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Rental Rundown tops list of Shacknews Jam Spring 2023 winners

Hammad K's Rental Rundown impressed players with a hilarious concept and fun gameplay loop.

Donovan Erskine

April 12, 2023 7:12 AM

Hammad K

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The Shacknews Jam 2023 has come to a close. Votes have been tallied, and a winner has been crowned victorious. Organizer RomSteady has announced that Rental Rundown, developed and submitted by Hammad K, took home first-place honors.

Once the votes were tallied, RomSteady shared the list of winners for the Shacknews Jam Spring 2023 on the official event page. Rental Rundown came in first place for both standard voting and Editor’s Choice. Here were the top three games for both categories of the contest:

Regular Prize

1. Rental Rundown
2. Forgotten Past
3. Retro Warp

Editor’s Choice

1. Rental Rundown
2. Retro Warp
3. Ticket to Hell

In Rental Rundown, players step into the shoes of the manager at the last Blockbuster. As the company slowly begins to sink, they’ll have to keep up customers satisfied by helping them checkout their film selections. However, the store itself is also sinking in the literal fashion. Between helping employees, the manager dons a witch outfit, flying around a cavern beneath the store to kill dinosaurs and use their bones to physically support the building. It’s just as bonkers as it sounds, and we had a fun time playing through it. Rental Rundown also made great use of this game jam’s theme, Retro. What’s more retro than video rental stores?

Other games that cracked the two top three lists were the adventure game Forgotten Past (Vidaco Studios), puzzler Retro Warp (Agent Amian), and horror game Ticket to Hell (totsu).

Congratulations to Rental Rundown for taking home the gold at the Shacknews Jam Spring 2023, and thank you to RomSteady for organizing the event. Also, shoutout to everyone that submitted a game, we here at Shacknews were really impressed with a lot of the games you all made.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_