Ludum Dare results

Ludum Dare #47 results just came out this morning! Let's break them down.

For context, the previous compo had 1379 participants. The results for my game Lighthouse Keeper were as follows:

• 45th overall (not bad at all for a first Ludum Dare)
• 100th in fun (juicy enough)
• 393rd in innovation (argh, innovation! my only weakness)
• 189th in theme (which was "keep it alive", and you had to keep the light alive, not extremely creative but it's there)
• 82nd in graphics (art style is about the same)
• 24th in audio (mainly because I polished the music until I got bored of it, also nice explosion effects)
• 209th in humor (I don't fully understand this category either)
• 61st in mood (mostly helped by the art & music)

Now let's look at the results for this compo. There were 800 participants. It decreased, probably because LD46 took place in the middle of a general lock-down, with the virus and all, with people having more time to make games.

For dramatic reasons I will sort the categories by ascending order of rank.

• 188th in theme ("stuck in a loop", it only moved by 1 rank and declined relatively speaking. Come on! You're stuck in the loop of a gallows' rope. To be fair, some reviewers didn't get it, there was also very creative games out there)
• 40th in innovation (still one of my weaknesses, but now we're in the top 5%, that's escalating quickly)
• 36th in graphics (art style is about the same)
• 29th in audio (the most declining category, but I started very high so it's not disappointing at all)
• 28th in mood (wacky and a bit adventurous, helped by the gameplay and juice)
• 13th in humor (now I'm starting to understand this category)
• 6th in fun (juicy enou… wait what??? 6th place?????)
• 5th overall (what?? how????)

Um. It would appear that Ace of Rope ranked 5th place overall. Out of 800 entries. Of the hard mode of the most popular game jam to exist on the internet.

To say that I am happy about it would be an understatement.