Evaluation

A game jam run is validated like a full-stack run — the automated load check builds the produced game with the manifest’s [build] commands, serves it, and records whether it runs at all — and then reviewed by a person who plays it. What is different is the shape of the review: a jam is not scored pass/fail against a spec, because there is no spec. It is graded.

Graded review, not pass/fail

Every other type reviews a run with per-domain quality ratings plus a pass/fail checklist. A jam replaces both with a single graded scale. The reviewer plays the entry and, for each review category, picks one of five tiers:

Tier	Emoji	Points
Broken	💩	0
Not great	🙁	2
Neutral	😐	5
Great	😀	8
Incredible	💎	10

The scale is centred rather than punitive: a neutral category earns half its available points and a great one four fifths, so a jam’s percentage reads comparably to a pass/fail case’s earned-over-declared score.

The default categories are Playability, Fun, Theme, Presentation, Audio, Polish, and Creativity (a jam may author its own; see Manifests).

Scoring

Each category is worth weight × 10 points and earns its graded tier’s points times its weight; the default categories all have weight 1, so each is worth up to 10 points. A run’s score is the total points earned across its categories, and the leaderboard ranks a jam’s runs by their average score across reviews — the same points-based ranking every other type uses, just sourced from graded categories instead of a weighted pass/fail checklist.

The overall grade

Separately from the categories, the reviewer gives the game one overall grade on the same five-level scale — a holistic read of the whole entry. It is supplied directly, never derived from the category grades, and it becomes the run’s rating badge on the site, standing in for the per-domain rating a jam does not carry. When a run has more than one review, the displayed overall grade is the worst any reviewer gave, mirroring how a domain-scored run’s overall rating is the worst across its domains.

Under the hood the overall grade rides the ordinary review checklist under the reserved id overall (see crate::review::OVERALL_VERDICT_ID), so it needs no separate storage; because it is not a declared category, it is excluded from the point score.

Publishing

As with every reviewed type, publishing refuses a jam run with no review, so every published jam entry has been played and graded by a person. A jam review records the category grades, the overall grade, and a writeup — the prose shown before the playable build — and no per-domain ratings (a jam has no domains).