So, earlier this month we ran the first Game Maker’s Toolkit GameJam - which was
a 48 hour game making marathon, where developers race to create a game, based on a theme.
For this jam, the theme was my video Downwell’s Dual Purpose Design, which was about how almost
everything in that game served multiple purposes, making for an elegant game with only a few
controls and mechanics, but lots of depth.
The developers in the jam took this idea and really ran with it, making games where
mechanics serve multiple purposes, where weird and disparate parts of the game are linked
together, and where a single idea is twisted and evolved to solve all sorts of problems.
It made for games with tricky decisions, with surprising outcomes, with elegance and depth.
To be honest, I was just blown away by the imagination, and quality on show in pretty much every game.
And, I was even more surprised by the sheer number of games that were submitted.
I was thinking we’d maybe see 50 entries.
200 as an optimistic guess.
300-odd as something really impressive to report in this video.
But by the time submissions stopped we saw a whopping 770 games submitted.
It was one of the biggest game jams in itch.io’s history.
Which meant that it took a bit longer than I was expecting to judge all of the games.
Don’t worry, I didn’t play them all myself, I had a wonderful team of volunteers to help
me pick the very best games.
And that’s what this video is all about.
We looked at every game and judged its innovativion, its adherence to the theme, its aesthetics
and feel, and its overall quality as a game.
And that let me pick the top 20 best games of the jam.
But first, some honourable mentions.
50 steps is a boxy game where rolling hurts you, so pick up pills to get health back.
It forces you to make every move very carefully.
Kali the brick layer is a weird and wonderful game about laying bricks with the help of
six different arms.
It’s almost impossible to play with any real competence but it’s interesting none
the less.
Same goes for Keygeon which is more like a game making engine than a game.
You simply hammer on the keyboard to make a dungeon that’s filled with pathways, enemies,
items, and hazards.
This could be a cool puzzle game if the developer ran with the concept.
Ninja Boy is a simple but fun game where you dash through enemies and objects.
Graphsplosion is Bomberman as a puzzle game.
You drop ticking time bombs as you move about the grid, with the aim of creating huge combos
and - hopefully - not blowing yourself up in the process.
Amazing Cat is a cute turn-based battle game, where charging up an attack also lets you
leap over several tiles at once.
Arrowless Archer is not polished or pretty but it is certainly ingenious: you’ll use
arrows and swords as both weapons and ladders as you climb up the screen and grab weapons
from mid-air.
Command Prompt is a cute top-down shooter where killing enemies can also affect the
game in weird ways, like changing gravity, speeding up and slowing down time, and even muting
the sound and rolling the credits.
And Kugelhagel is a tiny game where you can jump on your bullets to ride them like a surfboard.
It’s cute, simple, and has a lot of promise.
In Trouble in Space, you build up speed to blast though enemies, and drop bombs to open doors.
You’ll need to manage losing and gaining health carefully, turning this zippy arcade
game into a thoughtful puzzler about position and space.
In Bad Juju you kill enemies to get juju, and then use that to slow down time when you’re
in a tight spot.
It feels great, with just the right amount of screenshake.
Super Grapple Duck feels great too, especially when you toss your hookshot through a queue
of squishy ghosts.
Splatterpuss Bubblegun is a colourful turret shooter where a big health bar will hide enemies.
And Blasterball is a mace swinging arcade brawler that works wonderfully with an analogue stick.
Finally, Umbrella is a game where your umbrella is a weapon, a shield, a way of floating around,
and more.
I could do this all day, to be honest.
There were so many great games.
But let’s move on to very best stuff.
Roaring Streets is a puzzling game where everything is turn-based, from movement to animations
to switching your gun.
In fact, every few steps you take, your gun will automatically change.
And because different guns are needed for blasting different ghosts, you’ll really
need to think ahead so you’ll be in the right spot when you change weapon.
It will see you get stuck in tricky situations, before you finally switch to the right gun
and shoot your way out.
Vintage Flashlight is about how the same mechanic can both help and harm you.
You wander through a dark house with a candle, which is controlled by the mouse, and you
can use it to burn your way through planks of wood - which is handy - or make boulders
land on your head - which is less handy.
Careful decisions and forward thinking are a must.
A Slime’s Quest for Freedom is a fast-paced, brutally hard upside down Downwell, where
you shoot every time you jump, forcing you to think carefully about each leap.
Enemies who get killed can turn into platforms, like frozen dudes in Super Metroid, so baddies
are not just nuisances but a key part of your survival.
AAAAA!!! is one of the many games that took the route of shoot to move, but this one maybe
did it best.
You’ll find yourself firing around a lab, blowing away mines and blasting yourself forward.
By linking shooting to movement, the game gives you tricky low level decisions as you
constantly swap between offence and defence.
This one is as hard as nails, mind you, I can’t even do the second level.
In Geflect, the only way to attack is to deflect shots back.
So you line yourself up, wait with baited breath, then let loose a parry.
I mean, the parry is the best part of some games, so why not make a whole game out of it?
You also throw yourself around the screen with the same button, and everything is presented
with crystal clear graphics and great music.
Magnetic is a clever puzzle game about magnetically attracting and repelling metal boxes to solve
conundrums.
