Baron de Ropp, host of Dungeon Masterpiece, stepped into the arena hosting the 2026 game jam again. While people are discussing what they should do or what their process is, I want to address how I review game jam entries.

#H2 WHAT IS THE JUDGING CRITERIA?

The reason I want to consider this is because this is going to be how I will likely judge everyone’s projects when the voting period begins because you have to judge 5 submissions for your submission to be confirmed as an entry in the final tally. I also think it’s helpful to have a plan for reviewing because after you get to review #7, you’ll noticed that something you’re looking at now may be way better than the thing you gave a 4 to a second ago and it’s making you consider going back and shifting the rating lower, or wishing you had a 6 to award the new thing.

If you go in with a plan, it makes your reviews consistent & will allow you to give a lot more valuable feedback. I am also going to host another post-judgment livestream chat in the Arcane Library Discord where I’ll go over any adventure I reviewed or the layout of any one who wants to ask some questions. I find that being able to ask questions directly and pick people’s brains is a really useful way to improve.

That said there are 3 main criteria: how you used the inspiration, is the content usable at the table, & does this fit within the vibes of this competition.

#H3 INSPIRATION

This category is based on how you utilize the inspiration titles. Specifically, it says “[h]ow well the submission incorporates elements from the assigned NES games”. To me, this means all 3 games need to appear in your submission. 1 point for each. That brings us to 3 out of 5. If use an obvious connection for the titles, you got those 3 points. Anything unobvious will take you to 4. Something truly clever gets 5.

#H3 USABILITY

“Practicality and playability at the table”. This is the question about layout to me. There’s more to it than that, but it’s the basic thing. If you are making an adventure, do you have all the basic elements I expect to find? Where is your map? Etc. Did you use the Shadowdark template, that’s a solid 2 stars. You can get an extra 1 for doing everything perfectly within that template. It’s a near trade dress violation, so I won’t offer more than 3 stars for that. There are 2 reasons for this: 1) the minimalism layout emphasizes the quality of the writing, most people aren’t great writers; 2) Kelsey advises everyone should come up with their own trade dress. For me, this second one is what’s truly important, because I want to hear your voice as the creator.

1 point automatically will be awarded for doing your own thing. I love good effort.

1 point will be granted for actually having a solid layout structure.

Remaining 3 will be based on the quality of the layout. 1 for poor, 2 for mediocre, 3 for why didn’t I think of that, that’s brilliant. The SD template only nets 2 stars.

#H3 VIBES

This is the hardest part of this conversation, what does 8-bit energy mean? I’m not really sure, but I think it should be colorful and playful. Consistency will be important as well. If the tone seems to shift throughout, meh. I don’t really care about art. You can do a lot with layout and fonts. This is partially subjective, I understand, but your adventure should scream that I’m this thing and make me feel that when I look at it. But more than that, it needs to be something that takes advantage of Shadowdark’s unique elements. If it seems like you could use another ruleset, such as Cairn or BX to use your thing, is it SD? OSE is partially forgiven given how close they are, but still. Again, this is the most subjective aspect here so I’m not going to be harshest here. But I may award the fewest 5s here. That was the case during the Weird Tales SD game jam, lots of 4s, but few 5s and I couldn’t really explain it beyond, you know it when you see it.