Don't miss next year's jam! You can register your interest for GMTK Game Jam 2025 and you'll get an email as soon as the date is announced - itch.io/jam/gmtk-2025
So are all the jam creations the creators property or do game jam own them then? Just asking because alot of companies do this type of thing to source ideas and scam free work.
Developer of Little Slime Blows Up here- thank you so much for choosing my game, and thank you even more for organizing the jam! It’s a great time every year and I really appreciate the work you put into it. Congrats to everyone who managed to finish something, and thank you again!
I was the programmer of Grow to Perfection. Thanks so much for your kind words. I've been playing a lot of Factorio recently so I'm glad you can see the inspiration. Also, huge shoutout to my teammates who really brought the game to the next level with art and sound.
I really liked the concept, it's so fun. I can imagine a full release of the game being not about ants, but growing through various stages of the evolution of life, eventually scaling up to any size imaginable.
The core concept alone of scrolling to scale up and down through nested layers of scale which all affect each other is ingenious, I'm amazed I've never seen it done before. I truly hope you expand on the concept in some way.
Congrats on the brilliant idea and execution :P I've been trying to figure out how you can 'infinitely' scroll into and out of images without pixelation. I tried vector art but there are some limitations. How did you achieve this?
Blueprint Hell was us! This is our third time participating and I'm so excited to be in the video because GMTK Game Jam is one of the reasons why I've become passionate about game development again. Thank you so much for this opportunity!
i played blueprint hell and it was amazing! gave me memories of another game i used to play (called turing complete) that also involves wiring. Felt so good to get a nonoverlapping solution
I left a comment before I saw yours and I just want to thank you for taking what I liked most about another game (Masterplan Tycoon) but taking out the frustrating element of not being able to overlap lines with the blocks and so on. great work!
6:15 Hey, that's me! Getting top 100 was already crazy enough, but getting top 20 is just unreal! Thanks a lot to everyone who gave our weird game a chance! And thanks Mark, for doing what you do!
Hi there! We are Glass Gecko Games, the creators of Scale the Depths-that strangely addicting fishing game. We wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who played, viewed, and commented on the game. Your support has truly made all our efforts feel worthwhile. In fact, your support has inspired us to start working on a more polished, full version of the game, so keep an eye on our socials for updates! Once again, thank you to everyone, and congratulations to all who participated in the jam!
Sucky safari dev here! So happy we got in! We were really scared we weren't going to get everything together before the deadline, but glad it worked out. Thank you for hosting the jam, it is a blast every year :)
@@2121nath do you happen to need any help in the music/sfx department? Yours was probably my favorite game on them jam, and it'd be an honor to work on it 😊
"My Shadows Are Bright" is our game, and this moment of my life when I see our title on the screen has blown me away, woow. Also, I personally think that "Top Marks" page must re-shuffle on each refresh, but I don't mind occupying first spot randomly 😅 Thanks to everyone who participated and played games! And special thanks to Mark for organizing such a great event!
@@TheCrewExpendable Hey, I'm the dev of the game, our interpretation of the theme was building houses and upgrades to scale the coal/herb production :D
Oh! The very first game shown in the video is ours: Moldy Fruits! 00:15 ✨So happy to be featured in the video! It was already incredible to be in the top 100. Thank you, Mark, for this Jam. It's my first time participating, but I'm definitely joining again next year!
My game Long Boi Summer didn't make the cut, ranking at #739 but i am incredibly proud of it regardless, this is the first game jam I actually finish and submit, thanks for the opportunity Mark ❤
Thanks for featuring Get Some Helium, and thanks to everyone who provided valuable feedback! This game jam has been fantastic every year and it's really nice to see what devs can make in a short time.
Loving that part of the video from 17:58 to 18:00 haha (Bills & Bouquets, the game I helped make) haha. Even though we weren't a top 20 pick, I'm still so proud of our game and what we accomplished in such a short amount of time. Thanks for hosting this jam Mark!
Thank you for playing Tinker co, we really weren't expecting to make it into the video so we're really happy you enjoyed it. your comparison to tears of the kingdom made me laugh and congratulations to everyone who took part in the game jam, it was really fun
So many pizza games in this jam, including ours, Pizzascaper. Thank you Mark! It was first time I broke top 100 in gmtk and getting all the way up to #2 was surreal!
No fucking way. My shadows are bright is a game idea I’ve had for YEARS and I always thought the tech was too hard but someone did it for a GAME JAM?? That’s crazy
My first game jam ever. While I didn't get a spot on the top 20, I still made it into the video at 13:42 (scale_factor)! Thank you so much for hosting this jam, it was an amazing experience!
Oh cool, our game #9 - Planktown appeared in the video! Congrats to everybody was a really fun jam! (Also I have a made a small behind the scenes of this game!)
