Best Game Jam Games
Game jam games have really interesting gameplay and visuals that can sometimes never be seen in the full releases, plus, they often get to the good stuff right from the start and you can get through a bunch of different experiences in a short amount of time.
I’ll list some examples below, but there are a lot of new game jams happening all the time, and also you may prefer different genres, settings, and so on, so first I will go into how to easily find the best game jam games.
How to find the best game jam games
For the best game jam games, I would first look for winners of the recent big game jam competitions like Global Game Jam or Ludum Dare.
Ludum Dare
Here is a list of best game jam games from a few recent Ludum Dare events:
LudumDare also allows you to see tops by category, not just overall, so if you are looking for the most innovation or best graphic, you can sort by best in that category.
Global Game Jam
Where Ludum Dare is an online game jam and allows you to see global top games, the Global Game Jam is held in physical locations and each one picks its winner.
For example, here are the winners from the NYU Game Center:
Also try exploring games that were later turned into full releases: https://globalgamejam.org/ggj-success-stories
Or see the top list tagged with Global Game Jam
Other resources
You can open the ‘biggest game jams on itch.io’, and go to the Results page for specific game jams to look for the winners.
Look through winners of the Nordic Game Jam, for example, ‘Baba is You!’ was the winner for the Nordic Game Jam 2017, which later became an award-winning full release.
Try going through the best games on gamejolt tagged with #gamejam
5 Great Games
Here is a few examples of awesome game jam games:
MINUTES TO SHIP
A fun entry where you are hired as an intern and create your own little games. It got 2nd place on the Ludum Dare 45.
Little Lands
A small pretty city builder. Fun, but only available on Windows. (3rd place on LD38)
Video Games
The more you have, the worse it gets
A really interesting game that switches mechanics all the time, and then makes you play a bunch of them at the same time.
windowframe
Again a game only for Windows, but for this one, it is kinda thematic. Borders of the games ‘window’ are actually the walls you can jump off of. If you like this one, you can also look for more game jam games by managore, there are all great.
Delicious Cortex
A game jam game by another amazing maker – deepnight. In this one, you play as a Lich King and try to control your minions.
If you are thinking of participating in a game jam yourself, check out these articles on the topic.
