Ladies and gentlemen! After a gruelling few weeks we can now finally announce the winners of the 2024 Gain Jam!
Before we get into the winners, however, I would first like to thank all of the 46 participating teams and entrants for this year, as well as all of our handpicked guest judges, for all of their vital hard work in what has been once again our biggest and fattest Gain Jam to date!
Having judged each and every one of these entries, I know how close some of these decisions were and lamentable it is that only so many could make it through as finalists, and then among the Final Twelve we had the agonising decision of determining the Top 3 winners. Truly the competition has been fierce with many ups and downs felt along its journey!
But without further ado, lets get on with the scoring! To explain, since the Finals scoring works slightly different from the first round: each of our judges, including yours truly, had the onerous task of replaying and gauging these game experiences against one another to rank them all and assign a point value to them - 1st would get 12 points, 2nd would get 11 etc down to 12th getting a single point. Each judge’s points would be tallied to work out the final score for each entry!
Before revealing the winners, a brief round of applause to the runners-up! 
| # | Game Name | Judge 1 | Judge 2 | Judge 3 | Judge 4 | Judge 5 | Judge 6 | Judge 7 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | Mystical Boardwalk of Massive Mind-Benders | 1 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 23 |
| 11 | Tomb of Greed | 7 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 8 | 5 | 31 |
| 10 | Astral Flip | 9 | 1 | 8 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 32 |
| 9 | By the Light’s Grace | 10 | 9 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 34 |
| 8 | WeightWare | 4 | 7 | 7 | 1 | 8 | 7 | 3 | 37 |
| 6= | RogueWeight | 5 | 5 | 9 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 10 | 42 |
| 6= | COOP: A fur-person shooter | 6 | 10 | 6 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 42 |
| 5 | Brewing Cat | 11 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 2 | 9 | 7 | 43 |
| 4 | “Another Day In Paradise” | 3 | 12 | 4 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 8 | 58 |
Each of our finalists marks a fine game in its own right and each is one is well worth a play if you have not yet done so!
And now…
The Top 3
In 3rd place we have… the burger-flipping shenanigans of Squelchies by @Chubberdy and team! 
| Judge 1 | Judge 2 | Judge 3 | Judge 4 | Judge 5 | Judge 6 | Judge 7 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | 8 | 11 | 9 | 11 | 6 | 9 | 62 |
… In 2nd place we have… the time-bending murder mystery caper of LOOP GAROU by @Hoodah and team! 
| Judge 1 | Judge 2 | Judge 3 | Judge 4 | Judge 5 | Judge 6 | Judge 7 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 6 | 12 | 12 | 9 | 11 | 11 | 63 |
… Which means that, finally, in 1st place it’s the team with nothing to fear with Don’t Fear the Jester by @Plant_Planterson and team! A truly deserved win! 
| Judge 1 | Judge 2 | Judge 3 | Judge 4 | Judge 5 | Judge 6 | Judge 7 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 79 |
Best-In Awards
Best Art goes to Brewing Cat by @Bubble2 and @JacoTomo! 
Best Sound goes to WeightWare by @CupCupMug! 
Best Writing goes to Tomb of Greed by @reallyexists! 
And, last but not least, the Community Choice Award has been awarded to RogueWeight by @Yunyanite! 
Congratulations to each of you, one and all! We will be reaching out to each of the listed participants to discuss collection of the cash prizes and you can expect to see judging feedback on all games (yes, all 46!) in their respective threads very soon!
… We are also aware of some of the questions floating around about what seemed like voting irregularities for the Community Choice Award. We plan to address this in detail in a postmortem post we will be putting together at a later date. Until then, we ask that everyone join us in celebrating this year’s winners and to hold any questions on this particular topic until the postmortem.
And finally, in addition to the winners above, I would like to once again thank and congratulate all those who participated this year, our amazing community, as well as our backers on Patreon, whose generous support helps us to fund the general operation of the site as well as projects and events like the Gain Jam!
Without the support we get from all of you all this would not have been possible! Thank you all!