So I rated a lot of games 2 stars when the relevant attribute was OK, but had nothing special about it.

Second, do you find that you’re perhaps building games less for yourself and more for what you believe will be highly rated? You mention “It shows that I’m connecting more with players rather than myself as a designer because I can more easily predict how people will react to certain aspects of the game.” Is there an element in there of compromising your own vision in favor of what will be popular? Or has your own vision been shifted and re-shaped such that you don’t even consciously notice the difference?

Also yes, ratings here are very harsh it seems. I also suspect that there are at least a few people who 1-star any game that isn’t a web game, or who 1-star games they can’t play even though they are directed not to do so.

Regarding your game, I gave you highish innovation simply because I could see the scope you were aiming for. Most LD entrants make a smaller game (and for good reason) or one that really just expresses itself to its fullest extent as-is. Yours has a lot of work yet not done to really become what it wants to be, and I was rating based on that “wants to be” part.

The only one that surprises me is graphics at 3.93 — meaning that some people have rated it 3 or lower, which I don’t understand, as I feel I’ve done superbly there. But then again, almost everybody gets 2.x or 3.x scores and very VERY few get 4.x scores (like only the top 10 people in each category), so it can only be that lot of people are quite harsh when rating.

Looking at percentiles, I’m just about in the top 5%, as I was last time, which is not so bad I suppose.

* Overall: 2.95 -> 2.81 — I think it falls over p0.05, probably not a significant difference. I expected to rank lower this time.
* Graphics: 2.73 -> 2.64 — I’m a bit surprised, since the previous game was very incomplete graphically compared to the current one. Maybe the previous one was overvoted, since 2.6 seems like a fair score.
* Audio: 2.31 -> 2.94 — One of my goals was to work on music support, I’m happy that the scores show this.
* Innovation: 2.8 -> 2.89 — I’m not sure what is innovative about my new game. I wish people commented on this.
* Theme: 2.25 –> 3.41 — I took a more traditional approach to the theme, and it showed. I’m still mad at the “alone is SADNESS” mob from LD 22
* Fun: 2.78 -> 2.36 — as expected. actually, I expected this score to be even lower. I seriously dropped the ball on gameplay this time around.
* Mood –> 1.97 –> 2.60 — I’m not really sure how to interpret the “mood” score, and I think most people interpret mood in a different way. So I can’t make much of this score.
* Humor –> 2.10 –> 2,49 — I did not aim any of the games to be humorous, but added a few chuckle-worthy elements in each. I’m happy to see them recognized.

In the end, other than innovation, I’m not terribly surprised by the results. Thanks for making me think about them though, Dr_soda! By the way, I would LOVE to know the standard deviation/skew for each of the above grades.

With LD22, I was expecting much better results, but I guess my game just sorta missed the mark.

I did NOT expect to get such high marks in LD23 based on my performance in LD22, but I’m very pleased that it was so well received. The comments really seemed to reflect my exact feelings on my own game, which was great. It shows that I’m connecting more with players rather than myself as a designer because I can more easily predict how people will react to certain aspects of the game.

Ludum Dare is proving to be invaluable to me as a game designer.

I love the Ludum Dare.

It’s SO BAD.