The Best Games from GMTK Game Jam 2023

Earlier this month, I challenged 23,000   game designers to create a  brand new game – in just 48 hours. And, what’s more – the game had  to fit a very difficult theme… That’s right. Roles reversed. I wanted to see games that let us become a  character that we don’t normally get to play.

Like, instead of controlling  the buff knight in a suit of   armour – what happens if we get to play  as the army of enemy skeletons, instead? As always, the community rose to the challenge. They submitted over 6,800 games. Making it, once again, the  biggest jam in itch.io’s history. Sorry about the servers.

I played through the top 100 rated games,  and picked out my 20 absolute favourites. These games are clever, creative, inventive,   and annoyingly good for games  made in a single weekend. As always, the results are in  no particular order or ranking –

And this year, I’ve bundled them into groups  that show off different takes on the theme. Okay. So, a very popular take on the theme  was to make a game with a hero character,   who moves through the level by themselves.

And you’ve got to help or hinder them,  by taking on a completely different role. Take, for instance, Princess Paladin. Here, the titular princess is  very much the main character   as she takes on waves of demonic  bats and slime-spitting snakes. You, on the other hand, play  as her measly minion sidekick.

So you dash around the level to  pick up weapons and health potions,   which you can then yeet towards  to the princess to help her out. Which means you’re basically playing  as Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite. But it’s surprisingly fun  to play in the support role.

For one, while it can be tricky to  work alongside an autonomous AI,   these cute thought bubbles help make the  princess’s decision-making more transparent. And there’s some clever design here as you juggle  your own needs with those of the so-called hero.

When you pick up a health potion, for instance  – you have to ask yourself: who needs this more? You or me? Another take on this idea  can be seen in LedgePainter. You’re a game dev making a fancy  3D shooter but – alas – your  

Playtesters can’t seem to navigate  the level without some assistance. So, it’s time to do what all  triple A games do and paint   the way forward with bright yellow splotches. The game’s split into two halves:   you’ve got the editor where you lay  down your paint, from a limited supply.

And then you can hit play to see how the  AI-controlled character handles your stage. You can also look at The Tutorial,   which is also about painting a level layout  to give commands to an autonomous hero. So those are games where you help the  AI-driven character reach their goal.

But plenty of games went the other way, and  instead pitted you against the protagonist. Bready or Not is clearly inspired by  the breakout hit Vampire Survivors. But instead of playing as the whip-wielding  hero, you’re now commanding the army of enemies. Each one is on a different cooldown timer,  

So you need to bounce between the  different birds to create a varied team. When you do enough damage, you can pick  from a random selection of upgrades – from faster cooldowns, to twice-as-many spawns. Now I have to admit, the similar entry, Vampire:  

No Survivors, is probably a little bit  smarter as you must carefully spend a   limited pool of resources to build  the most effective army of enemies. But I slightly preferred playing Bready or Not – probably because there’s something wickedly  fun about spawning such a massive pool  

Of pigeons that it literally  breaks the game’s audio system. Another popular approach for this  theme was to take a well-known game,   and completely flip it on its head. So, Inside Job is an upside-down tower defence   game where you place down the  minions, rather than the towers.

You’ve got a bunch of different baddies to  pick from – each on different cooldowns – and you have to carefully deploy them  to overwhelm the opponent’s defences. Sometimes that means making  sure many enemies arrive at   the towers simultaneously,  so some slip by unharmed.

Or using a costly power-up to  temporarily shut down the defences. Bonus points to Tower Attack, which also  toyed with the “tower offence” concept. Another genre that’s ripe for  reversal is the stealth game. In Sneakerdoodle, we actually want  to be spotted by patrolling guards.

You play as an attention-hungry pooch  who wants to be chased by humans. But not caught and cuddled. So you need to intentionally trip  these wandering view-cones… and then make a dash for it  before you’re actually caught. This leads to some surprisingly clever levels as  you dart under tables, squeeze through tight gaps,  

And carefully choose the order in which you get  spotted, so you don’t find yourself trapped. Retro games also provided a good  opportunity for role reversal. In Bricker Breaks Free, the game  starts with a very familiar set-up:   a paddle firing a ball towards a bundle of blocks.

But then things change: the camera  swaps into an isometric view and   you’re now controlling the entire field of  blocks as a single, amorphous character. Now you’re moving through corridors  of enemy paddles and wandering balls. You can shoot at the paddles to destroy  them, but this actually uses your blocks  

As ammo – making you a tiny bit  smaller with every shot you take. And the smaller you get, the more  vulnerable your core becomes. However, it’s not all bad being small – you can   use your slimmed-down structure  to sneak through tight gaps.

