Gamedev.js Jam 2022:
Web Monetization and Decentralized category winners,
and expert feedback

Gamedev.js Jam celebrated Web games by building HTML5 creations within 13 days of the jam on a given theme, between April 13th, 5 PM CET and April 26th, 5 PM CET 2022. Below is the list of winners from both the Web Monetization and Decentralized categories, judged by experts, and awarded with prizes. There are also top5 picks by experts from overall results along with their feedback.

Check the detailed list of winners from:

• Web Monetization category
• Decentralized category
  • NEAR challenge
  • IPFS challenge
  • MPL challenge

Top5 picks with feedback from experts.

• 1. Secret Ingredient
• 2. IT'S TOO RAW!
• 3. Sushi Dou
• 3. Golem Caves
• 3. Thorn Gristle
• 6. Clash of Cuisine
• 7. Tennis Rhythm Academy
• 7. R.A.W. Ball
• 9. Save a Cat
• 10. Rafting a waterfall

Below the rating you can read the feedback from the experts: Daniel Keller, Tim Sulmone, and Val Suszk.

1. Secret Ingredient (9,33 / 10)

• Daniel Keller: Great integration of music, visuals, fun game to play, what threw me off was the goal, and some sort of visual indicator if I was doing ok or not.
• Tim Sulmone: Absolutely amazing style/music/gameplay that kept getting more challenging. Great near integration for the leaderboards.
• Val Suszk: Absolutely amazing! Gameplay, design and music are so fascinating and professional!

2. IT'S TOO RAW! (8,00 / 10)

• Daniel Keller: It's too raw, very simplistic, love the theme, the sound could use a little more, its to raw.
• Tim Sulmone: Stuck to the theme perfectly, loved the aesthetics and artwork to really bring out the "raw".
• Val Suszk: Loved the concept, game's minimalistic design and music, "it's raw!"

3. Sushi Dou (7,67 / 10)

• Daniel Keller: This is a fun little game to play! Wish it starts a little easier, and it is a little more clear on how to serve the people, make the char walk witht he food as you see it being assembled...
• Tim Sulmone: Very much enjoyed this game, seemed to be inspired by the game overcooked.
• Val Suszk: Little, fun, a bit hard to play game, wish it had additional difficulty levels.

3. Golem Caves (7,67 / 10)

• Daniel Keller: Excellent music, the controls are a little hard with the choice of z and c, i would use spacebar for making things hit or enter... great use of the leaderboard, and love the nft reward idea.
• Tim Sulmone: Fun and strategic (baiting enemies out of digging paths). Good use of leaderboards via Near protocol.
• Val Suszk: The game is interesting, it's tactical, and requires a player to plan its moves. Loved the leaderboard and an NFT reward implementation.

3. Thorn Gristle (7,67 / 10)

• Daniel Keller: This is gaming at its finest, simple, and for an oldskool gamer like me it brings back spaceinvader vibes. well made game, awesome visuals, great fitting music.
• Tim Sulmone: The hardmode was fun on IFPS (took a while to load), but good use of Uninity/WebGL. Weapon upgrades would be a cool feature, brought back some nostalgia of playing raptor in the 1990's. :-)
• Val Suszk: Loved the design and music, the gameplay reminds old-school game experience with game consoles from the 90-s.

6. Clash of Cuisine (6,67 / 10)

• Daniel Keller: Nice NFT integration, love the oldskool vibe, just having a hard time with the controls, not clear to me.
• Tim Sulmone: Loved the style, and gameplay. The coil subscription and Near NFT's for additional characters was a neat implemention.
• Val Suszk: Liked an NFT integration, the game's design and music are recreating old school gaming vibe.

7. Tennis Rhythm Academy (5,67 / 10)

• Daniel Keller: Needs some refining, very rough still, need some more feedback on hitting the ball, great music.
• Tim Sulmone: Interesting NFT integration, would love to see this more built out. Aesthetics and music were great!
• Val Suszk: Great sound and gameplay, needed an animation of hitting the ball.

7. R.A.W. Ball (5,67 / 10)

• Daniel Keller: Missing a challenge, intro was great, music was ok, but the AI is easily beaten, needs more refining.
• Tim Sulmone: Awesome intro and style, but was very easy to cheat and push the ball through the opposing AI :D
• Val Suszk: Great design and intro but it's too easy to beat the AI.

