#LOWREZJAM 2016 - I rated all the games!!! (PART 2)

Welcome back to the second part of my #LOWREZJAM summary! As I previously mentioned I completed my little quest. Rated all the game I could. It was like a wild roller-coaster ride! Full of excitements, disappointments, rage and pleasant surprises!

This morning I woke up excited. The results were already announced! I took a look and I finished at... 39th! Wow, for a first time jam, with a game I felt unfinished and unpolished I was very satisfied, got 26 votes in overall which is above average. The average number of votes was 9. Many of the games were below it. Surprising since there were excellent games that didn't get that many votes. Maybe the genre wasn't that attractive or people just judged based on screenshots. I don't know. Since I decided to rate all the games I had to torture myself sometimes, but I was surprised pleasantly sometimes, completing some games as my mouth stayed open.

Now this part is very personal and subjective. These are my opinions, but I tried to be objective when I rated games. But trust me, it's difficult when you play a game which is not from your liked genre. But I never thought as a none puzzle game fan, I'll get hooked on many puzzle games! Some games were excellent experiences for me and some of them were just... so yeah... I was full of rage!

Let's see my personal favourites!

Lost Ethereal by theLucre

An aesthetically nice atmospheric adventure game with great artwork, fun little puzzle elements. Everything felt self-explanatory and satisfying. Great atmosphere, short but great gameplay. Really loved it. Finished at fantastic 2nd place based on 8 ratings. Very well done and thanks for the experience!

Starlight by Amorphous

Oh Starlight, you wonderful experience! I really loved the main character sprite and the whole environment. What you have to do in Starlight? Going from stars to stars and lit them up. That's all! But it's a great experience thanks to the music and the story elements. It's one of those games that I couldn't put down until I left out two stars somewhere and... Now that's sad. I was looking for them for like 20 minutes. Finished at the great 10th place!

The Legend of Dad - A Quest For Milk by Binary Moon

I don't say it's original, but it has some special charm. Basically it's about a dad who looks for milk for his crying baby. That's it. That's it? Well, it's a time trial like adventure game where you need to find all the milk, while you need to find secret passages, read clues find upgrades and keys. Simple, yes, charming, absolutely. The artwork is excellent, nice bright colors, the main character looks great, the challenge is short and fun. When you run out of time, you start over. But you know more and more about the map so after a few tries you'll succeed. My only big complain was the lack of sound effect. Still, an adorable and fun experience. Finished at 27th. Great job! My personal favourite!

Castle Storm by Jack Oatley

This game reminded me of a game called... well... Castlestorm. Very intuitive controls, nice artwork, easy to play. Nice music and sounds. Fun little game, very polished. Nice job! Finished at 36th!

Bob's Magical Chainsaw by STK

A really awesome metroid-like platformer. I refuse to use the metroidvania phrase, because while it's Metroid style, it's not Castlevania... just my personal preference not to use that word except for Castlevania games that plays like Metroid... Now back to the game.
So Bob's Magical Chainsaw is a metroid style platformer with variety of different places and enemies. Great controls, very nice artwork, well done cutscenes. You need to get abilities to reach places that you couldn't before, fight enemies and enjoy the experience. Very nicely done in overall!
Finished only at the 62nd place and it was kinda surprising for me, but actually the game has no sounds at all so it really affected the overall rating.

Adversary x64 by Fissurefury

It's a side-scroller where you control both a robot and a human being in a sci-fi setting. You can change between the two characters. The most memorable thing about this game is the atmosphere. It's unsettling, creepy. I felt uncomfortable playing it thanks to the nice audio. Very well done! As a fan of horror games, it caught my attention! Finished 99th.

Road Trip by premek

Why is this... hmmm... game here? What is it exactly? Well it's the Desert Bus of #LOWREZJAM 2016. If you have an XBOX 360 controller, this game will give you a good hand massage. It revs up the motor as you accelerate. Finished 104th place and 1st in 64x64 Authenticity! For some reason I had fun with this title.

Stay Frosty by Marmalade

You have to go home. "A snowball fight has broken out! Don't get hit!" It has nice music, pretty good 3D environment and animations. So that's the game, right? But then I got home, it was simple. Because it's all just an innocent snowball fight, right? Yeah... then right in the feels. I don't spoil it, try it out! Finished at 129th place.

Momiro VI by puligames

A simple game where you need to collect 1000 materials on the planet Momiro VI with you rover. The good thing is that you get money for the collecter materials and you can upgrade your rover. And this is the fun part. You rover is horrible at the beginning. Barely turns, slow... boring. And even one upgrade makes a huge difference! Upgrading the rover is fun, especially when I left out the traction upgrades so I was driving like a professional rally driver. Well, almost. The place is big so the speed is necessary because some materials are far away. There is day-night cycle, nice lighting and shadows, unfortunately, there is no sounds or music. And the game gets boring after a while but it has potential. The power of the rover took this game to the 153th place.

BATHYSPHERE by Luke

Based on the rating this game's raw score is 4,4376. That's strong! But it got only 4 votes and that means a serious score penalty based on the median of the number of ratings in overall. 

An atmospheric game where you control a sphere that submerges to capture some radio signal and decode the messages. The story and the story telling is interesting and I found the game very immersive. Both unsettling and relaxing at the same time. I just didn't feel comfortable under the water. Great job! Finished at 161th place.