itch.io

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.