9. Save a Cat (5,00 / 10)

• Daniel Keller: A very raw cat game, love the quests, just no challenge...
• Tim Sulmone: Good use of using raw resources to complete an objective.
• Val Suszk: Loved the concepts of RPG-like quests but there's no challenge in a game.

10. Rafting a waterfall (3,67 / 10)

• Daniel Keller: I was very excited seeing the menu, seemed very polished, but once in the game I have no idea what todo, and nothing was really happening or ending it...
• Tim Sulmone: A little too "raw", awesome music however. Getting stuck was very easy/almost instant.
• Val Suszk: Game's a little bit raw, although it has an awesome menu and music, still didn't understand how to play it.

• 1. Marsville
• 2. Golem Caves
• 3. IT'S TOO RAW!
• 4. Clash of Cuisine
• 5. Secret Ingredient
• 6. Sushi Dou
• 7. Tennis Rhythm Academy

Below the rating you can read the feedback from the experts: Aliaksandr 'Sasha' Hudzilin and Vlad Grichina.

1. Marsville (8,00 / 10)

• Vlad Grichina: Login with NEAR, build actions on chain. Base state is completely restored after re-login.

2. Golem Caves (7,00 / 10)

• Vlad Grichina: Login with NEAR, daily challenge, high score leaderboard, planned challenge prize (not implemented).

3. IT'S TOO RAW! (5,00 / 10)

• Vlad Grichina: Login with NEAR gives unlockable bonus (skins).

4. Clash of Cuisine (4,00 / 10)

• Vlad Grichina: Login with NEAR, mint profile picture NFT.

5. Secret Ingredient (3,00 / 10)

• Vlad Grichina: Login with NEAR, save high score with NEAR, updateRankings.

6. Sushi Dou (2,00 / 10)

• Vlad Grichina: Login with NEAR, save high score with NEAR using setGreeting.

7. Tennis Rhythm Academy (1,00 / 10)

• Vlad Grichina: Login with NEAR.

• 1. Secret Ingredient
• 2. Clash of Cuisine
• 3. Golem Caves
• 4. Sushi Dou
• 5. Save a Cat
• 6. Tennis Rhythm Academy
• 6. IT'S TOO RAW!
• 6. Rafting a waterfall
• 6. Thorn Gristle
• 6. R.A.W. Ball

Below the rating you can read the feedback from the experts: Pan Chasinga and Yaya Saidy.

1. Secret Ingredient (9,00 / 10)

• Pan Chasinga: Well executed! The UX flow is great and the clean look and great timing.
• Yaya Saidy: Super engaging game for casual gamers.

2. Clash of Cuisine (8,00 / 10)

• Pan Chasinga: Really had fun! The character designs are great, and the storyline and the game controls are creative. The UI is decent and minting an NFT was smooth and easy. Although there are some lacking and the AI opponents are still not that smart, the game is playable and feels wholesome.
• Yaya Saidy: Super fun & addictive game. Has casual and competitive potential.

3. Golem Caves (7,00 / 10)

• Yaya Saidy: Fun little dungeon game with potential to gain traction. I could see this being part of a gaming ecosystem with special trait ingame item NFTs that can also be used in other games within the metaverse.

4. Sushi Dou (6,00 / 10)

5. Save a Cat (5,00 / 10)

6. Tennis Rhythm Academy (4,00 / 10)

6. IT'S TOO RAW! (4,00 / 10)

6. Rafting a waterfall (4,00 / 10)

• Pan Chasinga: The game doesn't work. Can't enter into the game.

6. Thorn Gristle (4,00 / 10)

6. R.A.W. Ball (4,00 / 10)

• 1. Martian Summer League
• 2. Marsville
• 3. IT'S TOO RAW!
• 4. Aris
• 5. RunAWay
• 5. Clash of Cuisine
• 7. R.A.W. Ball

Below the rating you can read the feedback from the experts: Adam Fuller and Tom Greene.

1. Martian Summer League (8,50 / 10)

• Adam Fuller: Football simulation! Fun, if pretty intense.
• Tom Greene: Cool!

2. Marsville (8,00 / 10)

• Adam Fuller: Resource accrual and nice exploration UX, and blockchain integration :party:.

3. IT'S TOO RAW! (7,00 / 10)

• Adam Fuller: Fun and simple idea, judgement & slightly randomness based, I like it.
• Tom Greene: Engaging fun and immediately accesible - obviously very simple.

