OFFICIAL Amaze Me Game Jam

makas

Member
I have a question I submited our game just in time 3 minutes before the expire hour, and is on t he game jam page and everything, it seems to me that I am able to edit my entry, I found a bug that prevent the game to go to the final credits when finished is possible to edit your entry ? is againist the rules? or I just can do it, any feed back will be appreciated! by the way this is our entry we would love to receive some feedback and ratings, thanks a lot!


 
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rmanthorp

GameMaker Staff
Admin
GameMaker Dev.
I have a question I submited our game just in time 3 minutes before the expire hour, and is on t he game jam page and everything, it seems to me that I am able to edit my entry, I found a bug that prevent the game to go to the final credits when finished is possible to edit your entry ? is againist the rules? or I just can do it, any feed back will be appreciated! by the way this is our entry we would love to receive some feedback and ratings, thanks a lot!


Happy to let little edits slide!

Can't WAIT to dig into all these games. Incredible work folks.
 
Submitted my game with about 30 seconds left! I am super proud of this one even though I almost didn't have any time left to do the actual levels apart from the first few basic tutorial ones - but these tutorial levels are actually quite good if I might say so myself ; )
...and hindsight is a thing, right? XD

Would love to hear some feedback on this one! Do the controls feel good? How does this minimalistic neon style look?

Edit: I forgot the link XDDD https://itch.io/jam/amaze-me-game-jam/rate/1096978
 

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Japster

Member
Damn, I missed this, but I'd love you to play either TetraLogical or my Jam game, Neon Star, on your next stream if possible mate! - I can send you a key for TetraLogical, of course! :D


PS - I've also joined your Discord server and Twitch channel - didn't know about them before! :)
 

Bearman_18

Fruit Stand Deadbeat
Guess I should post this in more places. NEON GEAR (Now with a trailer)! As an arcade-style game, playing it is an almost non-existent time investment (Unless you get sucked in)!
Play it today!
 
Extending the voting period is awesome! Thank you! For me as a father of two and a full-time job it was already hard enough to squeeze in the hours to make the game - afterwards the voting period should be relaxing and enjoying all the amazing entries and not also stressful! Would highly recommend keeping the longer voting period also for any future events!
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
They will help us a lot when it comes to judging.
I'm sort of hopeful that, unless we have a "boaty mcboatface" situation on our hands, you guys will just agree with the top 3 as voted by the public... afaik from the way itch jams work we'll all get to see who the "public" winners were - so there'd definitely be some weirdness involved if you guys then go and pick three totally different games lol
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
I'm sort of hopeful that, unless we have a "boaty mcboatface" situation on our hands, you guys will just agree with the top 3 as voted by the public... afaik from the way itch jams work we'll all get to see who the "public" winners were - so there'd definitely be some weirdness involved if you guys then go and pick three totally different games lol
I kind of agree and kind of don't... YYG/Opera will have a criteria, foremost of which will be showcasing GMS2... so the public may LOVE a game that looks absolute crap, and as such YYG/Opera may not want to select that as the winner. I imagine the winning entry will be what they consider as the one that balances polish and gameplay the best, and that shows GMS2 in the best possible light. I would think they'll be taking, say, the top 10 voted entries and then selecting their own top 3 from that. All that said, I would really like YYG to be transparent about why they chose the top 3 (assuming they are different to the public top 3).
 

rui.r6o

Member
I kind of agree and kind of don't... YYG/Opera will have a criteria, foremost of which will be showcasing GMS2... so the public may LOVE a game that looks absolute crap, and as such YYG/Opera may not want to select that as the winner. I imagine the winning entry will be what they consider as the one that balances polish and gameplay the best, and that shows GMS2 in the best possible light. I would think they'll be taking, say, the top 10 voted entries and then selecting their own top 3 from that. All that said, I would really like YYG to be transparent about why they chose the top 3 (assuming they are different to the public top 3).
I believe this would make the most sense. Also taking into account the general opinion. For example, generally GM has a bad reputation for creating 3D games so YYG/Opera might decide to pick a solid 3D entry as one of the top 3 to raise awareness for that specific set of GM capabilities. Then again GM is mostly marketed as a 2D engine so YYG/Opera might take the reverse path and ensure they only pick 2D entries to reinforce how good GM is for those.
 
