archive

Every source, in one place

35 primary sources behind this page — the papers, every jam page we could locate, the organizers’ own sites, and the surrounding coverage. The itch.io pages are listed in full because for most of these events they are the only public record of what was made.

Event descriptions are paraphrased and condensed from the sources above; dates, venues, hosts, themes and counts are recorded as published. Content was rephrased for compliance with licensing restrictions. Entry counts on itch.io were read in September 2026 and will drift as pages are updated. If you organized or took part in one of these jams and something here is wrong or missing, we want to fix it.