Whoa. It’s been a long journey but the new site is now ready for everyone to use!
Why change now? Because Game Jolt has been around since 2008 and frankly, it was showing its age.
On your quest to navigate this virtual land, you may come across bugs to report and changes you’re not yet comfortable with. Now that the foundation is built, we can shift our efforts to tweaks and new features. Log bugs on our Issue Tracker, and put your suggestions and frustrations on the forums. We’ll try our best to listen to all feedback.
But enough of that! Here are some of the highlights of the new Game Jolt…
Let’s Find Some Games!
Finding games to play is the main reason gamers and let’s players visit Game Jolt. In turn, developers receive feedback in addition to publicity. There’s a massive treasure trove of amazing games on the site and we’ve made it easier for you to sift through them!
The new site is all about game discoverability. On the home page, you will find different sections that highlight the all-time best games, trending (“hot”) games, and even the week’s highest rated games. On game and download pages, you’ll see recommended games to check out based on your game ratings. Browse and follow playlists to find collections curated by people whose tastes you share. If you’re a daring soul, you can of course always peruse Newly Added.
Searching the site is about a million times better now. We know this because…Math. Just start typing and you’ll begin to see suggestions. You can even filter the results to hone in on exactly what you’re looking for.
Playlists Are Awesome
Playlists allow the community to organize and share the gems they find on the site. You can create your own playlists to add games to, and follow other people’s playlists to be notified when a game is added.
With a click, you can follow all games by a developer to keep up to date on their new releases. Playlists also highlight veterans of the site who curate and organize tons of games for you to discover. Playlists are automatically updated in real time, so you’ll always know when a new game gets added to one you’re following.
Game Jolt on Your Phone
One of the reasons we decided to build a completely new site is to accommodate mobile devices (phones and tablets). Each page is now crafted to display well on a screen of any size. You can even touch it with your fingers.
Discover games, read news, and more on the go. You could make a new playlist while you poop. If you’re a developer, you can do things like manage your game page or post a news update (so no more excuses to have any sort of life away from the computer)!
Game Jolt on your phone or tablet is a great way to stay connected to the community through chat. Yep, chat is fully functional on mobile now.
And, Of Course, More!
You can see a more thorough breakdown of new features in this Fireside article.
Developer Stuff
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
WE GOT RID OF SHOUTS! Though we have something in the works that will eventually replace them, you can friend people and exchange PMs for now. We converted all of your SHOUT! history into PM messages so you can hold onto the memories. Just befriend the person and find them in your friends list to see the logs!
You can no longer create developer blog articles. We’re working on integrating this functionality into Fireside instead. In the meantime, we’ve ported all of your existing blog articles to Fireside and set the URLs to redirect to them. Don’t worry, all comments and history are preserved.
Found a Bug?
We have an issue tracker for people to report bugs and problems they run into. Please don’t use it for feature requests and ideas. Use the forums for that instead. But if you find a bug, please log it in the issue tracker!
Not the End
Let’s get more people playing games created by people! Share games, add games, form communities around games, PLAY MOAR GAMES.
This isn’t the end, but rather the beginning. We now have the foundation built to implement all the changes we’ve been dreaming of! To infinity, and beyond!
Stay Indie… or else! (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
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