After much careful consideration, the winners have been chosen.
I hope that having played the games you'd come quickly to the same conclusion. The quality has been great, but we have a clear winner.
Each game will have a full writeup in the next eZine; I'll go indepth with full reviews explaining why people won what they did there.
1st Place: Injury, Fractus Stellarum
Injury's space epic goes above and beyond what I expected from this contest. It's beautifully animated, and the sound, for one, was enough for it to win this contest, without anything else. While I am not personally a fan of tactical battle systems, a lot of thought has gone into the design of the enemies and the layout of maps for them. If you haven't played it yet I thoroughly recommend it.
Injury wins a copy of RPG Maker VX Ace, 100 project points, and a HBGames sponsorship.
2nd Place: Sleeping Duck, The Hermit
Choosing 1st and 2nd place was difficult, and both have their merits and pitfalls. However, after difficult consideration The Hermit wins second place. My main reasoning is that it's gameplay, rather than merely being an item gathering game, was based around puzzles that I found fun to complete. I found the dialogue interesting and witty, and more effort was put into the game thread. It was however a very tough call.
Sleeping Duck will win a large selection of games from the Humble Bundle, a sponsorship, and 75 project points.
3rd Place: Rob_Riv, The Lantern Collector
Lantern Collector was a fun little gathering game with a storyline added on. Created in just two days, it nonetheless has some beautiful mapping.
Rob_Riv, as there were only three entrants, will win some games from the Humble Bundle, 50 project points and a sponsorship.
Community Champion: Wanderer of Myst
With so little discussion going on it was difficult to choose a winner. My first thought was Guardian, who provided fantastic support and commentary on people's games. In the end, however, after a lot of thought and consideration, the winner had to be WandererofMyst. Despite not entering the contest himself, he nonetheless created music for other people's games, and released a lot of audio resources for the contest, going above and beyond anybody else. Hopefully you'll agree with this decision.
Wanderer of Myst wins the second copy of RPG Maker VX Ace, a sponsorship, and 75 support points.
. Thanks for going out of your way and comfort zone to compose music that fits my game!