4. Aris (6,50 / 10)

• Adam Fuller: Cool resource accrual, and love the foxes.
• Tom Greene: Quite fun! Mining a bit repititive but with more time this could be cool.

5. RunAWay (6,00 / 10)

• Adam Fuller: I liked the Mars-y pixel aesthetic.
• Tom Greene: Quite basic but worked.

5. Clash of Cuisine (6,00 / 10)

• Adam Fuller: I got the hang of it!

7. R.A.W. Ball (4,50 / 10)

• Adam Fuller: Good idea, football a bit one dimensional but I managed to win!
• Tom Greene: Fun concept but couldn't play it! Kept getting scored against.

• Fazri Zubair
• Joep van Duinen
• Richard Davey
• Thomas Vidas

Each expert picked their favourite top5 games from all that has been submitted this year.

Fazri Zubair

1. Space Major Miner: A well thought out space themed game. I enjoyed the mechanics and it was very easy to hop in and play. I really enjoyed the fact that I didn't need much direction to figure the game out, and yet it was challenging to complete the first objective. Overall a steller game.
2. Dead Fish Pinball: Dead fish, pinball, retro look and feel :-D this was no contest to catch my eye. Game felt good, graphics were on point and the fish flopping around was a great touch! Definitely a game I would like to see more content for and something I would play when I need to unwind.
3. Jurassic Golf: Concept was neat and art style caught my eye. I enjoyed the game but did find myself getting stuck if I shot the egg close to the nest, it was difficult to putt it in as the lowest power I would land on always knock it over. I had to hit it far away and then come back in again to try. But even with my thoughts about I still a enjoyable game very much! I would love to see a egg roll / some physics to the egg added :-D.
4. Dwarf Workday: This game has simple mechanic, neat art and all around felt like a polished title. Very satisfied physics and enjoyable progression. Excellent overall game.
5. RRRRRR: I always enjoy a world flip mechanic and this one was well executed. The levels were fun and challenging and the mechanics didn't need explanation as they were intuitive. Excellent game over all.

Joep van Duinen

1. Aaron's Quest IV: While Moses Was Away: A visual tutorial would work better for this game over a text-based one. You need to localise the text if you keep it how it is so something more simple without text would work better. The game feels really rewarding to play, you can add lots onto the game like new upgrades, maps / modes (e.g. time trials to get certain objects), maybe there are different workers or upgrades to workers that make them more efficient as the game gets longer / harder. You made a really simple game but it works so well, congrats! Excited for the future of the game.
2. Space Major Miner: Really like the concept and the artwork makes it beautiful. The enemies are a bit annoying to fight against, especially if the blocks they are behind are out of reach of your gun (maybe increase the range or reduce the enemies health?). The time in between levels / dying etc should also be reduced so the players can carry the momentum of the game forward. Really incredible game for a game jam, huge congrats.
3. Dwarf Workday: Another really nice platformer with a cool mechanic. The artstyle is really nice and the game feels pretty easy to play. It might be nice to have more differentiation between getting hit by an enemy and hitting a normal wall as the sounds seem to be the same. You could also introduce a new mechanic in the 3rd level so people stay engaged. Overally, really nice job on this one.
4. Untamed Lands: This is a super interesting game. There is probably too much text describing everything so localisation would be really important here unless you can show people how to play with less / no text. Love the inclusion of match 3 while making it still very strategy based with the skulls. There still is some room for improvement with the UI, especially on the match 3 screens. The homebase is really small and hard to follow sometimes so balancing that would make a nice difference. Maybe also lowering the threshold for the first couple of upgrades is an idea in order to get the player engaged with the upgrades pretty quickly. This will make them feel like they are actually progressing as opposed to just playing for nothing. Really impressive game!
5. Cooked Raw: This is a really nice take on a cooking game. It feels just as intense as any other because of the bullet hell mixed in there. I think there is room for improvements with showing when the food is cooked as well as where it needs to go at the very beginning so the players know what to expect. The controls feel nice except it can be hard to switch to the right ingredient while dodging lots of mushroom bullets but thats the fun of it. The artstyle is amazing but it might be a good idea to highlight the pot a little more as it blends in quite well into the background. Overall though it is a really well made game and excited to see how far it goes!