Soon enough, however, you’ll also face magnetic spikes that you definitely don’t want to
attract.
This simple set-up immediately creates interesting scenarios and shows real potential as a good
puzzle game.
Orbital Punch is a top-down shooter without the guns.
The only way to do damage is to use the power of your spaceship’s jet engine which means
flying towards an enemy spaceship, whipping your butt around, and then blasting out a
jet fuel explosion.
It’s a weird and fun way to move around, like a mix between drifting a car and doing
a gruesome finishing move.
It just feels great and this simple premise holds up for a long time.
_Barrage_ is a bullet hell game where you move to where you shoot.
And this is quite easy to pick up in the side-scrolling tutorial area, but a lot harder when the screen
zooms out to reveal a free-roaming battlefield.
There’s no running away from enemies while shooting behind you, like you do in a lot of twin stick
games, because attacking a foe will draw you in nice and close, meaning you’ll need to
think very carefully about maintaining distance.
Delta is a puzzle game where you have a time gun which lets you suck up old stuff,
and pump it into new stuff.
In the demo, that mostly meant sucking the life out of a big ol’ tree and then shooting
it into a sapling to make it grow.
You can only carry one thing at a time, which creates lots of puzzling scenarios - even
in this early prototype with just a handful of screens.
Plover Parent is a wacky platformer that feels like I could have played it on the Amiga back
in the day.
You play as an alligator, and you can press X to make your plover bird buddy start spinning
around in a circle.
If you get the bird covered in slime you can jump on it and then fling yourself around.
Or pick up an enemy and shoot it into spikes.
And more.
The alligator and the bird have different reactions to hazards, so you’ll need to
work closely together.
Oeufwakening is a testament to the inventiveness of some jammers.
Ask people to make one part of the game serve multiple purposes and you end up with a puzzler
where the dang floor can be used in multiple ways.
Grab the floor with your mouse and move it to bat away traps, create pathways, and make
the tiny chick jump on its way to breaking out of an egg.
I’m not sure if this is realistic.
I’m not a scientist.
Stuck Recoil is another game for fans of tiny chicks.
This time, the chick can run around but is pretty weak and useless.
Get to the egg, though, you’ll pick up a gun - which is so heavy it will pin you to
the ground and propel you around the screen with its recoil.
You’ll need to bounce between the two modes to win, like a super cute take on Titanfall.
ODA is a very clever puzzle game where you throw out these two balls to swap the position
of two objects.
Or throw one ball at an object, and then swap yourself with it.
You’ll use this mechanic to defeat or out outrun enemies, solve puzzles, and more.
It’s kinda ugly, but it has a lot of potential.
Void is a clever bullet hell shooter where your gunfire reveals whats happening in the
dark.
The more bullets on screen, the less light they cast, so short bursts of fire are preferable.
It’s clever and interesting.
Hopshot is a turn-based puzzle shooter.
When you move, so do your enemies - and all they have very specific and predictable behaviour,
as noted by the cards at the bottom of the screen.
So, when you move, they move.
Or when you shoot, they shoot.
You’ve got take advantage of their cooldowns, and puzzle out the perfect way to outsmart
these enemies.
It’s just a shame that you can’t trick them into shooting each other!
A Tale of Wind and Sea is a gorgeous two player game, where you must share a controller with
a friend.
It’s all about creating trails behind you to power your movement and guard your orbs
from your opponent.
And then you can dive into the other side of the screen to attack your pal’s orbs.
The controls are a bit tricky, but it’s a very interesting game.
powerCore is a tower defence game where you play as a big cube of electricity.
And you’ll use this cube for everything: to stun enemies, scoop up power nodes, power
up turrets, make new turrets, and heal your tower.
By having everything go through this one brick, it becomes a game about prioritisation, proximity,
and physics.
Lockstep is a clever game that plays with this idea that the camera zooms in when two
characters are close to one another in a co-op game.
Only the world doesn’t move or change size, so you can use this to make yourself bigger
or smaller to get around a maze and bounce on springy pads.
My favourite part is that it can be played solo, or in co-op, all in the exact same mode.
Resize is a game where you literally resize the game’s window to block lasers, bypass
spikes, and reveal more parts of the level.
It’s a bonkers game, turning the very construct of the game itself into a helpful ally that
can serve multiple purposes in the game.
And finally, SuperFunkyLightShow is an excellent arcade shooter, where everything does multiple things.
You’ve got a bow, which you can fire instantly for a small amount of damage, or charge it
up for a piercing blow.
Dead enemies turn into ghosts, who must be captured to give you ammo and a score multiplier.
And it even has a cool death system where you can respawn if you shoot some targets
in time.
The game is manic and feels great - you should polish this one up and release it as a full game.
So there we have it!
Like I say, there were so many terrific games.
You can go play them all over at itchi.io, so definitely leave the names of your favourites
in the comments below.
Thanks again to everyone who participated, the guys who helped set it up in the first
place, and everyone who helped judge almost 800 games.
Let’s never do this again.
Just kidding.
We learnt a lot about game jams, so, hopefully we can put that new knowledge into practice
in the future.
But for now, back to your regularly scheduled YouTube programming.