The 2015 Indie Game Maker Contest ends today at 11:59 p.m UTC (If you want to know what time that is where you are, check out this handy reference). You will have done your job, now it will our turn. But how is the judging going to work? I have a quick run-down that should give some insight.
Last year, we underestimated how big the response to this contest would be. The four judges were overwhelmed by the sheer number of entries, far more than we had anticipated. This time around we’ve doubled the judges to try and keep anyone from getting too bogged down. The entries will be divided among the eight judges, so if there are 800 games submitted, each one of us starts with 100.
The first part of the judging process is “screening,” when all the games get played for about 5-10 minutes in order to weed out the most broken and disastrous of the entries. Remember what I’ve said about having your game tested? This is when it’s going to count. If we hit a single game-breaking bug while screening, that game is toast. Once the screening is done, each judge plays the entirety of the remaining games (or at least an hour, so it’s not really worth making your game longer than that). Once we’ve finally finished everything and compiled our scores, we pick our top 20.
From then on, it’s a matter of playing the other sets of games picked by the other judges until all the major contenders have been scored by everyone. With eight judges, it will take a true consensus for the top games to rise above the rest. Of course, what makes this year particularly interesting is the long list of other prizes that were unlocked during the Humble Game Making Bundle. While we figure out who gets those, our Guest Judges will be making their own picks.
We hope to have the winners revealed by October at the earliest. I know it’s a long wait but you’ll just have to keep yourselves busy by playing the other games yourself! Good luck, everyone!
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