GM has a bad reputation for creating 3D games so YYG/Opera might decide to pick a solid 3D entry as one of the top 3 to raise awareness for that specific set of GM capabilities.
But there's a reason it has a bad rep for 3D, so if loads of people see a 3D game maker game and go on to purchase GM2 because they want to make a 3D game just like it, they will quickly be disappointed and that seems very counterproductive.

GM is mostly marketed as a 2D engine so YYG/Opera might take the reverse path and ensure they only pick 2D entries to reinforce how good GM is for those.
This seems much more likely.
 

rui.r6o

Member
But there's a reason it has a bad rep for 3D, so if loads of people see a 3D game maker game and go on to purchase GM2 because they want to make a 3D game just like it, they will quickly be disappointed and that seems very counterproductive.


This seems much more likely.
That's why I also included this in my reply:
Then again GM is mostly marketed as a 2D engine so YYG/Opera might take the reverse path and ensure they only pick 2D entries to reinforce how good GM is for those.
 

rmanthorp

GameMaker Staff
Admin
GameMaker Dev.
I kind of agree and kind of don't... YYG/Opera will have a criteria, foremost of which will be showcasing GMS2... so the public may LOVE a game that looks absolute crap, and as such YYG/Opera may not want to select that as the winner. I imagine the winning entry will be what they consider as the one that balances polish and gameplay the best, and that shows GMS2 in the best possible light. I would think they'll be taking, say, the top 10 voted entries and then selecting their own top 3 from that. All that said, I would really like YYG to be transparent about why they chose the top 3 (assuming they are different to the public top 3).
This and also we had word from Itch that jams that have prize money can often be cheated by voters so holding the final choice with us to avoid that. Our top 3 will likely be close to the top 3 as voted for.
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
Yeah I totally understand the reasons for doing it - I just hope it does turn out that you agree with the public vote, whatever that may be, because there is bound to be weirdness otherwise! I am just having flashbacks to my time on the helpdesk and praying for your current customer support team if the public / YYG / Opera winners don't match :p
 
It was stated from the beginning that the final winners were ultimately going to be decided by Yoyo Games and Opera, as opposed to solely on the public vote. Presumably, this can help avoid a scenario where a few people with large social media presences or something come in and bury quality submissions by relatively unknown people. Maybe in the future, there can be a prize pool for entries that win the popular vote, but don't get picked by the judges. Something like a people's choice award being worth the winner's choice of permanent license or covering a Steam submission fee or something.
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
It was stated from the beginning that the final winners were ultimately going to be decided by Yoyo Games and Opera, as opposed to solely on the public vote. Presumably, this can help avoid a scenario where a few people with large social media presences or something come in and bury quality submissions by relatively unknown people. Maybe in the future, there can be a prize pool for entries that win the popular vote, but don't get picked by the judges. Something like a people's choice award being worth the winner's choice of permanent license or covering a Steam submission fee or something.
Good points - and yeah depending on the outcome of this one that suggestion may be a good way forward in future!

Would like to point out though the line about how the winner would be picked was added later, not when the compo page launched
 
Good points - and yeah depending on the outcome of this one that suggestion may be a good way forward in future!

Would like to point out though the line about how the winner would be picked was added later, not when the compo page launched
Now I'm not sure if that line was already up by the time I became aware of the jam or if I just inferred it from the answers to some of the early questions about the jam. As far as I know, I was the first person to ask if the intention was for us to wait until the weekend of the jam period to work on submissions or if we were free to start over on the subreddit a little over 3 weeks ago and I've been under the impression that any final decisions were going to be made by Yoyo Games and Opera the entire time, for reference.
 

