The Ludum Dare 46 is finally over and the votes are counted. Let's see how I did:

Overall: 899th (3.622 average from 43 ratings)

Fun: 749th (3.561 average from 43 ratings)

Innovation: 877th (3.451 average from 43 ratings)

Theme: 319th (4.11 average from 43 ratings)

Graphics: 1458th (3.451 average from 43 ratings)

Audio: 391st (3.768 average from 43 ratings)

Humor: 581st (3.423 average from 41 ratings)

Mood: 915th (3.553 average from 40 ratings)

Let's put that in perspective of past Ludum Dares. Since there were about 2 times as many participants this time around (mostly thanks to COVID-19), comparing places between events has become meaningless, so I'll be looking at a relative place in an event instead (calculated by simply dividing the place by the number of participants, lower number is of course better):

Looking at number of stars is another valid comparison between events:

Unsurprisingly the charts look like upside-down copies of each other.

Overall, graphics, audio, humor and mood are constantly improving. These categories are IMHO indicative of the raw game making skills, which of course improve with experience, so are completely expected to improve with each event.

Theme and innovation are going up and down like crazy and are more indicative of the inspiration that comes in the first hours of each event - when deciding what to create and how. It's also harder to guess what people will consider proper use of the theme and what they will think of as an innovation. Harder to judge too.

Humor is the most fickle of the categories being the most subjective one. This depends heavily on what kind of game you decide to actually make, but can rise with inspiration throughout the event. Some of the humor can even be a result of inexperience, like making art that is so ugly that it's funny and creating game mechanics that fail in a more or less spectacular way.

I won't speculate on what will happen if this trends continue, but I think I can be optimistic. Patience is the key here.

One more thing: since the number of participants varies heavily between events the actual place isn't as important as the stars you get, it would IMHO be better for most people to put the average star rating in bold and not the place, unless of course you're in the top 100 somewhere.