The Short Games Showcase - Category Suggestions

Competitions
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Hello all,

As mentioned by @EJoyce yesterday, we’re looking to crowdsource suggestions for voting categories in the newly-formed Short Games Showcase! Please post any and all ideas here and we’ll take them into consideration.

(Don’t know what the Short Games Showcase is, or have some more general questions about it? Please check out EJ’s announcement thread here).

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:thinking:

  • Best Overall (can’t go wrong with that)
  • Nicest Prose/Writing
  • Shortest Best Story
  • Most WoW-ing Puzzle
  • Best Technical Achievement
  • Coolest UI
  • Shortest Game
  • Longest Short Game
  • Best improvement ?
  • and aslo: The Short Trophy (for participation, because we should all be winners :stuck_out_tongue: )
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  • Coolest PC
  • and also: Coolest NPC
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:joy:
did you misspell Shortest?

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Just looking through the XYZZY Awards categories on Wikipedia, there’s some that might be useful. Best setting, best use of innovation, best implementation, best use of multimedia? Don’t know if any of these would work, just throwing ideas out there.

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Some random ideas!

Best puzzle-focused game
Best story-focused game
Most fun
Most emotionally resonant
Cleverest mechanic
Best use of short form

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  • Shortest word count
  • Best characters
  • The Purple Alligator Award (whatever crazy criteria you can come up with)
  • most 10/10 votes (or 20/20, etc.)
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Best Replay Value

Perhaps that is something more relevant to short games than several hour long behemoths.

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Just to avoid any misunderstandings, the categories on itch.io are given 1-5 stars as usual?

If so, I wasn’t sure if all proposals had this in mind.

For instance, when the judges are going to rate a game, they e.g. have to give a chosen number of stars to category “prose/writing”.

Of course, once the results are published the game with the best writing score could e.g. be given the award “Nicest Prose/Writing”.

I am just mentioning this in case the proposers are not aware of this (or if I misunderstand, please let me know :slight_smile: )

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Voting will be handled through Google Forms so we’re not limited to Itch’s scoring system. Hope that helps!

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Given this is an existing game showcase I’d love to see a second chance category for games that did not place (like maybe not in the top 3?) the comp they were originally entered into perhaps?

Maybe one for games that have been given an update for improvements or extra content since creation/comp entry as well? (Not quite sure how either of those could get flagged though for voting purposes or what sort of content updates would qualify?)

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Yes. like it.

How about “most improved game” or something?

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For what it’s worth, these are the voting categories we use for the Text Adventure Literacy Jam. The first four may be appropriate for this jam.

  • Story (plot, goal, prologue, atmosphere, gradual revealing of story, conclusion)
  • Writing (clarity, spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalisation)
  • Puzzles (originality, fairness, consistency with the game setting)
  • Implementation (technical aspects, lack of bugs, responses to unanticipated commands)
  • Tutorial
  • Documentation (any external instructions, game page, feelies)
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  • Most Unusual Game
  • Most Scary Game
  • Most Hilarious Game
  • Most Heartbreaking Game
  • Most Heartwarming Game
  • Most Challenging Puzzles
  • Most Interesting Choices
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We have decided on our categories! They’re as follows:

Best in Show
Best Story Focused Game
Best Puzzle Focused Game
Best Use of Interactivity
Best Use of Short Form
Best Replay Value

Thanks to everyone who gave us their 2 cents!

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