Hi everyone!
A few days ago we have announced the very end of the Icehouse Jam 2019, and we revealed the results of the Judges' votes. We hope you took some time to take a look at them, and that you played these games!
The following will be a little longer than usual and you can take your time to read it. This will be one of our very last messages regarding this Jam, and then we will leave you at peace ;)
New Prizes for the top 10!
First of all, we are happy to announce that the Honorary Prizes will finally be given to the top 10 games! We had initially planned to give only 2 Prizes only in this category but what happened is that:
- the 2 winning games are Icehouse games (we can't give Prizes to ourselves!)
- the external Judges liked your games and decided to offer some rewards too!
As a result, the top 10 games will receive:
- A private exclusive demo of Neyyah (as initially planned), kindly offered by the author, Aaron Gwynaire
- A Steam key of a great Visual Novel, either Along the Edge or Seer's Isle, kindly offered by Geoffroy and Nico, Nova-box
- A Steam key of J.U.L.I.A., one of the best 1st-person sci-fi adventure games of the 2010s, kindly offered by Jan Kavan, CBE Software
And the top 3 winners will receive the Prizes that were written on the main page of the Jam.
We take this opportunity to remind that there is a Prize per game/team, not per individual.
In case you missed it, this is the list of top 10 games:
1 Ikarus
2 The Heart's Fallacy
3 Seclusion
4 Valhalla
5 The Greek Escape
6 Bright Origin
6 Road to Aztlan
8 Queen of the Underworld
9 Growing Up
10 HOL鈥燱UDU
Claim your Prize!
Please send us an email to: contact.theicehouse[at]gmail.com
The sooner you claim your Prize, the more chances you have to get them for Christmas (if we don't receive news from you, we cannot send the Prizes!). We will prepare your rewards and gather the keys etc.
Regarding Prizes 2 & 3, please tell us quickly what games out of the "External game list" you would like to receive (please see main page).
Please do it asap everyone. Thanks!
Judges Feedback
During the voting process, the Judges have taken notes about your games. We have decided to share some of their comments about the 3 winners of our Jam. We chose to share their comments anonymously in order to not create any issue in case you would disagree with them.
About Ikarus:
"The best game of this jam in my opinion. The story fits the theme perfectly, the gameplay is effective. It's funny, well written, intelligent. Very good work. Too bad the music lacks of personality and it badly needs sound design to refine the atmosphere."
"We liked Ikarus, even if we would have liked to see more humour. There are some very good ideas that deserve to be explored. Visually it's also very successful: the characters are really beautiful, well animated, with great attitudes. The sets are sometimes a little empty and would like to be a little more worked on. But the game has a lot of charm!"
"Ikarus gripped me instantly with its beautifully hand-drawn style graphics. It took me back to when I would play Broken Sword and become whisked away on an adventure with the hilarious George Stobbart ... Dialogue scenes, character interaction - everything in between really drove this style of game. What I thought was lacking in this game was the voice acting. The characters actually making sounds would be amazing and would definitely increase the immersion factor. Graphically, the game world has a very simple yet attractive pallet. Perhaps a bit more detail here and there wouldn't go amiss, but overall, the style works really well. It gives the game that light, smooth, cruisey, easy-flowing experience, along with the comical elements conveyed by character interaction. The bouncy flow of the music also kept this vibe alive throughout the gameplay. Perhaps a slight change in the music would be great later down the track during the game! The story lends itself to educational resources for younger players which is always a bonus! I loved Greek Mythology as a young child - drawing Medusa, cyclops monsters, etc ... And I still find it all very inspirational today! So instantly, the story sounded great and I really find the light-hearted sketch-style graphical representation of the Minotair myth to be refreshing and engaging! Great work!"
About The Heart's Fallacy:
"Not my cup of tea but really well done. It takes quite some time to get down to business, but that's fine. Overall the realization is very good. The story lacks maturity but is in the theme of the Jam. The black spots for me are the graphics: pixel elements are fine, the portraits are ok but the general appearance (UI) is too generic, it lacks of soul. Still, to me, one of the best propositions for this jam."
"The Heart's Fallacy was ambitious and quite fun to play, with good ideas, but visually we didn't like it as much, the generic RPG graphics lacked a little of personality. (They were assets, right?)"
