itch.io

Would it be possible to make a gamejam's voting policy obvious somehow?

For example, on the jam page, it could say:

Bob's Jam
Hosted by Bob — Voting: Submitters only

(it doesn't need to be so prominent... that's just an idea)

Motivation:
In my experience, ranked jams with voting set to Public tend not to be fair and I would like to avoid them. But there's often no way to know before joining (unless the organizer includes details in the page, which they usually don't).

I think it's great that the docs discourage this type of voting, but organizers still pick it sometimes:

Thanks for the feedback! Making all the art and music definitely slowed us down, but I'm sure we'll reuse them in the future to make longer games.

Thanks for playing! We really wanted the game to adjust to any "failures" along the way — it's just another path. We had grand plans to make a lot more variations but had to cut scope to finish on time.

I found for battles on the first map, I could mostly just hold down attack and win without thinking. For the second map (with the town), I had to use some strategy toward the end and then the pigeon / seagull battle was painful — too much healing for my tastes. But these are just my opinions of course!

Nice job! I appreciate the humor and the different approach to gameplay. I think the battles could use some balancing. Maybe having fewer would be easier to balance and feel less repetitive for the player?

Sounds nice! I especially like the boss one.

I'm curious: what kind of software do you use?

Fun entry! I loved the Sea Witch's dialogue and facial expressions. A small nitpick is I felt "..." was a too common, sometimes just when interacting with things? Maybe I just don't understand what it's conveying.

Side note: Enjoyed reading your devlog! Sorry to hear you lost a lot of work. One thing that has worked well for us is to have a github account (free) and push all the files there every day or so. Besides backing things up, you also get a version history of everything so if your mind about something, it's pretty easy to go back in time :)

I love the ship exploration and the music. I'm not sure the direction matters much, but that's ok. It's about the journey.

I felt a little lost in the gameplay. Took me a while to figure out that the splash attack only works adjacent to the skeletons — maybe a smaller animation would make it clearer? Ultimately I was stumped by slimes... attacking them just seemed to hurt me? 

Nice job overall!

Unique approach! Definitely on theme :)

Thank you for the thoughtful reply and for organizing the jam(s) in the first place!

I can certainly appreciate the importance of feedback and wanting to include the broader community. I just think it's important in a ranked jam to try to ensure some level of fairness — the rankings are feedback as well, after all. From my (admittedly mostly outside) perspective, it seems clear that that the game ranked  highest overall for the last few jams has not been the best game. And to be 100% honest, that's making me less interested in participating in the future.

Thanks again for putting in the time to run these jams. I started out in the RPG Maker community many years ago and I think this is a great way to motivate people and help folks level up. I sincerely hope I'm not raining on the parade by sharing my thoughts.

I noticed in a previous iteration of this jam that a particular entry received twice as many votes as most others and won. That made me wonder: is the voting set to public? 

Itch warns against using that setting (see below). Is that what is being used?

https://itch.io/docs/creators/game-jams#jam-customization/ranked-jams/warning-about-public-voting 

I'm wondering the same.

I like the theme! A little feedback after my playthrough:

• Maybe it's worth gating the asteroid area off until it's relevant — I went there first and was confused what to do
• The icons on rocks seemed out of place and a little hard to read... maybe it would be clearer to have a prompt what to do up top like you used later for the crater etc?
• The dinosaur got stuck behind a rock and was no threat to me

Good idea. I just rated your game... Please rate ours as well!

https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2025/rate/4084862

Our RPG includes some challenging battles, especially the final boss. We struggled somewhat with balancing and would love feedback!

https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2025/rate/4084862

Thanks for playing and for the feedback! I actually fixed the movement speed issue but didn't want to edit the game during voting.

You should never run out of spells. That definitely sounds like a bug we'll have to track down!

The description left me thinking that there audio clues for each piece (like on hover?), but that didn't seem to be the case. Without something like that, it feels like trial and error which isn't so fun for me. But otherwise I think it's a solid submission!

Nice presentation and music! I'm not sure if this is typical, but I ended up with a swarm of enemies that led to a slow framerate toward the end. Circling them seemed to be the best strategy — maybe there could be more structured levels?

Cool game! I like the pixel art! I'm not an expert in platformers but jumping didn't seem to work well when going down an incline — kept tripping me up.

Sure! Here's a screenshot

Well done all! The music, art and writing all worked really well together.

Small bug I ran into: a House tooltip got stuck and persisted at the bottom of my screen even after a battle and moving to the next village. It meant that I couldn't see what I was hovering over any longer.

Really enjoyed your game! The cats are so cute (and infuriating!) The fishing mini-game reminded me of stardew valley.

Minor feedback if you want to continue development:

• I tried entering another house and my bucket got dropped in a way that I couldn't reach it.
• I think having an NPC at the market that buys your fish would be more intuitive than going up to an empty stall.
• The cat aspect is fun, but I didn't like that they also stole fish you were carrying so easily - made it feel like a waste of time chasing the cats sometimes.
• Fishing was hard at first because the tutoral kept interuptting/getting in the way. I think the gauge starting before any fish appear was confusing.
• When I had 3 lines, it was unclear at first that I was only bringing in 1 fish — didn't realize I needed more inventory.

Unique idea! Is it intentional that the score counts downward after hitting Launch sometimes? I was a little confused by that.

Nice work with PICO-8! I think it's a great start 

So atmospheric! I was also hoping for a little more "game" but it all worked well. Nice job overall.

I found the movement un-intuitive but I figured it out! Nice job with the music and overall gameplay.

Thanks, we've had lots of practice and the engine we're using helps a lot 🙂

I thought the controls were broken at first — my ship wouldn't move. Next wave I understood the "AI" part :)

Nice art! Small bug report: the " characters in the item descriptions had encoding problems and looked weird. Maybe because I'm on a mac?

We can definitely add a downloadable version. Thank you for the suggestion!

Thanks for the suggestion!

Kudos to you! We want to do this too but felt like we didn't have time. Next game jam hopefully!

Relaxing game! Beautiful art and music. I found myself wishing for more obstacles or challenge after a while, though. Keep up the great work!

Loved the opening! I would love to hear some sound and have a little more time as a wave to eat things :)

Atmospheric! Cool idea using soundwaves. I found it hard to know where I was going, though...

Cool game! My lighthouse was unstoppable by wave 25 or so 💪

Absolutely loved this! I have done this very thing on many beaches throughout my life. I felt like my strategy was unbeatable and started experimenting but still made it 775. I liked how the waves kept coming while you're shopping. Small niptick: the sand bar maybe would be better on the left side so it doesn't potentially block the shop guy.

My memory is terrible! I blame the internet. Cool concept!

Reminds me of the Sonic the Hedgehog bonus levels!

Nice work! I don't know if was intentional but I got a rock-paper-scissors vibe with the units. I'm not usually a fan of tower defense type games but that was fun!