New to this year's game jam, we introduced a panel of judges, each assigned to check out all the entries and select their top five favorites. Unexpectedly, we received nearly 200 submissions, which took a considerable amount of time to play through. The judges unanimously agreed that the overall quality was exceptionally high this year, with numerous outstanding games that show great potential to be developed into full-fledged commercial products.
Among all the submissions, the judges collectively selected 19 games, which demonstrates a remarkable alignment in their choices.
The panel of judges was a diverse mix of genre legends, content creators, and hardcore dungeon crawler enthusiasts.
Without further ado, here are the judges' picks, presented in ranking order.
Rank |
Game |
Score |
1 |
Whispers of Fate by Maddie |
30 |
2 |
Sanctuary's Grasp by Kevin Hutchins |
11 |
3 |
Uncharted Wanders by Dashing Strike, Alex.Hamadey |
10 |
4 |
Dungeon Diver by Rebello |
10 |
5 |
The Beast of Oakenbrook by Ilyos Games |
10 |
6 |
Veil of Madness by SolSkyre |
7 |
7 |
Tomb of Absolution by Matt Kimball, Jammmz, LolHank |
7 |
8 |
Chronoleaper by KillerzScrubbie, Clair de Lou, meangpu |
7 |
9 |
Zorg & Shlak by evigouroux, nebula audio |
6 |
10 |
Demon Lord by Surt R. |
6 |
10 |
MisReverse by Volcanolord |
6 |
11 |
Duo Dungeon by Umbreon117 |
5 |
12 |
Guardian Gorge by tjm |
4 |
13 |
Iridescent Haze by Noah Rapetti, Dom Parker, Piroporopi, SunnySideUp1900, UntrainedMonkey |
4 |
14 |
Rival Blades by HugBug |
3 |
15 |
The Dark World by DaveLikesPasta |
3 |
16 |
Sparkle Tales by Slyonics |
2 |
16 |
The Adventures of Gorlag by jinxology, swampness |
2 |
17 |
Worlds Apart by vlzvl |
2 |
The scoring system is as follows:
Each judge selects their top five favorites in ranked order. The top position receives 5 points, the 2nd gets 4 points, the 3rd gets 3 points, the 4th gets 2 points, and the 5th gets 1 point. If one or more games have the same score, the number of times a game is chosen as an Honorable Mention comes into play as a tiebreaker.
Besides selecting their top five favorites, each judge was also tasked with identifying a few honorable mentions from the entries. Here are the honorable mentions in alphabetical order (exluding ones that were also picked as a top five favorite):
The judges have composed mini-reviews for not only the top picks but also for some of the honorable mentions. These reviews will be shared with the respective developers in the coming days.
I am incredibly proud and humbled that so many people in 2023 chose to dedicate their valuable time to creating games in a niche genre that was nearly forgotten just a few years ago. Thank you all for your amazing support of the dungeon crawler genre and for your contributions to the community. It's truly a pleasure to be a part of it!
A huge congratulations to the very deserving winner, as well as to all of you who dedicated yourselves to creating these fantastic games! Finally, congratulations to all fans of the genre, as you now have even more exciting games to enjoy!
I hope to see all of you in the next jam :)
- zooperdan