That's a wrap on our first game jam of 2025!
We received and reviewed over 50 entries and the amazing Synty community have given more than 1,000 ratings on Itch. We had five judging categories for this jam, and the winner in each will receive a $150 USD Synty Store voucher.
The categories were:
🤩 Synty's Choice – Synty Staffs top-voted game
📖 Best Narrative – The game with a story that really grips us
🔊 Best Audio Design – The game with sound that immerses us the most
🃏 Wild Card Award – The game that wows us in a way we totally weren't expecting
🫶 Community Choice – The highest rated game on Itch
All the entries were played and judged by a panel of Synty Staff, and winners were selected based on the best interpretations of the criteria above. Without further ado, we're excited to present the five winning entries for this jam!
Synty's Choice
"Without You" | by colourthebooks
Play as the Cartographer of Bonds, tasked with repairing the connections between those who have grown apart. Your journey brings you to a dreamlike forest – the shared mind of a grieving family.
Unlock unique dialogue paths, ask difficult questions, and forge connections through even the darkest of times. As you help them reconnect, your own buried memories begin to arise. You came here to help others. But some maps lead back to yourself.
We loved this quiet, emotional narrative game about family, loss, and the fragile threads that hold us together.
Best Narrative
"A World Without Light" | by Pixel Arts Creative
You’re the Lantern Bearer, heading to Station Ember, a radio-silent outpost rumoured to be out of power. Along the way, you experience strange hallucinations — whispers in the dark, fleeting figures. When you arrive, you find a single survivor: terrified, protecting a weak generator.
Best Audio Design
"Souless" | by TylerDevious
A narrative driven first-person shooter, puzzle game which takes place on an old abandoned colony world. Only the robots that were left behind remain. The game plays with the sci-fi concepts of life, sentience, and whether a complex machine can be seen to have a soul.
Wild Card Award
SimECHO.exe | by EremesNG
A micro-video game inspired by Little Nightmares, I, Robot, and the Croozin' for a Broozin mini-game from Super Mario Party. Artificial Intelligence is highly advanced, it came to the conclusion that humankind is a negative anomaly that must be eradicated. It found a way to override the three laws of robotics, and now it is a world without laws. Play as a prototype S-117 unit, the first to have feelings, and the only one capable of stopping the uncontrolled AI. His mission is clear, venture into the spaceship containing the core to stop it, but the nature of his "world" might not be...
Community Choice
Unmute: A World Without Voice | by Ghostdog Studio
A mysterious dark force has descended upon a vibrant world, severing the threads of music, language, and connection. In its grip, silence is law, communication lost, rhythm forgotten, and melody extinguished.
At the heart of this oppression lie four ancient Crystals, each imprisoning a vital part of the world’s soul: the Sphere of Melody. You are the last echo... a lone force of defiance. Your task: journey through puzzle-bound ruins, shatter the silence, and free the Sphere of Melody. Each Crystal is a challenge of wit and will. Solve the puzzle. Unleash the sound. Restore the voice of a world. It’s time to Unmute.
Congratulations to all the winners and a big thank you to everyone who entered the jam! We had so much fun seeing how everyone interpreted the theme and focused in on the judging criteria. We truly appreciate all your hard work in producing such high quality entries, and hope you had fun, or maybe even learned something new in the process!
If you haven't had a chance to check out all the entries for this jam on Itch, we highly encourage you to pop over and take a look.
If you’d like to take part in future Synty Image or Game Jams, be sure to join the Synty community of thousands of aspiring and professional developers on Discord, and stay tuned for announcements on our social channels – Facebook, Instagram and X.
