Designing a Winner — Game Design Highlights from the “Champions” Mega Game Jam
In July 2022, Crayta launched its biggest ever Mega Game Jam, offering a fabulous $200,000 prize fund. It was, after all, our second anniversary and we wanted to celebrate in style!
The theme of the Mega Game Jam was “Champions” — an intentionally big, celebratory theme that was accessible enough for all creators to get involved, but also broad enough to give us a wide variety of great games.
It worked!
The Crayta community came through and delivered an incredible range of creative, daring and absorbing games — some of which have the potential to go on to be true Crayta blockbusters, And if you don’t believe us, just take a look at the Winner’s Video.
With the 5 best games earning their creators $20,000 — and with a variety of other prizes ranging from $10,000 for a specific category award (for example “Technical Excellence”) all the way down to $1,000 for an “Honourable Mention”, the Champions Mega Game Jam was big news for everybody. And it is just one part of the incredible — and potentially quite lucrative — Crayta Creator’s Programme.
As with all of our Game Jams, creative interpretation of the theme was really important — but to be in with a chance of snagging a top prize, we needed to see excellence of game design. Obviously that is a very complicated and subjective area, especially when every game is quite different, but in many ways that wonderful variety is what forced us to look more closely, and think more carefully about the games we found the most enjoyable and compelling.
So let’s dive into a small selection of the winning games and highlight a few of the great design ideas that helped them rise to the top of the list. Hopefully all creators will be able to draw some knowledge and inspiration from this post as well as from the games themselves.
(It’s worth mentioning that judging Game Jams is a long, complex process so this is just a very small sample of the qualities we identified — there are lots more, but perhaps that is a subject for another day.)
Upl!ink: Cosmic Explorers
One of the recipients of the 5 “Winner” prizes worth $20,000, was the marvelous Upl!ink: Cosmic Explorers by a great team of long-term Crayta community members, Slaying and Kay.
Uplink is a wonderful combination of base-building tycoon and sci-fi action loot grinder. And there are some very smart design choices at work here — including two of the most important things for the long-term success of a game — a great tutorial, and a clear long term objective.
Uplink features a great introduction and tutorial which significantly smooths the player’s first experience of the game. We loved how well it introduced the main theme of building your base — (a very popular game concept, these days). From the first minute we knew that the objective of the game was to upgrade and decorate our base. The mechanism was described afterwards — head out into the combat zones to battle enemies whilst collecting loot to sell.
It would have been easy to see the flashy, action game as the most important bit and to concentrate on that, but Uplink demonstrates that making sure that the players know why they are playing can often be more important than what they have to do.
And as for that flashy action game? It’s an exciting, well balanced piece of action gameplay. There’s a ton of things we could say about the combat mechanics, but for now we want to highlight the great pacing. Each foray into the combat zone lasts just a few minutes and the player can instantly teleport back to their base if they get into too much trouble, or if their inventory is full. So if you only have a few minutes to play — you can get a great experience with some success and progress. If you have more time to spend you can really dig in and upgrade your base or head into the more dangerous — and more valuable — combat zones.
Play Upl!nk: Cosmic Explorers using this link https://launch.crayta.com/play/7g9d9nx5
King’s Champions
Also claiming $20,000 for their “Winner” prize, King’s Champions by the SylGames team (AsTiger, Denior, JusGoat, Rainarten and Unairf) sends you plunging into a medieval castle to recover a sacred artifact. However King’s Champions employs a direct, linear adventure structure.
What we loved about the game was that by providing a good supply of different weapons — and plenty of opportunities to swap between them — the game rapidly becomes a class-based dungeon battler.
Add to the fact that it supports both solo and multiplayer sessions and the game takes on a far richer texture, with players able to pick a balanced loadout and adopt interesting squad tactics as a result.
So the big ideas are great, but the smart ideas lie in the pacing. The Craft tables where players can select weapons are nicely scattered around the environment. This means that you are never unduly punished if you pick a loadout that you don’t get on with. This is a game that enjoys giving the player choices and allows the player to experiment and use the range of options available.
Need another smart decision? Health potions are plentiful, and are instant use. This works well with the challenge posed by large groups of enemies. Even a skilled combatant can get into trouble pretty quickly, and swift use of health potions is essential. This gives the game a constant swing between safety and danger. Your health can drop very quickly — but can also be recovered equally swiftly. It keeps you on your toes and definitely adds to the excitement of the game.
Play King’s Champions now https://launch.crayta.com/play/xas9fxxf
Champions Inc.
Back to a sci-fi setting, $20,000 Winner recipient Champions Inc. from Jam regulars Cereal and Drycoast is a superhero management sim! Yes, now we all know that the thing Superheroes need more than anything else is a good manager to choose their missions whilst they concentrate on the important stuff like having a great right-hook and looking good in tights.
Champions Inc. puts you in the role of that Manager and gives you a budget to recruit your first Hero and then send them out on missions to earn more money, recruit more heroes and grow your business. We imagine that the missions are astonishing sequences of near-death experiences, thrilling fist fights, mind-melting weapons and weirdly appealing supervillains. In fact we have to imagine that because all of the action happens off-screen while you are doing something more useful such as recruiting another Hero or hunting round the city plaza collecting a few more bucks to fund your next Hero.
