Thank you all for your submissions. The results of the poll are in, and resulted in a shortlist of games below.
Each of these scored similarly, around 4.0 average.
I think it's a good list. I will go over all of them to see if there's any duplicates or other problems.
Edit: After making some cuts, here's the Top 7, split into 5 categories.
Hi, can I ask what criteria was used to assign the grades in the first place? L)
I don't want to offend anyone, but this game. "Saga of Song, Ultraviolet". Best in "innovation" although the whole point of the game is to run on platforms and collect coins. Let's be honest, it's far from the best game in terms of innovation. The same goes for gameplay...
"Firebird DRM-Free version" Not sure why it's in 6th place on the chart either. And also ranks first in innovation, gameplay and music.
Road to Hollow Hills is a real soap, and yet it's #1 in graphics.... all gameplay is wandering through the woods with unbelievable lags. That said, the game is 5th in gameplay, and 6th in innovation.
Is that a cringe rating?
And I have a GPA of 3... And by all accounts, I'm ranked about 15th... Although the graphics are clearly a head above a lot of the top 5. Same goes for gameplay.
I'm not trying to elevate myself in any way, I'm just wondering how the ratings were put up. What criteria were used to evaluate the graphics, gameplay, etc.
Thank you for understanding!
Hey Dan, let me answer some of your questions.
There were five criteria: Gameplay, Graphics, Audio, Innovation and Polish. I took the average of all of these, then made manual cuts in the Top 10.
Your game ended up in 12th place overall. That doesn't mean it's bad, just that it had a lower average rating than others. Don't take it personally, and please submit it for the March jam!
Don't look at individual rankings. I don't care if a game ended up #1 in Innovation. I looked for average ratings for all games.
Some games are not good. And that's when you give them a bad rating. If someone rates it a 5/5, that's up to them.
Ratings were made by submitters, so anyone could rate anything. Unfortunately many games ended up with just 2 or 3 ratings total, skewing the results. I rated every single game to the best of my knowledge. Some games have no free version, so it's a guess. I'm not buying a $5+ game just to rate it. A requirement for the next Jam is a playable demo or a trailer.
This is Itch, there was only 30 submissions, and plenty of the submissions were not good games. More submissions will lead to more quality games at the top.
I hope that for the next jams, more submissions will come in, and more people truthfully rate the games. That way we make sure that we really have a great Bundle. The only way to get there is for me to keep hosting these every month, and people submit every month. The overall quality of all submissions will have to go up.
Final thoughts. Don't take it personally. Ever. That's a really big problem in the games industry. A bad Steam review can ruin your day. You may reconsider all your choices and contemplate leaving the industry forever. That's fair, we all do that.
But you got to move on, and try again.
Congrats for the winners!
Only thing missing, is really a review where possible (as in a game in development, this is really pretty important and, as to be honest, only numbers don't help that much) Also agree about not able to have a free demo to try it and to be mandatory for the next one. Many of the games had no free version to try on the Bundle, so how you can really put numbers of review that? :/
Ah by the way, in RTHH, demo you just don't wander in the woods. Try it a little bit, give it a try more than 5 minutes ;)
Meanwhile, please submit for the next Jam:
https://itch.io/jam/best-of-march-24
I'm applying the lessons learned from the February jam. Free demo or trailer is now a requirement.
