I think that came out wrong. Could be a wrong choice of words maybe, sry if i offended you, that wasn't the intention. I used the word "top tier" in a subjective manner. In another words i tried to say "This game is good but there are better games than this one in this jam in my opinion,so i need to rate this game according to that scale". That's my own sense of scale. Reviewing and rating a game is a subjective thing, it's not generally valid. Someone else may think that this game is the best game of the jam and they're entitled to their opinion. Also in a competition there's no such thing as "equal". It's against the nature of competetion, otherwise all games should be No 1 game of the jam. In my opinion your game is better than my game, i don't exclude my game from this principle either.
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Thank you for the explanation ^^ I agree that reviewing/rating a game is subjective no matter what, and as long as the rater applies same logic to every game they play, there's no problem with that imo. Personally, I base my ratings off of "expected quality for the jam" and rate higher/lower depending on if there are issues or a game performs a lot better in a category to the point it feels like part of a full game. I think our rating styles are similar for this reason, I just apply it to each criterion individually and don't take other jam games into account.
By "equal playing field" I didn't mean that "every single game can win" but rather "exactly 1 game can win, but everyone has a chance regardless of how good/bad the game performs in a specific category", hence the multiple voting criteria. A game could generally be rated 1 star in art for instance, but 5 stars in everything else, and it wouldn't disqualify it from winning. No offense taken, just wanted to understand your point of view and share mine. Thank you again!