dislekcia
23-11-2007, 02:55 AM
Comp 16 Results
What initially started as a joke idea for a possible competition ended up being one of the best themes so far! Who knew that the community had grown so much that a little limitation (like having to use only text for your game's graphics) would give rise to so many interesting ideas?
REVIEWS:
Alpha Snake (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=721&highlight=Alpha+Snake) - UntouchableOne
Everyone has played Nibbles. Or Snake. Which one you call it is often an indicator of when you started playing games. UntouchableOne built himself a Snake variant with a nice twist: Collect letters in the order that they appear in a word to then spell that word in your tail, if you try to pick up the wrong letter, you get longer as a penalty. He's also added in another interesting game mode where letters fall from the top of the screen and it's your job to collect either vowels or consonants as directed: If a letter hits the bottom of the screen it's bad. If your tail gets hit by a falling letter it's bad. Your tail gets longer the longer you survive, making it a challenging and enjoyable experience.
To add to the already very solid gameplay, Alpha Snake has some very well done sound effects for each letter (reminiscent of Quake 3's announcer sounds) and offers some interesting font customisation just to prove that the game is doing all that text dynamically somewhere under the hood. The only issue we encountered was a slight lag in the menu, but that's of small consequence compared to the rest of the game.
BattleTechst (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=796) - Gazza_N
Giant mechs are awesome. Gazza exploits this proven fact to bring us his take on text-based top down mech on mech combat. Pilot your armored robot around a randomly generated level, taking out AI foes using nothing but a text parser and your wits. Decide when to use which weapons from your arsenal and how close you can risk getting to your enemies, it can take a bit of time to get used to the tactical finesse needed to lure opponents to their doom as sometimes your doom isn't that far off either, but the game is fun in a retro, laugh-like-you're-destroying-giant-robots way.
Gazza also showed an utterly insane aptitude for coming up with awesome names this competition, a talent that started with the epiphany that brought us "BattleTechst" and ended with several entries sporting Gazza-riffic monikers.
Furious Frets (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=713) - CinimodZA
Guitar Hero certainly managed to make a mark that other rhythm games before it just couldn't pull off, especially in the emulation stakes... Furious Frets is a Guitar Hero/Frets on Fire-style game concept: Match the scrolling notes as they come down the screen and "strum" at the right time to get the correct audio to play. Technically there are few problems, except for the effects system sometimes playing multiple sounds if switched too fast, the notes play when you expect them to and the song is fun to get into - if a tad difficult for completely new players.
Unfortunately the game isn't finished, so there's a lot of exploration that could have been done: The free-play system is something that could have really pushed the envelope and gotten people amped; Whilst a single song would probably be acceptable for a once-off demo, but it'd be nicer if it didn't end just as the holds started getting interesting ;) (One quick word of warning, Furious Frets manually sets screen resolution and changes all your open windows, beware)
README (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=734) - Thaumaturge
Every once in a while someone has an idea that produces a really interesting game. README is exactly that: An exploration of what would happen if a game's readme file was both the game itself and its own help, or if the help was the game. You never really know, which is one of the things that makes it intriguing. Topped off with a beautifully minimalist presentation that somehow manages to be just freaky enough to feel haunting, README is a prototype that needs to be taken further. The idea of collecting punctuation to use as attacks and abilities in a bid to stave off the corruption of a document by evil is something that needs to be explored to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
RetroTank (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=788) - Evil_Toaster
Shooter games occupy a soft spot in many people's hearts. Retrotank is a shooter built around one idea: What if you had to take out ships made of letters? The rest of the game is simply Evil_Toaster applying his trademark levels of polish and good design. Dodging bullets that you don't manage to shoot down as your tank blasts letters off alien ships hits that zen shooter pressure point. Having to try and aim well enough to leave ships' central cores unmolested so that they drop down as powerups is a great touch. As is usual with an Evil_Toaster game, there are humorous levels to be attained by the player and all the text in the game contains at least 1 joke... It wouldn't be surprising if a few of the letter ships spelled things too if you paid enough attention! The only issue with the game is that currently there's a tail-off point on the difficulty curve if you survive long enough to get fully upgraded: Nothing else can take you out once you're there and the game becomes an excercise in getting ludicrously high scores. It's still great fun at 12 million points though, which says a lot for the gameplay.
RUBIX (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=731) - BlackHawk
At first RUBIX feels completely impenetrable. The controls are alien, don't work correctly the first time you try to enter something in and are given to you as part of pink text on a baby-blue background. Not exactly the most visible combination. However, once you've spent a bit of time understanding how you're supposed to interact with the game and carefully reading through instructions (honestly, who still does that these days?) you're ready to dive into quite possibly one of the most detailed stories created by the local community. In fact, the reason you're playing the game is to get more of the story and find out what happened to Julia's father and why... The story itself is a little predictable and sometimes suffers from being influenced by too many spy stories, but it's still a fun and well-paced read despite ending up feeling rather short and rushed towards the end once you finish the game. The puzzles themselves are letter-rearranging grids in which you have to create the answer to a riddle in a specific location on the grid. This is the most difficult part of the game to get to grips with as the control scheme is overly complicated due to multiple entries needing to be made per action. The controls could have been worked out better, but somehow they feel retro enough to compliment the type of game this is. RUBIX wouldn't feel out of place on a C64, passed around on floppy disk, so if you're into that sort of nostalgia and want a bit of thinking in your short stories, give it a whirl.