This is a fun, frantic, and very  clever twist on an arcade favourite. I just love games that use the  character’s shifting size and   shape to organically change  the way you play the game. Kinda like… Snake, which actually  inspired two games in the top 100. My favourite, though, was VERSUS SNAKE,  

Which turns the sedate Nokia phone favourite into  a legitimately scary first-person horror game. So you need to find all the apples in  the room and feed them to the snake. Or you can throw them far away  from you to distract the giant   cobra and give yourself a chance to get away.

It plays on the familiar AI  patterns of the original game,   but turns it into something completely fresh. Real-world games were also at the  mercy of our clever game jammers. Descriptionary is a really  imaginative rethink of Pictionary. Basically, the character tells  you what to draw – just squares,  

Lines, arches, and circles, with vague  directions for where they should go. You can then doodle that in the box below. Your job is to guess what you’ve just drawn. It’s a bit like translating the same message  through 4 languages on Google Translate –

You know, things start getting a bit wonky, but  you can still figure out the original intent. This game is super polished and well worth a play. I also want to give props  to The Last Piece Standing,   for being a rare chess-based  game that I actually enjoy.

You play as the king, and have  to destroy a bunch of enemy   pieces that are slowly marching towards your army. However, you can borrow the powers of the other   pieces to make massive jumps and  diagonal leaps across the board. This turns each bout into a  careful positioning puzzle. Good stuff.

Another way to interpret the theme was to look at  the different roles in games and relationships,   and let us take the side that  we don’t usually get to play. Take, for instance, Get Packing where we become  the shopkeeper NPC from your typical RPG.

In each round you have a limited amount  of money to spend on the weapons, shields,   food, and potions, brought in by the  brave and copyright-dodging adventurer. You then flip to the store room where you  embrace your inner Leon S. Kennedy and  

Try to squish all this stuff into  the cramped confines of a crate. What’s more, certain items can  affect their surroundings – so   don’t put a magic flame sword next to  your bananas, because the fruit will go bad. Sure, we have seen games about being a shopkeeper,  

But this was still a cute game,  and is worth checking out. Another game to do this was Crabjuice. It’s clearly inspired by the horrible headcrabs   from the Half-Life games – those mutant  chicken nuggets who pounce on your face. But here, it’s used to make  a excellent puzzle game.

Playing as the headcrab, you have to get around   these cramped levels by leaping  from one human’s face to another. Soon you’ll be flinging yourself into switches to  open doors, narrowly avoiding enemies with guns,   and ricocheting yourself off  walls for a better vantage point. Pets and Pokemon were also  common targets for role reversal.

We’re so used to playing as the human that   we don’t stop to think what  it’s like to be the animal. Not so in Walkies – a game where  you play as a bone-hungry dog,   who is cruelly constrained by a  tight leash and a strong owner. So the owner wanders around  the town automatically,  

Giving you a small radius to explore for bones. And also ways to gain power – you  can get pets from passing humans,   say, or use fire hydrants as a handy toilet. Once you’re powered up completely, the screen  zooms out and now the dog is totally in charge.

You can zoom around at double speed  and the human is powerless to stop you. It’s a fun back and forth  of power and powerlessness. Meanwhile, in One Day Better, you play as a  cat who tries to help its depressed human.

The dude wakes up in a funk – a fuzzy  fog of thoughts clouding their mind. Left to their own devices  they’d happily sleep in all day. But their faithful moggy can use  a few tools to get them going. So you can meow to get the human’s attention.

Scratch at stuff to make  them move towards objects. And even headbutt the human’s legs  to get them to move between rooms. Using these three commands you can make your owner  tidy their room, have a shower, and eat breakfast. It’s a heartfelt and touching little game  

About the restorative power of  animals, and I really liked it. Another take on the theme was to  give you a pretty standard game. and then pull the rug from beneath  your feet by reversing the roles. Take UVSU.

It’s a platformer where you have to get  the angel to the goal before time runs out. Seems simple enough? But  then you replay the level,   but now as an imp who has to kill the  angel before they reach the door.

And then you play it AGAIN, but as  another angel who now has to reach   the door while dodging the imp and its bullets. Hopefully that made some sense. Basically, you’re simultaneously  killing and dodging yourself and   must think several steps ahead so you  don’t screw yourself over in future runs.

