Announcing The Winners Of The 8th Annual Public Domain Game Jam
It’s finally time! Once again it took us a little while to get through all the entries this year, but we’ve now selected the winners in the latest installment of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1930!
As usual, we’ve got winners in six categories. Plus, at the end, we’ve got some honorable mentions for games that didn’t quite make the cut. Let’s get started!
Best Analog Game — Diary of a Provincial Lady by donnabooby
When E. M. Delafield published her semi-autobiographical comedy Diary of a Provincial Lady in 1930, it became an instant smash hit that has never been out of print to this day. With a little polish and expansion, we wouldn’t be surprised to see this party game of the same name achieve a similar status. It combines the gameplay of popular rotating-judge games like Apples to Apples, in which players compete to craft the funniest combinations from a set of cards, with the found-object art techniques of blackout poetry, in which creators turn existing text into a new work by subtraction. Players modify entries from the titular diary to suit randomly selected prompts, competing to collect cards featuring the book’s charming illustrations. It’s simple, fun, funny, and a fitting winner of this year’s Best Analog Game.
Best Digital Game — I Could Do That! by Geouug
Among the notable paintings to enter the public domain this year is Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow, one of the most recognizable works from the abstract art pioneer’s series of geometric compositions in primary colors. Of course, like many deceptively simple works of abstract art, it is often met with the declaration: I Could Do That! So what better title for this game, which responds: prove it! Players are given a brief look at the painting then sent to a blank canvas with some simple drawing tools and challenged to reproduce it, after which their effort is compared pixel-by-pixel with the original and assigned a numerical score with a detailed breakdown of just how close they got. It’s a clever and somewhat cheeky rebuke to dismissive attitudes about abstract art, and this year’s Best Digital Game.
Best Adaptation — I am Sam Spade by Marshview Games
Dashiel Hammet’s 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon is one of the definitive early works of the “hardboiled” genre of detective stories, and its main character Sam Spade was a major inspiration for Raymond Chandler’s famous detective Philip Marlowe. I am Sam Spade is a TTRPG based on the novel that does something very interesting as an adaptation: it draws inspiration from Chandler’s stories, which explored Marlowe’s thoughts and inner life in a way that came to define the character and genre, to enrich Hammet’s story, which very much did not do the same for Spade. To accomplish this, it makes use of mechanics from the brilliant minimalist TTRPG Everyone is John, and has all the players taking turns as Sam Spade, each inhabiting and fleshing out a different aspect of his personality. It’s an intriguing and thoughtful way of reflecting on this seminal novel and character, making it this year’s Best Adaptation.
Best Remix — Lilac Song by Autumn Chen
Lilac Song is a rich piece of interactive fiction that casts the player as a servant in the household of Prussian Minister-President Otto Braun during the last few years of the Weimar Republic. In this charged historical setting, it explores heavy themes of gender, democracy, socialism, and the rise of the Nazis, and it does so with grace through its excellent writing. On top of this, the game mixes together a perfect selection of public domain works to anchor its story with a background aesthetic: the player guides the character as they admire 1930 paintings by Klee and Kandinsky and listen to a variety of early 20th century musical compositions. The use of these works is subtle and elegant, serving to enhance the game’s original story without overtaking it, and for that it’s this year’s Best Remix.
Best Deep Cut — CARAMENTRAN by RedSPINE and poymakes
In the Carnivals of Southern France, there is a tradition: parading an effigy representing the “King of Carnival” or Caramentran. He is scapegoated for all the past year’s misfortunes, placed on trial, and ultimately burned at the stake to conclude the festivities. In a dual entry for both this game jam and the Themed Horror Game Jam, CARAMENTRAN is a haunting video game in which the player is the effigy, trying desperately to extinguish the rising flames and repel the townspeople who hurl accusations and admonishments at you. This premise is unsettling enough, but it’s made all the moreso by the collage graphics that clip their elements from archive images, postcards, magazine advertisements, and other obscure 1930 sources that could easily be overlooked and forgotten. For that, it’s this year’s Best Deep Cut.
Best Visuals — As I Lay Flying by Geouug
There are no returning winners from past editions in this year’s selection, but there is a first for these game jams: a double winner! In addition to winning Best Digital Game, designer Geouug has locked down a second win with As I Lay Flying, which was in fact a strong contender for the former category as well. The game is based on William Faulkner’s 1930 novel As I Lay Dying, and transforms it into a rather silly and slapstick physics-based challenge while still carrying forth a surprising amount of the story and heart of the book. But on top of that, it looks great: it has a robust array of well-polished graphics including original character portraits, parallax backgrounds, and thematically appropriate interface elements. Check it out and you’ll quickly see why it’s this year’s winner for Best Visuals.
Honorable Mentions
It’s always hard to narrow things down to just six winners, and we always end up having to leave out a few that we still feel deserve recognition. Here are some of our other favorite entries:
The Agatha Effect by A.M.Homunculus and Matteo Ignesti — a very creative narrative game that has players jointly crafting a unique murder mystery then conducting a seance with the spirit of Agatha Christie in order to find the solution.
Early Sunday Morning by Nora Katz — a truly unique entry that involves neither a computer nor a tabletop, as it sends players out into the streets of their home city for a play session that combines hide-and-seek with an improvised scavenger hunt.
The House Hunter Mystery by Gwen C. Katz — a genuinely fun little object-finding video game based on Nancy Drew, in which the player must solve a series of riddles while exploring the rooms of a house.
Poetry Appreciator 2K26 by ZapJackson — a comedic exploration of T. S. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday that combines purposely-obtuse resource-management style mechanics with some funny and surprising twists as you click on words to “appreciate” the poem.
The winning designers will be contacted via their Itch pages to arrange their prizes, so if you see your game listed here, keep an eye on your incoming comments!
A huge thanks to all the designers who submitted games to this year’s jam! Stay tuned for our series of spotlight posts taking a closer look at each of the winning entries, and for an episode of the Techdirt Podcast where we’ll be discussing them. In the mean time, go check out all the other great entries on Itch!