GMC Jam Results GMC Jam 35 - Results

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator


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All medals for all participants are available HERE

Full Rankings

  1. The House by The M, Ghandpivot
  2. Telepath's Escape (aka Telepathway) by Alice, mp
  3. Ghostris by Yal
  4. Chiaroscuro by Dickson Law
  5. Lab 23 by HayManMarc, Micah_DS
  6. Spectre 2023 by Bearman_18
  7. Super Adrenaline Boy by lazertrax
  8. Paranormal by Siolfor the Jackal
  9. Im a hunt ghosts! by Misu
  10. Boo! Dice by GameDevDan
  11. Grave Mistake by Tyler, Emily, Vincent
  12. Gluttony, My Master by Cantaloupe
  13. Necro-more-cy by Relic
  14. Bit Souls by Roa
  15. Supernatural Science by MikeeyBikeey, Aaron Baron, Caroline Zina
  16. Scary Ghost by stenol
  17. VLAD III by Fernando Gonzalez
  18. Ouija by Sk8dududu, Riley
  19. The Cabin by Bart
  20. Homebound by Shadow_Lancer
  21. Ghost Run by Cat, var
  22. The Mouse Curser by Cloaked Games, aSingleCapella
  23. Deadly Dungeon by KPJ
  24. submerge. by Josh Chen
  25. 重力スワッパー/Gravity Switcher by TheMiningBoyAlpha
  26. Demon Santa by Catastrophe
  27. Hazel by FreddyShnitz
  28. Night Of The Living Taters by dadio
  29. Dodge Em' Dracula by Firedingo

Awards

Best use of Theme: The Cabin by Bart
Best Concept: The House by The M, Ghandpivot; Ghostris by Yal
Best Presentation: Ghostris by Yal
Best Story: Gluttony, My Master by Cantaloupe
Best Devlog: The Cabin by Bart

Results Spreadsheet

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wIvsUuSqhFOUw3yBMTYC2KN_ifidkW1Mn9bWbYdBOhU/#gid=1116222238
(you can see best-ofs breakdown near the right end of the spreadsheet)
 

Bearman_18

Fruit Stand Deadbeat
Last jam I participated in (the 33) I got 10/42 place. This time I got 6/29! I hope to continue that upward trend. GG everyone!
Edit- Oh, yeah, congrats to the winners!
 
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Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Derp, didn't realize I was allowed to post in this topic so I posted my post-mortem in the discussion topic. x3

*copy-paste engaged*

Woo, I didn't expect to get 3rd overall given how many votes were bottom-top-10 or below! But I'm not complaining ^__^ I think Ghostris is the jam entry I'm the happiest with, in the entire history of the GMC Jam. I tried something new, ended up enjoying it, and could spend enough time polishing it that I'm happy with its quality as well... usually it's one or the other. Definitely was more fun to try a completely new genre than to do something I'm more familiar with, too.

I felt like one of the biggest hurdles was figuring out some way to implement the theme - it's more of a "setting" theme than a "mechanics" theme (like "start with nothing" from the latest Ludum Dare) and being so broad, it was hard to find some well-defined, unary innately supernatural thing that could be turned into a game mechanic - with a more narrow theme like "birds of prey" you have a lot of more obvious picks (hunting, laying eggs, flying), but a theme that's so broad it encompasses most historical events before the early 1900s, it's just too much to choose from. I could've just slapped ghosts or magic onto anything, but it felt like not doing something that would not have been possible without the theme framing it would've been a cop-out.

I think the part i'm the least happy about is the skull/ghost blocks... they were among my first ideas (as a way to give the game more personal flair) but while the randomness of the smaller blocks just cancels each other out over time, the big blocks are so "whale-y" that bad RNG can just destroy you instantly... or be made entirely from bone and let you patch up every hole on the board at once. I like the way they make you feel dread (because it fits with the ghost theme) but even with the tweaks to make them easier to deal with, they're just too much RNG at once.