I'm honestly surprised that there weren't any featured games based on building a musical scale. I was ready to see them the second the theme was announced!
This was the first GMTK jam I participated in, and I still feel proud of the fact that I managed to make a complete little game working entirely on my own even if it didn't make it into the top 100 or top 20. Tho that Pizzascaper game is *wild* (My Game was Cuby the Gelatinous Cube for anyone that is curious)
I had to stop the video at "Need for Kneade" because I was just laughing and didn't hear Mark anymore. Such a level of genius, from the title to the concept to the gameplay. That game looks absolutely hilarious
Video left me motivated, but reading comments from the devs has me tearing up :’) So incredible to see so many fellow game makers coming together just to create and support each other! What a cool opportunity you’ve put together.
PlankTown looks wild. I've been enjoying the birth and growth of this "Bullet Heaven" genre and loving the fact that it's almost exclusively indie developers that are constantly innovating it. It seems like every week I see someone with a new idea pushing it further and expanding the simple core mechanics into something unique and fun.
Hey, thanks so much for featuring Need for Knead! This jam's theme was brilliant! It made us think of so many great ideas before settling on the pizza thing
I really truly think y'all should add touch controls and put this on phone app stores as-is, this looks WILDLY fun to use on a touch screen with both thumbs. I'd buy it!
A lot of these are great, but it does rub me the wrong way that plenty of them were probably deep in development before the game jam even started, and its a really unfair competition. I'm sure a good amount of games on this list were mostly fleshed out before the game jam started and the devs just connected the dots to the theme. Congrats to all the devs who really did it in 4 days.
I'm not even sure what Tinker Co. has to do with the theme at all. Great looking games and all but if the theme is going to be such a loose suggestion why bother having one
This video made me realize 2 things: 1 - It's absolutely mindblowing what people can create in just 4 days. It's overwhelming almost. My dreams to create a game some day are (almost) crushed. 2 - With the recent events around Concord, it's almost embarrassing publishers like Sony spend 100 million to create the most uninspired games while there is so much creativity out there.
PlankTown's lesson (10:26): "Don't worry about making it fair on the enemy, just give the player a good time" How much do we all wish that EVERY game developer, big or small, domestic or abroad, indie or triple A studio, will learn and implement that lesson.
5 minutes in and some of these ideas are so good I can't believe they haven't been done before! The size expanding jumping blob game looks so intuitive to control I can really easily imagine myself playing it. And Picture Perfect looks like a fully fledged release with the beautiful art and nice story. I can't believe it's a jam game
I'm so glad to see that the decision to prolongue the jam from the usual 48 hours to 4 days has paid off. These gems have been squeezed into very satisfying and polished experiences to watch. Great job to everyone that have participated. This video is, every year, one of the reasons that keeps my spark alive :)
The sucky safari reminded me of that old pop cap flash game where you are a fish which have to eat fish smaller than your size to grow bigger and bigger to eat them big fish. A new twist in sucky safari is the spit out mechanic, which is quite fresh and more (to me) engaging than trying to dodge those big fish in the old game
My friend and I started working on our project with high hopes. We were learning Godot while doing it, but despite that we were making some good progress. Had most of the core mechanics done, a menu, level selection, the art was cool, sounds, etc. He was working on the scaling portion of it though and was quickly losing patience with figuring it out. He quit about 24 hours in and I didn't have the gumption to do it myself. Failure. My brain was so exhausted after that day of non-stop problem solving. It was fun though, and I wish we'd been able to finish it. Mad respect to those who got through it.
This was such a good time to participate in and I'm so proud of my end result. Last time I did this jam I came around 1000th and this year I was 107th. My congratulations to the winners and to everyone else who took part and thanks so much to Mark for running the jam!
Three comments: First, I am in awe that some of these games were made in four days, especially Shutterbug, Sucky Safari, and Pizzascaper. Secondly, I love the games that wear their inspirations on their sleeves, like The Strongest Strongman (Wario Land), Getting Goopy (Slime Laboratory), and The Boiler Room (literally a Spirited Away fangame). Third, congratulations to everyone who managed to get a game uploaded! Even if you didn't make it into the top 100, you did something great!
We joined this jam. It's fun and all but I really wish there were two categories for experienced devs and studios that participate vs. newbies. Seeing games with such high polish and features come out so quickly is actually really demoralizing. It's always veteran devs and even full-on studios. We will never stand out against them. Ever.
Yo, I really hear you but it's not always the case. 2 years ago me and my friends (8 people total) participated in GMTK 2022 (theme: Roll the Dice) and ended up 30th overall with a game named Helldie. Sure, we were a big team, but none of us had ever made anything game-related before and we had never worked together on anything either, so we were definitely newbies at this. I know it can really be demoralizing but not all huge, polished games come from experienced and professional teams.
