There's something I noticed that I think everyone here needs to see too. Everyone is giving VERY conservative ratings on all of the games. I mean, for crying out loud, first place overall only got 4.5 stars on average, and there were some categories with only 4 stars! I'm not here to point any fingers, but I am here to give some advice. What I do for my ratings is I give everyone a 4 star rating right off the bat. High expectations, but it works. Then, I affect that rating based on the game's performance. A game with graphics that aren't so great gets something like a 3 star rating. I never gave out a single 1 star rating, and I played a couple pretty bad games, but this is because that there is always something that saves a game from a rating like that. A 1 star rating in, say, graphics, means that the creator made none of the art himself and just use assets, or that the creator only used programmer art, such as gray cubes, without using materials or anything that could be called art. Meanwhile, a 5 star rating would be a top notch game, or just a tad below such, and this is because it's only three days that you get to make this! Anything done in such a short time span that turns out even remotely good should merit at LEAST 4 stars! Now, the big issue here is that we are not here to be cold-hearted with each other's works of art. We are all game devs working towards the same goal: making video games! There's no reward, prize, or anything other than having a game, and if your game gets panned or even if it just doesn't turn out that high quality when you plan to turn it into a full project, that doesn't help anyone's morale, not one bit! That's why I'm here to try and get everyone here to implement a new policy: Nice ratings, critical reviews. That means that you rate the game according to what you think it deserves, but be generous. If you can't simply be generous, just add a flat star to each category on any rating you give out. Then, make your comment critical. Give the developer what he needs to improve his game. We all know that while good reviews feel nice, just having someone say "great game" is completely useless unless the person can be more specific about why it's great. I'm not saying to be harsh with your reviews. If you can't think of anything good to say, just say good job and over-glorify a specific aspect of the game, letting the bad parts fade into the background. Now the real problem here is this: while panning someone's game does make yours seem better in the short run, if everyone's running around giving bad or nitpicky ratings to everyone else's games, that's going to absolutely wreck the system, and currently, it is! Everyone just gets bad ratings because everyone thinks that their game is better or equal to the other person's game, and because everyone is setting the bar at a quality similar to the expectation a full time critic would use! Now please, let's make next Ludum Dare a better experience for everyone! Nice ratings, critical reviews.

Cheers! - The Koala Squad

PS: Check this out too! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/exhaustion/ludum-dare-42-is-almost-over-but-our-main-project-isnt