"I found this game very mesmerising and immersive. The artwork reminds me a lot of my step daughter's, very illustrative - and the game's game world graphics took me back to when I used to play my game boy colour. I was very glad I could play the game full screen too. What I found interesting was the slight 3D look to the objects in the scenes, seen from the top view perspective. What could be interesting to toy with is the technique of adding pre-rendered assets into the 2D space? This was used in games such as Firefly's Stronghold back in 2001, etc. This could enrich the game world more. However, I also love the anime / cartoon-style graphics too. With the help of the beautiful music, the game conveyed a strong sense of what was 'real' and what was 'dream' within the tone of the visuals. The intro was very intriguing and spooky, hooked me instantly. My favourite part of playing this game was entering the dream with Aurora's parents. The music here is so good. I would play the game just to listen to this piece of soundtrack. Very beautiful. Within the first moments of playing this game, the player has already experienced the dark vibe of the mysterious 'bad' dreams, the mundane mood of the miserable real world and the colourful prosperity of the 'good' dreams - but there's that feeling of when will it all shatter, and when will the spider-like create re-emmerge? Aurora's Dream scene with her parents gave me a mixed bag of feelings. There was the sense I was actually there within the dream, everything is beautiful and peaceful, happy, with the light twinkle of strings and piano fluttering around me ... yet is Aurora's dad in fact dead in the real world? If so, there was also a heavy sense of sadness in this scene too, a very interesting combination of emotion. And if so, how? Was it connected to the spider? The game made me ask questions which is fantastic. The dialogue sections are really well written, too. Voice overs would work wonders here, yet the music is also strong enough to convey the moods being generated by characters during such scenes. Overall, a very lovely experience which I would like to continue by diving deeper into the 'dream' with this gem 馃檪 Well done guys!"
About Seclusion:
"The quality of this proposal is amazing. A great mastery of 3D and textures as well as an impressive attention to detail to achieve a version without major bugs (and we know that in this type of game, without the possibility of jumping, collisions can be tricky) AND such a story. My only regret is the hanging up on the jam theme, sometimes it seems artificial but this beautiful atmosphere makes up for it."
"We liked Seclusion. The game is well finished and you don't feel the short duration of creation (Jam time limit), unlike some other games. The environments are well worked out and each new place is full of surprises and wonder (the floating islands, the tree...)."
"I was very excited to play this game. It was the first game I played for the judging process. However, I soon realised how taxing it was on my current PC I am using in the UK (my main studio being based in Western Australia) and I had to set the graphics to lowest quality unfortunately. What I did see of the EPIC option was stunning! It's great to see how far real-time rendering has come and Unreal Engine always delivers great work. I didn't get very far in the game, mainly due to the struggling PC trying to keep up with the beautiful graphics, but I found the puzzle orientation slightly awkward. Perhaps, a-like the close ups of letters, the player can inspect a close up of the puzzle device in front of them, once clicking on it, so it's easier to interact with for more intricate buttons or levers, etc. Although slightly out of place and arbitory for a first puzzle in a game where the tone seems to lend itself more to 'environmental discovery', the code box kept me going for a while, even though it did seem to hinder my immersion. However, I think this game is full of mystery and intrigue, and if tweaked in certain areas - focussing on environment space, amount of area to explore straight away ... then this game will be amazing! The voice acting is great at the start. It really sets the mood, with amazing graphics to match up. One thing I noticed in the vocal recording was slight pops and muffled sounds. A pop shield on the mic during recording will easily fix this. I would really like to play this on a higher-end pc system once it's finished! Well done! i'm now going to write up for Eoin's Quest and Don't Eat The Girl 馃檪"
And that is all for now! Honestly we still have a lot more comments from them about the other games that we could share with you, but it would be way too long for a single message! So let us know if you liked reading these lines and if you want to see more, and we will post the rest of them asap.
That was really smart from our Judges to give Steam keys and share these thoughts with us. We hope you like it too. Thanks to them!
See you soon! (or next year for another Jam? - please consider to follow us on a social network to encourage us and to keep track of our future updates and events) Bye!
- The Icehouse team