from the gaming-like-it’s-1929 dept
This is a brief detour in our series of posts about the winners of this year’s public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1929! We’ve already covered the Best Remix, Best Deep Cut, and Best Visuals, and Best Adaptation, but before we move on to the last two categories (Best Analog Game and Best Digital Game), let’s take a moment to run through the honorable mentions that we included in every category this year.
First up, the honorable mention for Best Remix went to Eleanor by Micah McFarland. This short piece of Twine interactive fiction artfully combines public domain artworks by more than a dozen artists, each one carefully chosen to illustrate a scene in the story. There’s some great succinct writing, multiple endings, and some hidden narrative mechanics under the hood.
Next, the honorable mention for Best Deep Cut went to The Last Tower by Zee Ham, a tabletop dungeon crawl game based on the 1929 architectural floorplans for the Chrysler Building. Using the plans as a skeleton, the game builds out a fun environment full of puzzles and encounters, as well as rich environmental storytelling woven through the details of the various rooms.
The honorable mention for Best Visuals went to Benten Pond by cutegamesclub, a simple sidescroller game based on a 1929 wood block painting. Though the gameplay is a bit frustrating, the visuals shine: the painting has been carefully and lovingly recreated as layered pixel art with parallax scrolling that takes full advantage of the original composition’s sense of depth and distance.
For Best Adaptation, the honorable mention went to DIY Dalí by haunted-jug, a meditative little game about remixing the iconic imagery from Salvador Dali’s paintings. It’s simple and engaging, and it puts the focus squarely on the source material — plus, it kicks off with a fun little animated flourish that perfectly sets the tone.
On to the two categories for which we haven’t yet had the main spotlight winner spotlight posts (those will wrap things up on the next two Saturdays).
For Best Digital Game, the honorable mention went to Thrall by Kanderwund, another piece of Twine interactive fiction, and one with an incredible sense of style. The prose is pretty stylish by itself, but the real eye-catcher is the presentation: full of lively lo-fi video backgrounds and set to moody atmospheric music, it’s an incredibly polished product for a game jam entry.
Finally, the honorable mention for Best Analog Game went to Red Harvest by fuzztech, a compact and well-designed mystery TTRPG for a game master and one or more players who roleplay as private investigators. It’s based on the Dashiell Hammett novel of the same name, but with a twist inspired by that name: it transports the story from a mining town in Montana to a mining town on Mars.
And that’s that for the honorable mentions! Congratulations to everyone whose game was chosen. We’ll be back next week with the next in our series of winner spotlights, and don’t forget to check out the many great entries that didn’t quite make the cut! And stay tuned for next year, when we’ll be back for Gaming Like It’s 1930.
Filed Under: game jam, gaming, gaming like it’s 1929, public domain
