GBA Jam 2024
The GBA Jam 2024 has come to an end! We are proud to say it was our most successful event yet, with a total of 52 (!!) final submitted entries.
The event was hosted by the the gbadev.net community. We're promoting the development of new GBA homebrew games, development tools and documentation. Join us on Discord or IRC and check out our curated collection of gbadev resources.
A huge thank you and congrats to everyone who participated! We hope you had fun and picked up something new along the way.
We'd also like to extend our gratitude to our sponsors, whose support made this event possible:
insideGadgets, Bitmap Soft, ZedLabz, incube8 Games, The EXP, The Retro Room, gbdev.io
And thanks to everyone who donated to the prize pool, our fellow organisers and judges, and of course everyone who's played & enjoyed the entries so far (if you haven't yet, what are you waiting for!!)
Results
Prize winners are marked in bold, open-source bonus is denoted by ﹢.
A five-way tie break was required for 4th place due to the physical prize, other ties have been left as-is.
Full detailed results for all 52 entries can be found on the itch.io results page.
Overall (Top 20)
- BeatBeast﹢ by Afska, Lu, Synthenia
- Discrete Orange by Tardigrade
- Getting Around It with Pheasant Birdy by Hell Labs
- Dungeon Tactics Advance by setsquare, LostImmortal
- Space Evangelion﹢ by fixxiefixx
Sys*Crusher by OutOfSync
Detective Monroe: Murder at Sea﹢ by eragnarok, HummusHustler
Aereven Advance by Dreamnoid - Sleep Paradox by staticlinkage, ReyOruga, Nikku4211
Zipline Zapper by 3DSage
World of Zoink by colonelsalt, Beatscribe - Work Life by jeffzzq
Toll Runner by Jenka Lab - Hex Advance by Ax
GEMATRIX by Issung
Happy Dawn by Luife
Globlins! by Jeremy Elkayam, Pollyannawog, Arcobaleno97, Dot Maetrix
Galactic Quest by origamiscienceguy, potatoTeto, n67094
Bata Dubnos by Fralacticus - Sekhmet's Playground by Pyro_Pyro, ReyOruga, mooon.bit
Technical
- Getting Around It with Pheasant Birdy by Hell Labs
- Zipline Zapper by 3DSage
- Sleep Paradox by staticlinkage, ReyOruga, Nikku4211
- Project: PAG - Tech Demo by Gronis93
- Bata Dubnos by Fralacticus
BeatBeast by Afska, Lu, Synthenia
Originality
- Bata Dubnos by Fralacticus
World of Zoink by colonelsalt, Beatscribe
Discrete Orange by Tardigrade
BeatBeast by Afska, Lu, Synthenia
Work Life by jeffzzq
Graphics
- Sekhmet's Playground by Pyro_Pyro, ReyOruga, mooon.bit
- Discrete Orange by Tardigrade
BeatBeast by Afska, Lu, Synthenia - Zipline Zapper by 3DSage
Toll Runner by Jenka Lab
Audio
- BeatBeast by Afska, Lu, Synthenia
- GBA Grand Prix by Dippy0615
Getting Around It with Pheasant Birdy by Hell Labs
Discrete Orange by Tardigrade - Sekhmet's Playground by Pyro_Pyro, ReyOruga, mooon.bit
Polish
- Discrete Orange by Tardigrade
- Dungeon Tactics Advance by setsquare, LostImmortal
- Sys*Crusher by OutOfSync
2048 Advance by Basil Termini - Detective Monroe: Murder at Sea by eragnarok, HummusHustler
Getting Around It with Pheasant Birdy by Hell Labs
Judging and Prizes
The GBA Jam 2024 submissions were judged by: AntonioND, Evan Bowman, exelotl, GValiente, pmprog, PyroPyro.
If you won a prize, we'll be in touch via email over the next few days! More details on how the prizes were calculated can be found here.
Physical Prizes
The top 4 participants can choose from the following pool (first place gets first pick, and so on...)
- 3 × GBxCart RW cartridge flasher/dumper, courtesy of insideGadgets
- 1 × Fydo's Magic Tiles for Game Boy, courtesy of Tom Sutton
Money Prizes
- 1st place - $545
- 2nd place - $218
- 3rd place - $136
- 4th place - $109
- 5th place - $82
(note: 4th & 5th place to be combined and shared evenly among 5 entries due to a tie)
Open source bonus
Additional prize money is given to the top 3 entries whose source code was released under a free-software license.
- 1st - $136
- 2nd - $82
- 3rd - $55
(note: 2nd & 3rd bonus to be combined and shared evenly among 2 entries due to a tie)
Tie-breaks
Tie-breaks have been applied only where necessary for physical prizes to be assigned. Consequently we had to resolve a 5-way tie for 4th place between Dungeon Tactics Advance, Space Evangelion, Sys*Crusher, Aereven Advance, and Detective Monroe: Murder at Sea.
To break the tie, we ran 10 polls in parallel, asking judges to vote on which of each pair of games they liked the most. This gave the following results:
| Tiebreak poll outcomes: | Total | ||||||||||
| Dungeon Tactics Advance | 4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 17 | ||||||
| Space Evangelion | 4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 17 | ||||||
| Sys*Crusher | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 9 | ||||||
| Detective Monroe: Murder at Sea | 1 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 9 | ||||||
| Aereven Advance | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 8 | ||||||
This narrowed the tie down to Dungeon Tactics Advance vs. Space Evangelion. We then used the average of all judging criteria on itch.io to resolve this final tie, narrowly awarding the 4th place physical prize to Dungeon Tactics Advance.
Besides this, the prize money for 4th and 5th place will be distributed evenly between all five tied entries, with the 2nd and 3rd open-source bonus being shared between Space Evangelion and Detective Monroe: Murder at Sea.