Japster

Member
Now I'm not sure if that line was already up by the time I became aware of the jam or if I just inferred it from the answers to some of the early questions about the jam. As far as I know, I was the first person to ask if the intention was for us to wait until the weekend of the jam period to work on submissions or if we were free to start over on the subreddit a little over 3 weeks ago and I've been under the impression that any final decisions were going to be made by Yoyo Games and Opera the entire time, for reference.
Yep, same here... ...I thought the judges were still able to make their choices, but weigh up various factors - I have to admit I was a little surprised at most of the voting results/placings myself, and the really low placings of what I felt were superb looking and extremely playable entries (I'm looking at you, Non-Stop Space Probe!), but hey...

I also noticed that some (not mine, I hasten to add!) games with some extremely good (imho) neon-themed gfx weren't amongst the highest ranked visually, in fact, some ranked waaaaaaay down the scale...

I felt that I personally rated very fairly and generously on all 3 aspects of each game I tried, giving lots of 3's, 4's and some well deserved 5's out, but wondering if maybe the voting in these situations could be abused due to anonymity... (ie. maybe ppl potentially 1-star'ing other submissions etc...) ...In fact, it'll never happen, but I would have LOVED to see (or if YoYo/Opera could see) everyone's votes *PUBLICLY*, for other devs' games - I'd imagine persistent 1-starrers would show up straight away... ;) ...

...Obviously well done to the winners, but I'm beginning to agree that some of the voting results seem a little bit strange - For example, looking at some (not all!) of the top 20 visually rated games just makes me think... ..."eh?!"...

Not looking to get flamed etc (and I never expected to win anything, personally!), but some of the games that I felt were genuinely amazing or playable / polished don't seem to have placed well at all! - maybe I'm just getting old and out of touch with the voting public, or maybe @rmanthorp and @Mushroomstick have a point about bigger followings/fan presence unbalancing results - the 'people's (or YoYo/Opera judges / none-anonymous) vote' idea does sound like a welcome addition for this scenario...

Anyway, I had a lot of fun, a lot of REALLY nice feedback for my own game "Neon Star" (thanks!), and got to see a lot of other great games, so there's that... ;)
 
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Xor

@XorDev
I'm quite pleased with these results (7th for visuals, 21st for theme, 69th for fun, nice).
I didn't have as much time as I would have liked (most of the work being done in the last 4 days), but I'm definitely happy all things considered. I did promote my game a bit on Twitter so here are the results:
1624926471495.png
I'd be curious what other people's rating distributions look like. I wonder if encouraging more people to vote makes the game rating more average statistically?
Anyway, big thanks to YoYo Games and Opera for the jam! It was a load of fun and hope to see more challenges like this in the future. I'm super excited about the direction YYG is heading!
They've been really on a roll these last couple months
 
Do we have winners officially announced?
I'm pretty sure it was the middle of the night where the YoYo Games offices are when the jam ended. So, I would think the absolute earliest we might hear something would be tomorrow morning - or maybe they want to take a few days to make a final decision.

Clipboard02.png
I kind of wish there was a way to see the rating distribution broken down by category.
 

makas

Member
I'm quite pleased with these results (7th for visuals, 21st for theme, 69th for fun, nice).
I didn't have as much time as I would have liked (most of the work being done in the last 4 days), but I'm definitely happy all things considered. I did promote my game a bit on Twitter so here are the results:
View attachment 40954
I'd be curious what other people's rating distributions look like. I wonder if encouraging more people to vote makes the game rating more average statistically?
Anyway, big thanks to YoYo Games and Opera for the jam! It was a load of fun and hope to see more challenges like this in the future. I'm super excited about the direction YYG is heading!
They've been really on a roll these last couple months
Our distribution is kind of similar... we also think that invite a lot of people to play the game and vote tend to make the rating more average...
1624933800152.png

But to be honest we are kind of happy with the results and specially with all the feedback from other developers, but at the same time I can see how difficult could be balance all the things to consider the winners... the rating, the number of ratings, the actual quality of the game, there are definitely some top ranked entries with weird comments that didnt even mention the game... or even doesnt have too many developer comments, so I can see how hard is to yoyogames to get a result that can please everyone, I personally have some games that I were sure that they were going to be high rated and they didnt... I hope that at the end the criteria to select the actual winners are better than the rating system used.

