Judges & Voting

Learn about the voting process, voting criteria, and the judges that rate your games.

Voting Process

Once all submissions are gathered, all entries are verified to ensure that all necessary information is provided and that the rules stated in Rules & Guidelines and in the Medium article for the specific Game Jam are followed. The judges will then play through and rate the games over the course of 3 weeks.

Each game is played by all judges and scored the voting criteria below. The game's accumulated score allows judges to determine the top 10.

Each judge can also select up to 15 Honorable Mentions. Up to 10 experiences that are not part of the top 10 and were designated as Honorable Mention by the most of the judges will be then awarded an Honorable Mention prize.

Voting Criteria

Games are judged based on five categories, amounting to a maximum of 22 points per judge. The following voting categories are scored based on the following criteria:

Overall Creative Idea

This category is rated from a scale of 1-5 by each judge.

• Originality / uniqueness of idea

• Theme adherence

Level Design

This category is rated from a scale of 1-5 by each judge.

• Game flow

• Ensuring that areas cannot be accessed or skipped past unless intentional

• Terraforming

• Immersion (visual design & coherence)

Game Design

This category is rated from a scale of 1-5 by each judge.

• Quality of logic design / mechanics

• Fun and well balanced mechanics

• Immersion (based on mechanics)

• Narrative (applicable based on narrative’s importance in your game)

• Level of replayability

Playability

This category is rated from a scale of 1-5 by each judge.

• Intuitive gameplay

• Severity of issues / bugs disrupting player experience

BONUS: Wow Factor

This category is a bonus point category rated from a scale of 0-2 by each judge.

• Outstanding assets and artistic direction

• Unique / innovative features

• Outstanding atmosphere / immersion

• Exceptional player experience

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Judges

Game Jams have a total of 5 judges:

• 2 from The Council

• 3 from Trusted Partners

Guest Judges from IPs may select an Experience for a special prize.

Trusted Partners

For each Game Jam, 3 external Trusted Partner judges (in addition to 2 judges from The Council) will vote on the experiences submitted.

Trusted partners are creators that are selected for their skills with the Game Maker and have already published several experiences. Most of them have also already participated in Game Jams. Trusted Partners will rotate from one Game Jam to another.

Trusted Partners acting as judges, as well as directly related persons, cannot participate in the Game Jam they are judging.

The Council

The Council is an independent entity working closely with The Sandbox on tasks such as Quality Assessment of games published in our ecosystem. All judges from The Council thus have extensive experience in evaluating games and determining their strengths and weaknesses. When you submit a Game Jam entry, you may opt for feedback by The Council who will send an e-mail once the final results are announced to those who wanted feedback.

Guest Judges

Guest IP's judges might select one experience for a special IP prize based on an IP fit. However, they do not influence the global ranking.