It's 2020!! Happy new year, everyone. Thanks so much for being a part of this jam! I've loved reading everyone's games, and I hope to play as many of them as I can in the new year. Here's a google doc with links to all the games and everyone's itch page - let me know if you'd like to be cited differently in the document! Finally, I wanted to share some thoughts (and invite the other readers to do the same), and share some awesome things that I saw in this jam!
Thrice-Spiced
How the Goblin Left the Dream Garden, Or Did Not, by seaofblackstars, Joshua Fox, and Jason Vanhee was an interesting case - each round had a different take on how to implement the core mechanic of the game! The themes and central idea stayed fairly consistent, but the expression of those ideas in the realms of possibilities implied by the dice rolls and moves was different each time. I really like where the game wound up, but more than most other games, I'd be interested to see three complete versions of this game, to see each designer's take on how to play it.
Triage, by breathing stories, katamoiran, and Mega Draco, also stood out to me as a game whose journey through the rounds was impactful. The entry in the first round was fairly short but packed full of ideas, and seemed poised to become a heartwarming game of caring for each other. But over the course of three rounds, the game grew less and less light hearted, leaving a truly poignant and moving game. I was totally blown away by how this game took an idea and ran with it, and became something beautiful and not at all what I had expected.
Triple Decker
Special mention here to Nested Tales (by Gray Darling, StuffBySpencer, and Mags Maenad) and All the World's a Stage (by FrivYeti, Blake M. Stone, and Sam Zimmerman), which you'll notice took a very similar idea, the game-within-a-game, and turned it into two totally different and extremely neat games. You'll also notice that there's no overlap in their designer triads! Nested Tales asks us to imagine perhaps our classic roleplaying characters taking a break and playing a game of their own, and really zooms in on the personal experiences of the "players" around the "table". All the World's a Stage, meanwhile, frames the ultimate game you play as a theater production, with your eventual characters played by actors, and complete with tools for managing an audience, and their whims and expectations. Both very cool games!!
The Three Laws of Robotics
One of the absolutely wildest developments I saw came from Cogito - UnrestrAIned by Sohkrates, Dan Maruschak, and Josh Hittie, which included fully functioning code for a website!! Including addressing "todo" comments over the course of the rounds! The game itself is a very interesting single player experience, and the automated website I think adds so much to the experience. There's some very cool work that went into really simulating the feeling of being a machine, or having rules you can't break.
On the opposite side of "single player experience" is Astrobot Explorers, by Wasteland of Enchantment, seaofblackstars, and Joshua Fox, a game for two groups of players (and run by a single GM). In the first game, players simulate galaxy-altering entities of the ancient past, and discuss their civilization and the worlds they changed. In the second, players take the role of robots exploring those planets, learning about their history and building their future. Here, instead of trying to replicate the feeling of being a simple machine, the focus is instead on building that sense of wonder and discovery, of being something new in the world.
Tri Something New
Fae or Foul, by Pidj, Mags Maenad, and StuffBySpencer is a dinner party larp, where you attend the Unseelie Monarch's banquet as a Fae courtier! I have effectively zero experience with larping, so I was very interested to learn more, and this game seems like a very fun one. The special attention given to how to host a dinner party as well as thinking about what kinds of actions at dinner could be blended into the game was especially cool to me! And the rules and rolls do a great job of building the theme and atmosphere of the game.
Hunt, by Sam Zimmerman, Wasteland of Enchantment, and Luke Miller is another game that surprised me - the primary mechanic here is playing dominoes! What's especially fascinating is how this gameplay mechanic builds into the tropes of the genre (a monster hunt) - planning your attack becomes literally planning your trail of dominoes, as you think about what dominoes you can afford to chain (and potentially lose) or which ones you need to keep. There's something really fascinating too about making the game so tactile as well as mapped out, where the main path and each branch represent something in the physical game space as well as the narrative space you're building.
The Magic Number
There's no way I could pick a favorite game made for this jam (I don't think I could even always pick a favorite version of a game!). Each game captured my heart, one way or another, and I know this is not the last time I will see them! I do want to try and talk about three games that did feel particularly special, and that I think benefited from this strange, intense, triumvirate experience.
Embers of Spite, by Dan Maruschak, breathingstories, and FrivYeti, caught my eye specifically because of the way that it changed through the rounds. The first round entry had some fantastic setting details that were primed to explore exciting themes, but I wasn't sure how they would work out in play. But both subsequent rounds took what came before and carefully and creatively added, edited, and altered the game in ways directly in service to those themes. This isn't a "most improved" shout out - it's a celebration instead of how this game represents something that happened to every game, but I especially noticed here. Taking other peoples' ideas and making them your own isn't easy, but it led to some phenomenal games and ideas, like Embers of Spite.
Ascending the Tower, by Mags Maenad, Sohkrates, and katamoiran, accomplished a similar feat, starting out with an engaging and evocative core idea, but with most of the gameplay still up in the air. Each iteration took those ideas and found new ways to drive home the experience of climbing towards your doom. The final game is tense and weird and personal. The final result is a unique dungeon crawl that I'm very excited to play!
The Queen of Cups, by Nick Wedig, Jason Vanhee, and Blake M. Stone, finally, stands out to me not just because it's a beautiful game, or because the gameplay mechanics and tools for setting scenes are so useful and intuitive, or because each part of the game works so well in tandem with every other part. It's also fascinating to me because each designer managed to contribute meaningfully to several parts of the game, but those parts fit so perfectly together it doesn't feel like it was written by three people. In a crowd of incredible games, The Queen of Cups shines as a polished, cohesive, and innovative experience (even just in the .txt!).
All Good Things Must Come (To An End/In Threes)
Once again, I wanted to thank everyone who took part in this jam!! It was an honor and privilege to get to read through everyone's games, and I'm already looking forward to doing this again in 2020 (or passing on the torch to someone else who'd like to run it)! I'm sorry that I didn't have the time (or puns) to mention every game, but I want to reiterate that I think every game made along the way is truly something special, and I was delighted to read them all. Thank you all so much!!