Richard Davey

1. Dwarf Workday: This game is just superb! You control a dwarf, deep down in the mines, who must use his hook to grab the ore from the walls and then smash it between two giant hammers. Doing so creates diamonds. Collect two diamonds, and you'll unlock a new ability, such as a longer hook or the ability to shoot up. These are essential in the later levels to access areas of the mine you otherwise cannot reach. There's a nice element of physics to it all, such as dragging sliding blocks to jump on, catching the bouncing ore, and head-jumping baddies. The graphics fit perfectly, and the only minor niggle I had was that it was easy to mix the jump with the hook controls.
2. Space Major Miner: When looking at it, you'd be hard-pressed to believe this was a game jam entry! The visuals are just beautiful with a very 16-bit aesthetic, and the sound effects went great with it (I admit, I did have to turn the music down after a while, though!) - you land on a planet full of riches, just waiting to be uncovered. Blast your way through the rocks, mining the gems as you go, and be sure to take care of the aliens that swarm in on your location. You have a jetpack you can deploy, although it eats through your energy reserves, so use it sparingly. The trick is to leave enough carefully placed rocks behind to act as platforms for a speedy exit. Great fun and ripe for expansion into a full title.
3. Dead Fish Pinball: I love video pinball games, and this one is no exception! Rather than shiny silver balls, you are flipping (pun not intended) fish around instead. Based on the title of this game, these fish are apparently dead, but they certainly don't react that way. They have a superbly satisfying plop as they bounce off the table and suitably fishy physics as they slip, slide, and writhe their way around. There are power-ups, such as extra fish to collect. And if you manage to lock three fish away into the area at the top, you unlock a multi-fish mode, although sadly, I never achieved this. Addictive, insane, and I'd love to see this concept pushed even further!
4. RRRRRR: There are only three controls used in this game - left, right, and space to shoot. However, placed around each level are buttons that, when collided with, cause the whole level to rotate. As it turns, you can still control your little guy - which is crucial because you often need to take advantage of the fact that you're now potentially falling in order to guide him into the hard-to-reach diamonds that litter the level. Ultimately, you want to get to the exit, and this is no small feat in its own right, given all the spikes, aliens, and bullets flying around! The concept is a lovely take on the classic VVVVVV, and it gets you thinking and reacting fast. It's not always obvious which way the level will rotate, which can make it challenging at points, but restarting is quick and painless, giving it that "just one more go" edge.
5. Jurassic Golf: If cute little dinosaurs could play golf, only instead of a ball, it was their eggs they were slicing around the course, then this is very close to how I would imagine it would go! It takes quite a bit of skill to get used to the power bar, but this game is a joy once you master that. There are three different dinosaurs, each representing a type of club, and you'll need to combine intelligent use of them all to complete some of the later levels as you bat your eggs towards the nests. The graphics are adorable, the sound bouncy and chirpy, and the concept is excellent. If there were one addition I would like, it would be the ability to drag-scroll the level to see the nest, rather than the 'flip-screen' system it has. It's a minor point, however, and I was more than happy to smash my eggs all the way to the very end of the game.

Thomas Vidas

1. Space Major Miner: This is a game jam game?? Wow! The entry animations are great, it feels smooth to control, the mouse aiming with right/left shooting is easy and the goals of the game are clear. It's instantly fun and I you can tell a lot of work into making it. An excellent entry.
2. RRRRRR: RRRRRR is a great, simplistic game. It is a puzzle platformer can move left, right and shoot while in a single screen puzzle. The game tutorializes you by giving you a very simple puzzle and gradulaly increasing the difficulty, which makes understanding the game fun and allows you to want to keep going to do the next puzzle. All in all, while the idea is limited in scope, the execution and design here are great.
3. Dwarf Workday: Dwarf Workday is a polished, easy to understand puzzle platformer. The hook mechanic was unique and pleasing to watch your dwarf spin around as he zipped to the wall you hooked to. Watching the hammers smash the rocks to make gemstones is entertaining as well. All in all, it's a great all around game.
4. Cooked Raw: While maybe a bit too difficult, Cooked Raw is a good concept. Mix up Overcooked and a top down action game and you've got Cooked Raw. The music/art were fun as well as having a good tutorial screen on how to play. The controls were a bit odd but worked well enough. With some more time in the oven this would be an excellent game. And for a gamejam, it's a solid effort!
5. Richard The Wizard: I'm a sucker for a good terminal-style text adventure game. And Richard the Wizard is well done. It resembles classic text adventure games, looks authentic, and is easy to play. A lot of fun!