itch.io

Congratulations to the winners of the 2026 Mystery Game Jam! 

1st Place (and public vote): Loop of Faith 

2nd Place: The Yearbook 

3rd Place: An Overgrown Mystery 

If you are one of these winners, please check the email address you provided along with your entry. You should have received an email with instructions on how to redeem your prize (Mystery Maker). For everyone else, thank you so much for being a part of the jam, and we look forward to hopefully seeing you again next year!

Hey Mystery Gamedevs,

The judging period will end very soon. When the timer runs out, the results will be hidden temporarily, as we'll be revealing the results of the jam in our Discord server shortly after the timer runs out. We will update the jam page, plus this thread, once the results are made public. 

The three judges played through all of your games, so we know how much hard work and passion went into your entries. You all did an awesome job, so no matter what ranking you end up getting, please know that there were many, many great entries that we had to choose from to be the top three prize winners. It was very hard for us to just pick three.

So, congratulations to all. And again, please look forward to the results later today!

-- Kinjo, Mystery Gamedev

Sorry, even if your game has a mystery theme, we have to disqualify this entry because it was created before the game jam started. Best of luck with your game.

Sorry, even if your game has a mystery theme, we have to disqualify this entry because it was created before the game jam started. Best of luck with your game.

Yes, that is allowed!

Hi there! While we appreciate all forms of mystery, whether video game or not, we ask that submissions to the jam are in video game form. We want the judges to be able to consistently and fairly evaluate each entry, and we just wouldn't be sure how to compare a tabletop game (or system) to a video game. We wish you the best of luck with your project as well!

Voting will be open to the public, and the highest overall score from those votes will determine who wins the Public Vote prize. There will also be three more prize winners determined solely by the judges. We believe this will work better than the voting from last year.

It's a good question. After giving it a lot of thought, ultimately we will just trust each dev on their word. The point of the jam is to encourage you finish your game, not get bogged down in rules, so as long as we've helped you achieve that goal then that's all that really matters. Hope that clarifies it for you, and best of luck finishing your game!

This is a great idea for a thread. Thanks for sharing your story, and best of luck in the jam!

Yes, you must work on an old mystery game project that has not been completed yet. Entirely new games will be disqualified. 

Hello! There is no prize, other than finishing your game. Have fun!

We followed itch's recommended guidelines for ranked game jams, which was to only allow voting for people who submitted games.

That said, we agree that there should have been way more votes. We will figure out a different voting method for next time.

Good to hear you had fun and learned a lot regardless -- that is what matters the most!

We’re keeping it simple for our first ranked jam by using itch’s built-in scoring system. It’s not perfect, but it lets us get started without overcomplicating things.

Of course, the opposite problem isn’t ideal either, where a game with just one “perfect” rating ends up ranking higher than a game that received many high ratings but averaged slightly lower. So rest assured that we have, at least, thought deeply about how to balance many aspects of the jam.

For games that have received a low number of ratings, we suggest playing and rating other entries and leaving a comment. When you post a comment on the rating page, your entry is automatically linked below, and other creators are more likely to return the favor. And as noted by Ryan, web builds are much more likely to be played as well.

That said, we’re absolutely open to improving the system for future jams, so feel free to share your feedback. The more we learn from this one, the better we can make next year’s event!

Hello, did you intend to submit the same game twice? Congratulations on your first game by the way.

Thank you for submitting, but your game can’t be accepted to the jam due to use of copyrighted characters and setting elements, which is against the jam rules. This includes visual likenesses and indirect references that violate intellectual property (e.g. obviously recognizable characters like Squidward, "employee of the month", Krabby Patties, etc.). We want to make sure all entries follow the same fair standards. We appreciate your understanding.

Hello, your game page is currently password-protected, which means no one will be able to play it. Please be sure to make your page public before the jam ends.

Hello, your game page is currently password-protected, which means no one will be able to play it. Please be sure to make your page public before the jam ends.

Yes, you can include a controller system you made for previous projects, as long as you use it to create a new project. From the rules page: "You may also use your own pre-existing assets and code, but they must be used to create an entirely different game from the source material (not updating an existing game)."

We will likely have voting in future events, but for our first jam we wanted to keep things simple and low pressure. Feel free to suggest ideas if you have any, and we will consider it for next time.

Wow, thank you so much for sharing your playthrough! It's great fun to watch, and we're all looking forward to parts 2 and 3!