Top honors in GitHub's Game Off 2019

GitHub's month-long Game Off jam kicked off on November 1 with more than 4,000 participants, each challenged to build a game around the theme "leaps and bounds." After a month of development followed by a month of peer voting, the community has picked its winners across all categories. The finalists span pixel-art platformers, puzzle roguelikes, and point-and-click adventures, and every winner's source code is available for study.

Sealed Bite — First place

Sealed Bite, built by @securas with Godot and GDScript (source), is a pixel-art platformer with a clock-based hook: hunt down crystal shards before you transform into a werewolf. The game runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux and also claimed the top spot in the Gameplay and Graphics categories.

One voter praised it as "A great, short metroidvania. Great polish for one month's work!"

Retrochase — Second place

Retrochase is a Windows-only game from Maxime Gammaitoni (Unity, C#) that replaces standard movement with a teleport mechanic. As a futuristic ninja who cannot walk, you must think in terms of jumps rather than steps. Voters highlighted the novelty: "I always like seeing new mechanics tried out in game jam games, and this is definitely something I've never seen before."

BLAWK — Third place

Flappy Bird-like reflexes meet a distinctly different twist in BLAWK, developed in GameMaker (source). The Windows game took the Innovation award, with one player noting it's "Really creative and perfect for the theme."

The Gems — Fourth place

The Gems is a web-based point-and-click action-adventure from @sharpfives, built with Phaser and JavaScript (source). The game blends puzzle-solving, combat, and platforming and earned first place in the Audio category. Reviews called it "very polished for a game jam" with "a really cool art style."

Noneuclilypads — Fifth place

Noneuclilypads, built with LÖVE and Lua, is a turn-based puzzle roguelike about inhabiting multiple grid cells simultaneously — tripling your leap distance in a single step. It took home first place in the Theme Interpretation category. The game is playable in-browser and on Windows, with source available.

Beyond the podium

The full jam archive contains more than 200 entries. Standouts outside the top five include a Commodore 64 retro title, a roguelike shooter, and a mobile puzzle game.