I think you just need to  play this to really get it. It’s a wonderfully clever game. Not surprising, when you learn that  it was made by the developer behind   Toodee and Topdee – which also  started life as a game jam game. Reversal Rooms also begins as a basic platformer.

But then, in level two, your jump  button actually controls the spikes. Then you control the spring. And then the door. It’s a manic context-switching headscratcher that   basically feels like Wario Ware as  a platformer, and I really dig it. And then Ragdolf looks like your average  putting simulator – but then this happens. Oops.

Turns out you need to use the ball as a  bounce pad to get you around the level. It’s actually way more than a  slapstick sight gag, though: it quickly turns into a tricky platformer where   you must carefully time your swings  for the correct power and angle.

I played through this entire  game with a big smile on my face. Highly recommend this one. And then the final twist on the  theme was to go completely meta. Let’s start with Pause to Play, which makes the  pause menu an active participant in the puzzles.

So pausing the game doesn’t actually  stop the action – but it does flash   up some buttons which can be  used as platforms to get around. Then, the options sliders  can be used as lifts – but   they change the settings as you go up and down.

You can zoom the camera, for instance,  to turn your character into a tiny speck. More ideas are explored as the levels go on. It’s an inventive puzzle platformer with  plenty of room to grow into a full game,   if the designer wishes.

A tip of the hat to The Adventures of Raddish Boy,  which also uses pause as a game mechanic. We also saw games that reversed the  roles between player and designer. In Making the Game, you start with  a platformer that is far too easy:   just a brief stroll from start to finish.

So you have to choose the next avenue for the  designer, from a list of three random choices. Each time you expand the game,  it gets harder and harder,   but you’ve got to complete the level to carry on. When the game gets so difficult that  it’s just incredibly tedious to play…

It’s time to hit release. Maybe a little dig at your humble host? I  dunno – but I still liked this game a lot. We also saw games that reversed the roles so hard,   that they actually incorporated  the game jam into the game itself.

There was, of course, Video Editor’s Toolkit which  lets you play as me, editing this video right now. AI MARK: “A brief interlude for our  sponsor, please check them out”. But I’m gonna give the win to Our Dearest Player,   which emulates the experience of being  a game jam judge, in this exact jam.

You play through a handful of simple  reversed-role games – including a   surprisingly good Flappy Bird clone – before  handing out stars in different categories. There’s even a broken Web GL page, which  makes the whole thing super authentic. And then finally… Streamer Screamer is a wonderful  fourth-wall-breaking meta comedy.

This game features a jibbering Twitch streamer,   who is showing off some low-rent  horror game with a spooky villain. But then… the screen pans up to reveal  that you are actually playing as the villain. You’re carrying an iPad showing  the stream, meaning that you can  

Triangulate the location of the streamer  and sneak up behind them for a jump scare. You don’t want to make the  game too scary though – you   want to vary your approach to build  tension – and raise viewer numbers. Plus, you’ll want to hold  back to hear the streamer’s  

Inane babbling about Disney World and dreams. This is a genuinely galaxy-brained game  idea and needs to be explored further. STREAMER: “Oh my god!!” So, there we have it! By reversing roles,   these clever game designers found  fertile ground for brand new game ideas. We helped and hindered AI-driven heroes.

We turned classic game ideas on their heads. We took on unfamiliar roles. We saw surprising twists on familiar concepts. And we went so meta that the fourth  wall shattered into a thousand pieces. As always, I want to shout  out some honourable mentions. Firehose is a manic score-chasing  

Arcade game where you play as a  firefighter… who starts fires. You can only move as far as your hose  will allow – so you’ll then need to   hop into the firetruck and drive somewhere else. The Contrarian Press sees you make  the judicious use of censor bars to  

Rewrite newspaper headlines, and make new stories. It’s all presented with  arty cut-out collage images. And Spared is a bowling game  where you play as the pins. You’ve got to dodge at the last  minute to avoid being struck down,   and different bowlers with special  powers are introduced to mix things up.

To be honest, I can easily recommend a dozen more. So you can now head to itch.io and find the full   list of games – and the public’s  rankings for all the entries. Have a look through the top  100 titles, at the very least.

Thank you so much to everyone who took  part in the jam, or rated some games. Thanks to all the mods on Discord,   to everyone who made our awesome Team  Finder app, and to Leaf over at Itch.io. An extra huge thank you to my Patrons  who fund GMTK Game Jam – and mean we  

Don’t have to get corporate sponsors involved. The jam will be back in 2024. So subscribe to this channel to receive  the date announcement next year. AI MARK: “And that’s a wrap  for 2023. See you next year”.