Of course, the Community Spotlight won't be chosen until after you, the players, vote on their favorite games (other than these two). Until that happens, let's talk about the current winners, Pokémon Convenant and Tower of Ashes! This article will go a little more depth into each of these games as Game Jam winners!
Pokémon Covenant is a very beautifully made game in the Generation 2 style, albeit with entirely modern Pokémon game design (Physical/Special Split, modern moves/'mons, EXP.Share). Notably, the game focuses a ton on a cognition based region, building off a truly unique world where the protagonist is trying to reacquire pieces of their shattered heart across a region where people who have fallen psychologically end up, including you. Some areas include a town and bathhouse full of people who are too stricken by sloth to move or function, a casino area where people become obsessed with greed, and things of that nature. It takes a very unique storybuilding opportunity and gradually tries to build the pieces to why the player needs to be redeemed in the first place.
As a bonus, the game runs for a few hours but is actually awaiting additional updates featuring more Vices for the story, so make sure to pay attention to future updates for this game!
Tower of Ashes might as well be the other side of the coin. Covenant focuses a ton on its world and story, and while it is definitely has a good grasp in the gameplay department, it's definitely more poking at storytelling and worldbuilding as its strength comparably. Tower of Ashes has a huge focus on its gameplay, and actually features prominent roguelike features! The player enters the Tower of Ashes every day, a structure that changes its interior every time you enter selecting two from a set of Pokémon to enter the tower (temporarily). The goal is to climb all the floors in on sitting to get to the top.
Of course, getting to the top is intentionally quite difficult, and the player will need to assemble a strong squad from within the tower as well as Relics that will boost the party and upgrade various attributes. For example, some Relics will boost the strength of certain kinds of moves, some Relics have activation requirements that make the game a little safer, some straight up boost your damage but boost the damage you take as well...It's very well crafted and extremely fun to experiment with. My team for Tower of Ashes was entirely made of Ghost-Pokémon, abusing some of the type specific relics along with damage boosts to be really difficult to hit and hit very hard back. It sounds easy, but the bosses of Tower are very strong, and have multiple health bars, requiring some level of management of your team, which includes making necessary sacrifices and setting up combos for the rest of your team. I actually played 2-3 more runs after I beat the game instead of moving to another game, just because I wanted to see what other funny combos I could come up with. It's great!
It is a fantastically fun game with tons of variation, and it had a ton of thought put into it. However, I definitely want to still give props to the world-building of the game! The game features a ton of beautifully sprited characters, tilesets, and a stellar and wonderful looking UI design that really captures and makes the game look and play smoothly at the same time. The reoccurring characters, in their wonderfully and endearingly sprited forms, and all these factors together a very unique flavor and life to a game that without, would just be in essence, a bunch of numbers and RNG rolling at the screen rather than a fully crafted experience.
Both of these games were fantastic games in their own right, with tons of positive qualities between them! While I loved aspects of every jam game this year (yes, I played every single one of them to completion), I definitely wanted to highlight parts of these games as a token of their victory. Congratulations again to both development teams for their achievement!
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