Criteria rankings in js13kGames 2024

The overall winners were announced on October 5th already, along with the best Mobile and WebXR entries, while the Decentralized category games participating in four optional challenges were announced on Monday. Now’s the time to check on the specific criteria the games were ranked by.

Criteria

There are six different criteria an entry is judged on: Innovation, Theme, Gameplay, Graphics, Audio, and Controls. It’s important to balance all of them if you want to end up high in the overall results and win cool prizes, but there are always cases where folks ignore some of those (Theme, Audio) to focus on others (Gameplay, Graphics) and still rank quite high. Let’s look at the best games in all the criteria, as there are prizes assigned specifically to those rankings as well.

Top5 Innovation

1. Bubble Burst by John Edvard (4.47)
2. Coup Ahoo by Antti Haavikko (4.04)
3. PicoBuddy by Benjamin Boyd Austin (4.03)
4. Do Not Make 13 by Pim Schreurs (4.00)
5. 13th Floor by Rob Louie (3.87)

Top5 Theme

1. 13th Floor by Rob Louie (4.20)
2. Brewing Disaster by Adrien Guéret (4.12)
3. How it Started by Roman Miniv (4.05)
4. Economy of Motion by Andy Sommerville (4.04)
5. The Society of Multiphobics by Almut and Owen Kieffer-Jones (3.96)

Top5 Gameplay

1. SQUAD 13 by Rémi Vansteelandt (4.29)
2. The Way of the Dodo by Jesper Rasmussen (4.28)
3. DR1V3N WILD by Frank Force (4.26)
4. Xiicur Surviivors by Mohammed Saud (4.09)
5. Coup Ahoo by Antti Haavikko (4.07)

Top5 Graphics

1. DECK 13 by Almar Suarez (4.76)
2. DR1V3N WILD by Frank Force (4.76)
3. 13th Floor by Rob Louie (4.70)
4. Those Final Seconds by Jani Nykänen (4.63)
5. Escape from Planet XIII by Miguel Ángel Pérez Martínez (4.59)

Top5 Audio

1. Coup Ahoo by Antti Haavikko (4.34)
2. Phantomicus by Cody Ebberson (4.26)
3. 13th Floor by Rob Louie (4.13)
4. Aargh! Triskaideka attacks! by Christoph Schansky (4.08)
5. The Way of the Dodo by Jesper Rasmussen (4.06)

Top5 Controls

1. DR1V3N WILD by Frank Force (4.24)
2. Xiicur Surviivors by Mohammed Saud (4.22)
3. The Way of the Dodo by Jesper Rasmussen (4.15)
4. Ghosted by Jani Nykänen (4.06)
5. Coup Ahoo by Antti Haavikko (4.02)

Results viewer

Since we’ve shared the raw voting results on our Slack recently, our community member Cliff Earl prepared the js13kGames results viewer the same way he did last year. You can now rank all the entries based on the criteria listed above, but also the game’s votes received, author’s votes cast or even comments left.

Next steps

Don’t forget to write your Post Mortem , and add it to the Resources list and on your entry’s page.

Also, consider linking a Director’s Cut (post-compo) version on your entry’s page as well, and adding a link to a YouTube video with a trailer/gameplay/walkthrough there too, as those are now possible on our site.