Announcing The Winners Of The 6th Annual Public Domain Game Jam!

At the start of this year, for the sixth time in a row, we launched the latest edition of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1928! Once again, we got a whole bunch of fantastic entries making use of newly public domain materials to create games of all types. And now it's time to announce the winners!

Every year, it gets more and more painful to choose the final slate of winners in all six categories, because there are so many entries that deserve recognition. So before we get to the winners, I want to acknowledge a few fantastic games that didn't quite make the cut.

Leaving Cambridge is the third entry in these jams from designer Nora Katz, who won Best Analog Game with Nude On A Yellow Sofa in 2022 and got a nod for The Chess Player in 2023, and like those last two entries it's a thoughtful and intimate roleplaying experience, this time inspired by a 1928 poem. Ladies of the Almanack by dandelion dino is an unfinished but extremely promising start to an adventure-game-esque adaptation of Ladies Almanack by Djuna Barnes, with fantastic visuals and subject matter. 1928 Author Clicker Tycoon by gogp is a creative minimalist browser game that slowly reveals amusing new mechanics and draws on a huge corpus of text from 1928 books, and is notable for being coded from scratch rather than using any kind of engine. M3KMarch by A.M.Homunculus is a robust solo pen-and-paper roleplaying game that feels a little like an analogue roguelike. Soulless Children and Troika 19280!, both by xiombarg, are clever modifications/extensions to existing roleplaying systems. The Steamboat of Madness by Digital Phoenix UG is a twisted, visually-striking platformer. And 20 Hrs. 40 Min. by aeta is rich and playful roleplaying/storytelling game about Amelia Earhart with excellent rotoscoped pixel art.

I strongly encourage everyone to check out all these games and the other entries over on Itch, but now without further delay, on to the winners...

Best Analog Game - Letters To Cthulhu by Lucienne Impala

We get a lot of great small, experimental roleplaying games as submissions in these jams, and every now and then one of them stands out for containing an especially creative and unique idea. Letters To Cthulhu by Lucienne Impala is, as you've probably guessed, based on H. P. Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu, and with just a few pages of rules it taps into the themes of corruption and madness in the quest for knowledge and power that we associate with the Lovecraft mythos. Players take on the roles of Cthulhu cultists (except one who plays the dark god itself) and collaborate to write a letter in which they must weigh their devotion against their desires - and in doing so, they have opportunity to alter and sabotage each others' words, whether to jockey for Cthulhu's favor or rein in the avarice of their compatriots. The elegant simplicity with which it creates this intriguing dynamic earns Letters to Cthulhu this year's title of Best Analog Game.

Best Digital Game - Millions of Cats by Javi Muhrer, Chris Muhrer & McCoy Khamphouy

It's tough to make a video game on a game jam timeline. Usually the smart approach is to limit your ambition and pick one or two things to focus on, whether that's refined mechanics or original art or ample content or something else. But if you're feeling ambitious, you can try to do what Javi Muhrer, Chris Muhrer, and McCoy Khamphouy have done with Millions of Cats: build a fully-realized puzzle platformer with a strong core mechanic that gets explored through a full slate of levels rendered in original pixel art. Based on the 1928 book of the same name by Wanda Gag (the oldest American picture book still in print), Millions of Cats is an impressive accomplishment. You control a character who is followed by cats that you can spawn at will, and must use them to navigate rooms full of gates and switches that grow increasingly complex, while the game teaches you via well-employed conventions of puzzle design. For being a complete and satisfying puzzle game, Millions of Cats wins Best Digital Game.

Best Adaptation - Mickey Party by Benjamin Gray

We knew it was almost certain we'd have lots of entries and at least one winner based on the big entrant to this year's public domain, Steamboat Willie, but this was never the category that came to mind first. Yet Mickey Party by Benjamin Gray has found the perfect way to adapt the source material and retain the playful cartoon spirit of a series of madcap antics between expressively animated characters, in part by taking a little inspiration from a popular video game that is decidedly not in the public domain. But Mickey Party is no video game: it's a tabletop take on Mario Party, with players moving pieces around a wacky game board and competing in competitive minigames based on scenes from the iconic cartoon, for which they'll need props including dice, coins, cups, and citrus fruits. Apart from these accessories, it's simple enough to print the necessary pieces and play with a group of 2-4 players - and the action gets started right away. For its success in embodying the spirit and style of Steamboat Willie in game form, Mickey Party wins Best Adaptation.

Best Remix - The Burden Of Creation by Menendez Guerra

Steamboat Willie was the most famous cartoon to enter the public domain this year, but it wasn't the only one. Not only were there other Mickey Mouse shorts in 1928, there were also classic early works by the Dave and Max Fleischer - and The Burden Of Creation by Menendez Guerra chops them all up and puts them back together in a small walking simulator with a surreal low-res aesthetic, ominous vibes, and a hidden narrative. As the player, you explore the grey hallways of a strange building, facing a few light obstacles and encountering a series of vignettes built out of sprites from the various source cartoons. It's creepy and mysterious, and there are secrets to be found, plus the whole thing is elevated by a backdrop of 1928 music that only adds to the atmosphere. For creatively combining material from multiple sources into a memorable little experience, The Burden Of Creation wins Best Remix.

Best Deep Cut - Solar Storm 1928 by David Harris

Long time followers of these game jams surely know the name by now: David Harris has submitted a winning game in every jam since the second, and each time his entry is one of the most unique and striking of them all. This year is no different: Solar Storm 1928 is a tabletop game very unlike its predecessors, but with all the same creativity and thoughtfulness plus some intricate mechanics. It draws on one not-so-deep cut source, Buckminster Fuller's 1928 plans for the Dymaxion house, and one very deep cut: hand-drawn sketches of solar activity in 1928 from the Mt. Wilson Observatory. The former becomes the game board, with each player constructing a Dymaxion house of their very own on Fuller's template, while the latter provides the challenge, with the historical solar activity doing damage to the houses to see whose holds up best. Either of these mechanics could, by itself, form the basis of a great game, and the combination of them both is simply inspired. For using a collection of sunspot sketches of all things to power a game about Buckminster Fuller, Solar Storm 1928 wins Best Deep Cut.

Best Visuals - Flight from Podunk Station by onamint

There were quite a few good-looking entries this year, but it's hard to compete with a game that consists almost entirely of completely original artwork, and that's what you'll find in Flight from Podunk Station by onamint. It's another take on Steamboat Willie, but this time a much darker one, casting the boat's crew as a party of gangsters on a grim and frightening river in a classic RPG with turn-based combat. Players must manage their party and their resources through a series of violent encounters with twisted enemies, and while the gameplay and balance is unrefined at the present stage of development, it's not the star of the show anyway. That would be the artwork: unique handcrafted portraits for each character and enemy, absolutely brimming with expressiveness and style while drawing on the Disney source material, all rendered in striking black-and-white-and-red. Beyond the characters, the environment and interface are all similarly stylized and original, with just a few third-party icons and stock effects seamlessly filling in some gaps. For its wealth of top-notch original art that's been perfectly assembled, Flight from Podunk Station wins Best Visuals.

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 great entries on Itch!