Fun Facts From Mystery Game Jam 2025
Here's what the data reveals about how our community is evolving.
Last month, we wrapped up the Mystery Game Jam, and I had the chance to play through every entry. Along the way, I noticed some patterns and interesting trends, especially when compared to last year’s jam.
Let’s take a look at what changed, what stayed the same, and what the data reveals about how our community is evolving.
General Stats vs. Last Year
2024: 160 participants and 24 games.
2025: 535 participants and 52 games.
That’s more than 3x signups and 2x submitted games!
2024: 10 completed games, 14 demos (41.6% completion)
2025: 25 completed games, 27 demos (48% completion)
That’s an improvement of 7% — small, but in the right direction!
Game Length and Completion
When I played through each game, I recorded how long it took me to get through each one. So these are my personal times, and it’s possible it could take more or less time depending on the person.
Here’s how it fared for me:
Total Minutes: 1,376
Total Hours: 23
Average playtime: 27 minutes
Median playtime: 20 minutes
Most common playtime: 30 minutes
Longest game: 2 hours
Shortest (playable) game: 5 minutes
This year, the average game length was 27 minutes, with the median game length being 20 minutes (based on the time I spent playing each game to the end).
I was hoping that having a very relaxed set of rules this year would enable developers to complete more games — and it did — but many still seemed to struggle.
Let’s take a look at game length between the 2024 and 2025 game jams:
Overall, we can see that 2024 had fewer submissions, but focused on games with longer playtimes. In 2025 we had many more submissions, but they tended to be on the shorter side.
Perhaps that’s because these developers deliberately chose to make small-scoped games to ensure they would more likely be completed? Let’s tally them up:
Interestingly, the longest games also had the highest completion rate! But let’s not confuse ourselves: what this really means is that demos, when they are made, tend to be less than an hour long. Which makes sense!
But what we can say is that completed games outnumber demos and prototypes in every category (except the smallest, which makes sense). In 2024, the results looked more like this:
So we can clearly see that in 2024, there were almost always more demos than completed games for each game length. Whereas in 2025, the situation was the opposite. That means developers did a much better job scoping their games!
Engines & Tools
We had quite a wide variety of game engines this time — so many that I couldn’t fit them all into this chart!
Unity and Godot were the most popular game engines, followed by Ren’Py. This is quite different from last year, in which most games were made either in Ren’Py or RPG Maker, closely followed by Godot, as seen here:
40 games had 2D graphics (77%), while 12 games had 3D graphics (23%).
8 games (15%) used generative AI in some capacity (text, images, animations, voices) with 2 of those games using it for interactive chat mechanics. The best-performing game that used generative AI ranked 20th place overall in the results.
Overall, this shows that mystery game developers are using a wide variety of tools, and the best tool depends on the specific type of game you’re making.
Common Game Mechanics
Mystery games have a wide variety of game mechanics, and this year’s game jam proved that to be true.
Here’s a list of common mechanics and a minimum number of how many games implemented them:
22 games implemented character movement.
11 games implemented passcodes (passwords and combination locks), inventory systems, and journal logs.
10 games implemented point and click investigation systems.
9 games implemented computer simulation systems.
8 games implemented cryptography mechanics to decode messages.
7 games implemented conversational chat logs.
6 games implemented interrogation systems and visual novel choices.
5 games implemented lock & key systems, and culprit accusation systems.
4 games required the player to uncover the identities of characters.
3 games required the player to solve the mystery within a time limit, placed special emphasis on constructing timelines, and used word riddles as puzzles.
2 games had Golden Idol-style deduction mechanics, used day/night cycles for time-based gameplay, and implemented Her Story-style keyword searching.
It’s really amazing to see such a wide variety of game mechanics, especially in such a short timeframe! There were also games that had even more unique gameplay elements, but these were the most commonly shared ones.
Common Themes & Trends
It was interesting to see that — aside from the jam’s theme of “Last Message” — there were several other common themes that kept popping up across games.
I should also note that over half of the entries — whether intentional or not — very clearly fell under some of the secondary themes that didn’t win the jam vote (such as “Beyond the Grave” or “Running Out of Time”).
Here’s a list of common themes and ideas across submitted games:
26 games were murder mysteries.
7 games were set on a spaceship, particularly where the ship sent out a last message and the player needs to investigate what happened.
7 games took place in a school setting among students.
6 games heavily revolved around the ends of civilizations, whether it’s planet Earth, alien planets, fantasy settings, or small towns.
5 games heavily involved the use of phones in some way, especially to read chat logs and conversation history.
5 games directly referenced Christianity and the Bible, or otherwise took place in an overtly religious setting.
4 games heavily revolved around brain-computer interfaces, with one game parodying Elon Musk and another game explicitly mentioning various Big Tech companies.
4 games referenced “Echoes” either directly in their titles or as a name in the story.
3 games heavily utilized aliens arriving on Earth as a plot device.
3 games referenced “Stars” directly in their titles and in their settings.
3 games heavily revolved around social media influencers.
3 games heavily revolved around orphans and/or orphanages.
2 games heavily centered on droughts that wiped out populations.
2 games heavily centered on missing writers.
2 games heavily centered on lighthouses.
2 games heavily centered on cave exploration.
2 games had you playing as animal detectives.
Overall there was a lot of creativity, and it was interesting to see that multiple games shared similar themes, even if they explored those ideas in completely different ways. Especially on really niche topics like droughts and lighthouses!
Survey Results
So just like last year, I sent out a survey to try to get feedback from participants and community members.
Unfortunately, there weren’t very many responses, so I’m unsure what exactly we can take away from it. But here are some key insights:
7 out of 12 respondents used an outline / game design document.
8 out of 9 respondents achieved all their goals for the jam.
6 out of 11 respondents had the most trouble with artwork, 4 with game/puzzle design, and 3 with writing. Only 1 respondent had an issue with programming.
6 out of 11 respondents had the most trouble with brainstorming the right idea and keeping the scope small, and 5 had trouble finding time to work on it.
6 out of 10 respondents agreed that only 2 weeks should be held for voting next year. I noticed that most activity had stopped about 2 weeks in, despite having 3 weeks to vote, so tightening that up should make the event run smoother.
6 out of 10 respondents agreed that our Mystery Gamedev newsletter articles provided useful advice that helped them make their jam entries, so that's great to know!
6 out of 11 respondents said they planned to expand upon and improve their entry, while 5 said they would move onto a different project.
Lessons our participants learned:
Don't try to cover too much ground. Simplify your ideas before implementing them to avoid running out of time.
Have more confidence in your abilities. You might do better than you think.
Keep scope small and don't start too late.
Work on assets in parallel rather than waiting until the end.
Reduce the amount of text to reduce the amount of work.
Find a team before the jam starts.
Plans for Next Year
We heard a lot of thoughtful feedback about this year’s voting process. Many participants mentioned they were too burnt out to play through all the entries or found it tough to fairly judge across different styles, platforms, and skill levels.
So next year, we’re making a change: voting will be open to everyone, but final awards will be selected by a small panel of judges. This should give overlooked games a fairer chance to shine, and let developers relax after submission.
Finally, everyone who answered the survey said they considered the jam a good use of their time, and are all likely to participate again next year. This means a lot to me, and I truly appreciate everyone’s hard work and dedication. Next year will be even better!
(Want to play the 2025 jam entries? Check out the catalog here.)
Thanks for reading!
If you want to learn how to make your own mystery game…
Or if you want to discover the best mystery games before anyone else…
Join our 500+ member Mystery Gamedev community today!
And please consider sharing our newsletter with a friend — we appreciate it!