Good job everyone and what we loved more was the interaction with other developers, seeing their games and ideas and how the cleverly implement them was amazing and very special for us... we will definitely optmize better our entry next time!
 

Ericbomb

Member
Shout out to the single person who rated my game five stars.

I think I found the one Getting Over It fan!

Maybe next game jam I'll make something from a slightly more popular genre than uber difficult/punishing platformers...
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
...Obviously well done to the winners, but I'm beginning to agree that some of the voting results seem a little bit strange - For example, looking at some (not all!) of the top 20 visually rated games just makes me think... ..."eh?!"...
Tbh, I have to say that I agree... I'm rather disappointed with the performance of my game, especially looking at the top 10 in each category. I mean, yes, I am biased, but I do think that my game fit the theme better than most of them, and was far more polished and complete too. I mean, second place for visuals is a minimalist breakout clone that had bright bricks!!!! (first place is pretty awesome looking though, I have to say... :p ) So, yeah, disappointed and more than a little frustrated that my game didn't rank higher after all the work I put into it... :(

Here's the breakdown of the ratings for the record...

1624947779065.png
 

Roldy

Member
Tbh, I have to say that I agree... I'm rather disappointed with the performance of my game, especially looking at the top 10 in each category. I mean, yes, I am biased, but I do think that my game fit the theme better than most of them, and was far more polished and complete too. I mean, second place for visuals is a minimalist breakout clone that had bright bricks!!!! (first place is pretty awesome looking though, I have to say... :p ) So, yeah, disappointed and more than a little frustrated that my game didn't rank higher after all the work I put into it... :(

Here's the breakdown of the ratings for the record...

View attachment 40960
Honestly, even though there were many great entries, IMO your game impressed me the most and I think I have played it everyday since you uploaded it. It is seriously fun and addicting.

It easily won 'fun' category for me hands down. I was surprised by your poor ratings as well. You got robbed!!!
 
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Here's my rankings:
rankings.png
Pretty happy with it, could've gotten a better score in visuals but eh, there's definitely some areas I could tighten up. I agree that you were robbed @Nocturne, lol, the jam felt a little off throughout for me, but at least I wasn't doing it to win.

There's a few games in the high rankings, especially in the "Fun" category, that have a lot of ratings/comments from accounts created during the jam, so I'm assuming either they did a lot of socking or they have a large extended family, hahaha.

I'm glad that @Bart won in the visuals, that game kinda blew me away with it's atmosphere and visuals. And nice to see @Xor near the top for the same category, I really liked how mellow and mesmerising the look of the game was. I haven't entered a GMC Jam in so long that I can't remember how the games are rated there, but I'm assuming it's not itch and therefore voting isn't so easy to manipulate? Might be nice to see yoyo take a leaf from that battle hardened jam and implement some of the same rules/setup from there, after all, it is the jam that best represents the community IMO.
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
I haven't entered a GMC Jam in so long that I can't remember how the games are rated there, but I'm assuming it's not itch and therefore voting isn't so easy to manipulate?
In the GMC Jam, voters place their votes in the voting topic for everyone to see publicly - so there's really no way anyone could artificially boost their score without someone else noticing. I don't think that's necessarily something YYG should attempt to emulate in future official jams.

I can see now why YYG/Opera chose to reserve matters into their own hands, the results of the public vote do seem a little bit like a lottery lol, but well done to everyone who entered anyway and a huge thank you to everyone who did play & vote. Saw an impressive amount of useful feedback in the comments for this jam, which is a good takeaway for any developer regardless of their eventual position in the jam.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
We need to introduce Jam Player to itch.io!