My original idea actually was having an ectoplasm material that let some bricks go through solid matter, but I realized it would make what constituted a line make less sense (and also would make the already convoluted collision checking code go out of control) so I scrapped it early on. But thinking back on that scrapped idea, I think I know what its natural conclusion would be - Ikaruga mixed with Tetris, having you manipulate two independent boards at once (and being able to swap between the two realities as you please), but lines counts both boards at once. I think I have to try that idea out sometime ~
 

Relic

Member
Congratulations to everyone who submitted something they are proud of and to all the high achievers.

Thank you to the reviewers, your thoughtful feedback helps everyone grow.

Thank you to Dan and Alice for facilitating this Jam.
 
M

Misu

Guest
congrats to everyone. It was enjoyable till the end.

@Alice also... was there no best reviewer medal this time? strange... anyway congrats to all of you who reviewed anyway. Almost all of you did wonderful.
 

ghandpivot

Member
Thanks for participating everyone! Can't remember the last time I put this much work into a jam game, very happy with the results and how the game turned out :p

Looking at the votes our spread was huge. Almost everyone who could play the game put it in 1st to 3rd place, and then there were a surprising amount of people who had either too low of a resolution or too high zoom to fit the window onto their screen. This should clearly have been more of a focus, we knew that one or two of you wouldn't be able to play it, but this was closer to every third player. Gimmicks are a great and fun way to make a game that stands out, but as usual, window gimmicks are dangerous territory.

If I can agree with the M, next jam the theme will only be possible to present through gameplay. Looking forward to it!
 

The M

Member
Woo! Thanks for the first place everyone! This jam was a blast but I really didn't think we'd be able to place so high after so many people couldn't play the game. Next time I'll make sure to test the game a bit more thoroughly (or maybe make the window stay in just one place instead :p). Love the banner by the way. :)
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Also, I decided to export the full ranking in pictures form (remember that you can download the pack with all medals from the results post):




@Misu Actually, Best Reviewer hasn't been awarded for a while. It might be related to the fact that it's Jam hosts who would have to make a choice; also, I feel there are much fewer outstanding reviews lately compared to earlier times.

If I can agree with the M, next jam the theme will only be possible to present through gameplay. Looking forward to it!
I would like to say NOT PLATFORMER, but it seems the number of games focused on platforming challenges (as opposed to The House which uses platforming movement for exploration) is lower lately.

Anyway, I'd be careful with themes that are only possible to present through gameplay. Back when Jam had handicaps, there was one with "Failure should result in loss of something other than progress" which already made some heavy assumptions about the gameplay (and it was combined with a theme that excluded lots of settings). I would rather not have a theme that excludes entire genres because they have no way to employ the themed mechanic. ^^'

The cool thing about Supernatural is that it allowed presentation-based and gameplay-mechanic based interpretations alike. Also, the possible gameplay mechanics to derive from it were quite varied, be it telekinesis, mind control, blocks haunting (it's a good idea, but it could have been made on a per-block basis instead of random intervals), poltergeist possession etc. As a bonus, Supernatural isn't generic enough to be reasonably applied to just any game.

So, when picking the theme I'd rather go in the "variety of gameplay mechanics to derive from it" direction (presentation-based interpretations are welcome, too) rather than "theme can only be interpreted through gameplay mechanics" direction. Can't speak about the specific theme, because I obviously don't know what you have in mind; just pointing out possible risks. ^^'
 

ghandpivot

Member
@Alice Good points, the theme can't be too restrictive of course. What I would like is a theme that can be done in a lot of different takes, but where it's not quite possible to just slap on some thematic sprites and a wall of text on your avarage platformer and call it a day. Half of the games of most jams could be fit into any other broad theme as long as you change the story and some sprites.
Ghostris is IMO one of the best games in the jam as the supernatural theme is rooted deep into the core of the gameplay and it couldn't be played in the same way for most other themes. Chiaroscuro was my favorite game to play, but the only supernatural part of it was that the coins had either an angel or a demon on them.

Luckily we've got a few more months to think of something :p
 
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Bart

WiseBart
Congratulations to everyone and especially to the winners!

I'm really surprised by that Best of Theme. Thanks for your votes!
 
C

Catastrophe

Guest
Ah shoot, was busy for a few days and forgot to bump up the house after finally finishing it with a working version.

Glad it didn't affect the rankings in the end seeing it got first place xD
 
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