Hey all, firstly, congrats with your entries and congrats to the winners!

I take pride in having made the 3rd most rated compo game, which implies the 3rd most played game. I never expected that. I received nearly exclusively positive comments and I want to thank the community for that.

This edition was special, as I missed the 3 earlier ones due to life getting in the way. Even the host can appreciate this, as he was putting a lot of effort in brushing out cheaters, clearly while paddling his way through life (picking up his wife for example).

However, odds are this was for realzies my last Ludum Dare, as the work and effort, both during development and during rating, is simply not reflected in what I get out of it. Don't get me wrong, the ratings are in line with what I can do as a solo dev, but they don't line up with what I see.

As I understand I am not the only creator of a "popular" game that sees this happen. It probably is indeed statistically very much expected that larger numbers of ratings (about 400% of the winner in my particular example) tend to drag your average down drastically. The median would be a lot nicer to use here, but that info isn't available so I can't be the judge of that.

And yes, ultimately, it's about the game you make, the feedback you receive. Very much so. But this no longer has more weight than working for 48 hours, ignoring family and life. I effectively am writing a book on game jams, and I think I found a nice closing chapter after this edition. At some point, you outgrow game jams as a compo-dev.

As this honestly made me a bit upset and took away everything I saw in the spirit of Ludum Dare for years, there's no point.

Thank you Mike for hosting and your work. Thank you for letting me meet lifelong friends and thank you for teaching me so much. Thank you, game developers, artists, audio-experts, UI developers... Thank you game design document builders, playtesters, streamers.

I'll flat out say it, thank you all for your shitty little games that made me giggle.

See you in the next, it's been fun!

DrJavaSaurus