Really, though, I'm strongly considering suggesting it to them. The itch.io jams already have games uploaded to the same place, and there are systems in place for itch.io Steam-like games client.

So having something that combines:
- automated entries downloading
- single point of accessing entries to play
- integrated voting/commenting (and maybe writing notes for future reference)
isn't too far-fetched, given the existing itch.io infrastructure.
 

FoxyOfJungle

Kazan Games
I loved being able to play most of your games (I couldn't play all, many games! 😅 ), I was impressed with the quality. I found some ratings in Jam a bit unfair, I could take the guess that there was some kind of vote stealing... Especially in the first place in the "fun" category. I don't want to say that his game is bad, I had a little fun playing it, but I can say with certainty that others were much more polished and deserved to be higher. That's my personal opinion.

I wish you all luck!
 
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Japster

Member
Tbh, I have to say that I agree... I'm rather disappointed with the performance of my game, especially looking at the top 10 in each category. I mean, yes, I am biased, but I do think that my game fit the theme better than most of them, and was far more polished and complete too. I mean, second place for visuals is a minimalist breakout clone that had bright bricks!!!! (first place is pretty awesome looking though, I have to say... :p ) So, yeah, disappointed and more than a little frustrated that my game didn't rank higher after all the work I put into it... :(

Here's the breakdown of the ratings for the record...

View attachment 40960
@Nocturne - My thoughts exactly - I feel some people were unfairly 'lowest possible' voting some games, esp. ones that weren't created from scratch. I thought your game was SUPER polished, and REALLY fun, so rated it accordingly - I definitely rated it 5 stars. Same for Non-Stop Space Probe, etc...

Still, for some reason, someone also felt the need to 1-star my game, so what can you do - it's anonymous, people can hide behind it and downvote the hell out of stuff, and as others have mentioned - plenty of fresh sock puppet accounts seem to have been created expressly to vote in this jam, so what can you do...

Here's my 'created from scratch' game's rating breakdown, for comparison mate - I still got 1-starred, so thanks to those ppl - I notice that the rankings are built from the median, so presumably I got 1-starred across everything (Theme, Fun, Visuals) which I find hard to accept was a consciously ethical vote, so my game ended up 79th place visually:-

1624956491161.png

I have to say, I don't think I'll participate in another abusable rating system jam like this again - ie. as regards the overall 'voting' results, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth...

I think itch.io could have improved the jam by ALSO allowing us to see the same breakdown / rating distribution for itch.io ACCOUNTS, and letting us all know that this was possible, to deter any competitive down-voting - you'd easily see where one has just 1-starred most games, or another has just voted once only, etc... My suspicions are that THOSE breakdowns if available right now, would be very enlightening... ;)

On a final note - what I'm more disappointed in, is that I thought in addition to other devs voting, the general itch.io population were going to be able to play and vote for our games! - I'm now assuming I was wrong? - just seems to be devs voting for fellow devs' work, which really would explain the (unsurprising if so) outcome (although I was still hoping it would be fairer - I feel that I've shot myself in the foot, and been handing out WAAAY too many stars in comparison to some others, judging by the results!)...

Ah well, again, gutted for you @Nocturne , amongst others - You still have to release this game mate - it's beautiful, and very playable!
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
I am happy with the idea of a rating system for categories like YYG had in this jam, I think it works well in e.g. the gm48, it just needs a bit of tweaking for future YYG jams.

I think the fact that the theme was very visuals-based, and the only 3 categories were Fun and Visuals/Theme, is why we're perhaps seeing a little bit of apparent "randomness" to the results. Speaking as a voter it's quite hard to express your absolute favourite game just based on a 1-5 star system for what effectively boils down to just 2 categories.

I think I'd suggest in future breaking the vote categories down a little bit further like the GM48 / GMC Jam do (e.g. 5 categories of CONCEPT / EXECUTION / THEME / PRESENTATION / FUN or something).

