Hey all, sorry I didn't get back to this topic sooner. Coolest sort is something we used to have but it got lost in some code updates and I didn't have time to return it for this jam. It will definitely be something that will be available for next time though. I like the idea of providing as many sorting options as possible to encourage more people to get involved.
That being said, coolest can be abused pretty easily: bad actors can rate a bunch of other games negatively/with no effort just so their project sits on top. It can be difficult to automatically judge the quality of ratings to prevent this kind of abuse, and any automated system can also make mistakes. Random truly is the best way to have the most even distribution of votes across all projects.
I understand the appeal of coolness though, it rewards you for putting time into the jam. The more time you spend playing & rating projects, the more people will see your project. As I've been observing GMTK this time around though, I actually have taken a liking to a different approach of accomplishing the same thing: comments.
If you haven't noticed, I pushed out an update that makes it really obvious what the submission is of someone who has commented on your project. It's a common pattern to rate the games of those who take the time to write a constructive comment on your page. I honestly think this is a better way of enabling people to invest time into getting more ratings. Go leave good comments, people are likely to go back to your project. If you leave spammy or bad comments, your posts may get deleted, and no one will follow the link back to your page. Comments are definitely more work than simply leaving a rating, but they solve the quantity/quality issue I described above with ratings.
I'd be happy to hear your thoughts about this approach. Thanks