Thank you for making it possible! I managed to complete my game solo this year and it was a blast! An amazing experience all around and a ton of valuable lessons. Loved the idea and going to release a post jam version update soon and planning to continue development even further. Can't wait for the next jam and more exceptional videos from you!
Thanks for running the jam! So much incredible creativity in the submissions. It's somehow inspiring and demoralizing at the same time. I really relate to your comments in the Getting Goopy section 😁
I remember your first game jam. you were very surprised to realize that your jam had 700 games submitted. Now you have 10x of that and your quality only got better. I admire your work. One day when i start to chase my dreams i will submit my work to one of your jams. Thanks for keeping my dream alive!
Ok but is nobody going to talk about how beautifully written the plot for Grow-Bot by TomOak is? It actually managed to make me feel sad for a game that takes like 10 minutes to complete.
Ain’t about talent my friend, don’t think you can’t do it. Just pick an engine, take a general tutorial about it, read the documentation and start playing with it, you will be surprised at how far you would reach
Talent is a scam. Follow some Godot tutorials, Mess around a little with what you've made, Build upon them, and see where you go from there. Sure you're not diving straight into ""your own game"" but it's an excellent way to learn.
I got into software engineering due to video-games, but it's web dev I've been doing as a career for, like, two decades. I always wanted to make a game other people can play, and I'm *so proud* I finally did... thanks to this Game Jam! Nowhere near the quality of essentially all other games of the jam, but it's a game, it's out, and I couldn't be happier 🥹 Thank you so much for organising this, I think it'll open the floodgates for many more from me 🙌 See you next year! I voted on some of these excellent games! Can't wait to try out the rest of your picks 😄
Congratulations to the winners and to Mark for hosting another great jam. I'm a fan of these types of videos (I saw another video with the best games in the GMTK by Dual Gen Studios) Both videos are great and feature different games.
This was my first game jam, there were many ups and downs, but overall I had an incredible time. Thank you for holding this Jam, I can't wait to join the next one!
Game jam is something I look forward to each year, I’m not a dev I’m just a gamer but I’m also an artist and seeing all the creative and beautiful games made during the jams just fills me with joy and I’m so happy each year there are more games being made, it’s truly an incredible event. Thank you so much for hosting it
Didn’t quite make the cut but this was by far the most proud I’ve felt after a game jam. The extra couple days was really helpful, and I’ll be looking forward to next year! Thanks for hosting! (My game was Get A Grip, got ranked #499!)
Oh, the My Shadows Are Bright game has so much potential. Imagine placing a second flashlight, creating a second shadow for each object! And the dynamics - you can eliminate the second shadow by placing an object closer to one flashlight, but that makes it huge; depending on location, a single object might have a larger shadow and a smaller one. The posibilities are endless!
15:35 Factorio also has that, in the form of the Factorissimo mod - it adds factory buildings with space inside, and you can put them inside each other too
How would that work? Isn't he the final judge? I wouldn't be opposed to seeing a jam game from him, but I don't think that a judge can practically enter for the jams they judge...
@@25fan Maybe he can hire a third party judge. Or his game won't be included in the finalists. Instead, he will reveal it at the end of the video and say whether people liked it or not.
That master-copy pixel game is genius. It’s teaching you to paint for real. I mean there is more steps in irl painting. But the mindset of simplifying and matching color is super important. Great game
Developer of 42 FOLDS Here! Was a lot of fun entering the Jam, my first one in a while, really glad you played it on stream and had fun with it! honestly didn't expect to be in the video at all but technically still made it xd definitely gonna enter next years jam! was a great time with a friendly environment
British snottiness aside, I think you ARE all actually very clever for making game levels out of OS windows! That's super cool and I never would have thought of it!
My first GMTK jam and I had so much fun with it!! I kinda wish there was a large scale jam like this that cared about audio 😅 I'll do my best to make top 100 next year!!! Thanks so much for hosting!
@8:13 NEED for KNEAD reminds me of a children's book that my son absolutely loved called A Pizza with Everything on It by Kyle Scheele (and illustrated by, I kid you not, Andy J. Pizza)!
Ah I didn't quite make it into the video. Not surprised though, there were so many amazing games this year! Thanks for hosting and taking the time to play so many! Can't wait for next year!!!
I'm always amazing by the crazy ideas so many people can have around a simple topic, and then to even have the capacity to realize it within 4 days. Congratz to everyone who participated! You have my full respect!
IIRC, Nintendo registered some kind of patent that makes it complicated to add similar building mechanics to a game without getting a letter from Nintendo's lawyers.
Congrats to all the participants! Despite all the stress, it was a lot of fun and tons of cool ideas around to see and try! Already looking forward to next year's jam (and maybe top 1000 at least 😅)