Champions Inc impressed us most with the witty, clever exploration of the “Champions” theme. We get to be at the centre of the Superhero world, but without needing to learn half a dozen different control schemes engage in high-difficulty boss fights. When we launched the Champions Mega Game Jam, we asked what it might be like to be the little person surrounded by Champions — and this game told us just that.
The amazing, cyberpunk visuals (and the best looking nightclub in Crayta history) give the game a thrilling atmosphere even though it’s basically a resource management sim. And it is that atmosphere, the feel of being in this world that really turns Champions Inc. into a terrific game.
Here’s the link for Champions Inc. https://launch.crayta.com/play/wmu9ns25
Champions Tycoon
Another take on being “just” a manager is Champions Tycoon by AresCaries, Obazu and ShamanKing. This game won the $10,000 Technical Excellence Award thanks to the startling use of battling AI. Returning to medieval roots, Champions Tycoon gives you a small team of fighting heroes to upgrade and send into the ring to do battle. However both your team, and the opposing team are AI controlled, so as the player/team manager you get to watch your skilfully balanced team bravely defeat the enemy — or watch your foolishly ill-balanced and recklessly under-powered band get ripped apart like wet paper bags!
The cool idea here is that you’ve only got a limited number of upgrades before that character is maxed out. And you get a different selection of stat upgrades to pick from each time you choose to beef-up a character.
It’s a constant stream of interesting decisions as you try to balance the stats of each character and of your team and your income which comes from winning battles. The more battles you win the more coins you win and therefore you can recruit new, more powerful heroes — with high limits on the number of upgrade they can take.
There’s another smart idea here, each upgrade takes longer and longer to apply as the power increases — so you might find yourself triggering an upgrade then doing something else while it completes — like taking a few other characters into battle.
It rapidly becomes a very compelling loop — complete a few upgrades, do some battles, set up some nice long upgrades, buy a new and better hero and start the process again.
(And to be honest, this blog would have been finished a while ago if I hadn’t been slowly increasing my latest set of heroes to level 20.)
Play Champions Tycoon https://launch.crayta.com/play/r9z9w5bv
A Hundred Great Ideas.
No, there isn’t a game called A Hundred Great Ideas, but there are at least a hundred great ideas from the Champions Mega Game Jam that we haven’t got space to talk about. So here are some of the other winners that really caught our eye.
Champions Market by Audyssey pushes you even further down the Hero pecking order and positions you as one of the folks who make the stuff those heroes carry into battle. Make this sword, imbue that helmet with magic; there’s no rest for the player in this charming gathering-and-crafting game.The icing on the cake are the NPC heroes wandering around your little crafting station who will stop, peruse, and often buy anything you have on sale. The game superbly captures the spirit of being a tiny but vital cog in a huge world of danger and adventure. A world that lives just outside that permanently locked gateway.
Champions Market Link https://launch.crayta.com/play/mgxvrged
Champions Bounty (created by Strowk and DonHyena) is another clever base-builder matched up with an open-world autobattler. There’s a wonderful playful quality to the game as you build your town, add facilities to improve your champions and earn money to place those all important bounties on targets. It evokes the Greek Gods in those old movies, looking down at the heroes and setting them tasks and granting them favours. An unexpected and creative interpretation of the Champions theme.
Champion’s Bounty link https://launch.crayta.com/play/8fmr4udx
Craytactics: Eldritch Edition (by Crayta regulars LittleCreator and Czinczar) redefines the team based shooter genre in Crayta in this slick, well balanced and well executed game. Two teams face off with one team defending the sacred ritual grounds from the other team of attackers. What makes this design so special is that it is all turn-based. Turns alternate between attacker and defenders, giving each player a chance to move a limited distance, and fire a limited amount of shots at the enemy.
This brought us a completely new way to play shooters in Crayta, and also introduces a whole new level of strategy we’ve not often seen before on the platform.
A game like this is not only ambitious but also needs a lot of work to ensure that the experience and mechanic works. Craytactics manages to get this just right with consideration for all of the elements that are important to a game in this genre including weapon damage, movement amounts, turn length, level design, clear instructions and much more. We’re very excited to see where this game goes and hope that it unlocks many more tactical turn-based shooters to follow!
Craytactics: Eldritch Edition link https://launch.crayta.com/play/udkkg9sq
Dungeon Climber — Winner of the Judges’ Choice award. This is another loot hunter but with an elegant turn-based battle system and an upgrade system underpinned by a rich loot-based economy. Brought to us by one of our newest creators, lukkk89, Dungeon Climber proves that some daring, thoughtful design can literally win awards. Hopefully more new creators will soon follow lukkk89’s example.
Dungeon Climber link https://launch.crayta.com/play/6k44k9r4
Everyone’s a Winner
The Champions Mega Game Jam has produced some of our best games and so many of them demonstrated an incredible level of polish considering they were made in just a few weeks.
With so many games bursting with potential, we’d love to see further developments on these games. There are many opportunities still available within the Creator’s Programme, and with the range of promotional opportunities that our best games can now receive, we think that several of these Champion games could grow into our first blockbusters and draw a huge crowd to Crayta.
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Play Crayta at www.play.crayta.com