But I don't want to take anything away from where people have placed in this particular jam - I think we should let the top finishers enjoy their success without drilling down into it too much or pointing the finger. All the entrants, especially those who are quite new to game dev, can be super proud of what they've achieved, and I'm sure whoever YYG/Opera pick for the top prizes will be deserving winners.
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
But I don't want to take anything away from where people have placed in this particular jam - I think we should let the top finishers enjoy their success without drilling down into it too much or pointing the finger. All the entrants, especially those who are quite new to game dev, can be super proud of what they've achieved, and I'm sure whoever YYG/Opera pick for the top prizes will be deserving winners.
Well said, and while I am disappointed in my own ratings, I do want to stress that my "saltiness" is really just for fun and posture and I congratulate everyone that entered something and especially those that made it into the top 20!
 

Bart

WiseBart
I somehow ended up in first place in the Visuals category and 8th place overall (or is that just the Theme category?)
I'm equally surprised and happy with that result! 😄

I had absolutely no idea what the outcome would be since this is the first bigger jam I participated in.
But I'm very happy with all the votes and feedback I got from other people. I especially found the interaction during the voting phase to be great.
In case anyone is interested in the details of the votes for my entry:
entry_results.png

I have to say though that I'm also a bit surprised to see that some entries that I'd expected to see in at least a top 10 position didn't make it in there, for one reason or another.
I think I expected those games to be there mainly because an overall very high level of polish.

Anyway... To me this has already been a great (learning) experience.
And I guess we'll soon know what the final results turn out to be! 😀
 

Japster

Member
I am happy with the idea of a rating system for categories like YYG had in this jam, I think it works well in e.g. the gm48, it just needs a bit of tweaking for future YYG jams.
Yep, I took a look at that page, and can see that the results were far more realistic - a gradual increase towards the best game, all within a realistic range...

I think I'd suggest in future breaking the vote categories down a little bit further like the GM48 / GMC Jam do (e.g. 5 categories of CONCEPT / EXECUTION / THEME / PRESENTATION / FUN or something).

But I don't want to take anything away from where people have placed in this particular jam - I think we should let the top finishers enjoy their success without drilling down into it too much or pointing the finger. All the entrants, especially those who are quite new to game dev, can be super proud of what they've achieved, and I'm sure whoever YYG/Opera pick for the top prizes will be deserving winners.
Yep, this sounds really good, but TBH, I think I'd now feel more optimistic if it was the general public in large numbers, voting (still cheatable, I guess, with sock puppet accounts / social media weighting, but the impact this time would be marginal, I think, and less biased) or just Yoyo/Opera judges voting....

...and likewise, well done to the winners themselves! - I'm just disappointed with the jam results/voting outcome in general, not making much sense to me given the quality of stuff ending up waaaay down the list, and the visuals (a HUGELY important criteria given the visual THEME) voting in particular seeming VERY random / skewed...

I really feel that Yoyo / Opera may have ended up missing out on other GREAT media eye-candy, really playable games to also showcase the engine's (amazing) capabilities, and gain more followers / users....

Anyway, onwards I guess - Back to indie coding as normal, without a concrete deadline... :)
 
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Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
For the record, it's possible on itch.io to limit voters to people who submitted an entry + designated judges when hosting the Jam.
So with this option on, it's at least impossible to make dozens of sock puppet accounts and vote with them, unless each of them submits an entry as well.
 

Japster

Member
For the record, it's possible on itch.io to limit voters to people who submitted an entry + designated judges when hosting the Jam.
So with this option on, it's at least impossible to make dozens of sock puppet accounts and vote with them, unless each of them submits an entry as well.
That's interesting, but it didn't seem to stop new accounts from voting, so either they were legit added to submit entries (I'm dubious!), or possibly that restriction wasn't set, BUT the games weren't made accessible to the public? - I'm not even sure myself, as I'm always logged into itch.io as myself...

Will have to log out and see... :)
 
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