Ultimate Quest (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=1011) - Chippit & Azimuth
There's a certain style to oldschool text adventures. Apparently Chippit and Azimuth are both fully aware of that style and have both done their utmost to distill it in their complementary ways: Chippit built an engine in XNA (Pixel shader bloom filters for a text game? Yes!), thing like the room transitions need to be seen to be believed; Azimuth added her considerable writing talents and ascerbic wit. The end result is a game that knows exactly what it's aiming for, it parodies the familiar constructs of text adventuring (just try exiting the first screen to the right, go on, try it) while presenting an interestingly warped story, great neuvo-retro visuals and a ton of fun.
Plus any game that actually has a Lick command is just plain awesome. Our first playsession went "Look", "Look field", "Lick sheep"... At which point we fell over laughing. Play it now.
UnlimitedRPG (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=753) - edg3
UnlimitedRPG features a text-based combat/leveling system reminiscent of many older non-realtime MUDs. The core gameplay is simply to get bigger and stronger so that you can whomp the next in a train of never ending monsters conveniently lining up to fight your gradually firming ass. There's very little choice as to how you kill monsters (3 = hit it), but there seem to be a few ways to try and specialise your character: Attack heavy, Defense heavy and magic/spirit heavy. All in all it's an amusing little combat system in need of a reason to play it, perhaps a story or interesting setting to make the fighting meaningful. The ASCII animations are a nice touch though :)
Teckst (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=853) - FuzzySpoon
Teckst is a typing game, you play a hacker who has to disassemble incoming network commands during a hack. Interestingly, this means that what you have to type comes in reversed on the left-hand side of the screen, making it a bit difficult until you notice the command mirrored in the top left corner in an easier to read right-way-round format. As you successfully block commands, you go up in level, earning greater score per character and getting less time to type as the commands move faster and faster the higher you go. The game looks great (straining the spirit of Comp 16 to breaking point - it's not all text!) but the gameplay is so simple that you'll spend most of your time reading the command in the top left corner and trying to match the random number sequences at the end of some of the strings you need to type in, which are easily the most difficult parts of the game.
Zombies (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=1032) - Light
A text-based competition allows for games to pop up in some surprising places. Once such place is Javascript, as Light demonstrates with his game Zombie. It's a simple exercise in keeping your mouse cursor away from an ever-increasing horde of evil green zombie Zs. The longer you keep your cursor alive, the higher your score. The game itself is well written and stable after a couple of iterations of testing, definately a rewarding proof of concept and hopefully an educational development experience for Light. It's experimentation like this that grows multi-talented developers.
RESULTS:
First place: Ultimate Quest - Chippit & Azimuth
Seriously. "Lick sheep", what more do you need? It's funny. It makes you go "Hey! How did they do that?". It's made, ultimately, of win.
Second place: RetroTank - Evil_Toaster
It's fun. It's stylish. It works. Once the balance issues are sorted out and the usual ET-Super-Mega-Polish-Brigade decides it's time to pack away their brooms, it'll be even better.
Third place: Tie! Alpha Snake - UntouchableOne & RUBIX - BlackHawk
That's right. I was in a real pickle with this competition until I remembered that I used to give ties all the time. So here I am, being indecisive again... It's not my fault though: Both games are good and were both seriously challenging for second place!
Alpha Snake is well executed, explores new gameplay in an otherwise very established genre and sticks to the theme wonderfully. It deserves a podium position.
RUBIX is tricky, difficult to get to grips with and utterly astounding. Astounding because it's the best written game entered into any of these competitions. It hinges entirely around the player wanting to read the rest of the story, that earns it a spot on the podium.
...
So, customary congratulations to the winners, unfortunately no prizes for Comp 16 though... It's been a great competition though: The limitation of forcing people to work with text really seemed to open up imaginations and get people's creativity fired up. I think that's great. Now I need to think of other ways to hamstring you all for the next competition in December and January ;)
-D
P.S. I am a horrible person for taking so long with the judging. Yes, I know. It's just that, well, there's these jobs people want me to do, right. That they pay me for. But it's ok, I know the first step to controlling a problem is admitting you have one. I'm on the wagon now, no more work for me!
What initially started as a joke idea for a possible competition ended up being one of the best themes so far! Who knew that the community had grown so much that a little limitation (like having to use only text for your game's graphics) would give rise to so many interesting ideas?
REVIEWS:
Alpha Snake (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=721&highlight=Alpha+Snake) - UntouchableOne
Everyone has played Nibbles. Or Snake. Which one you call it is often an indicator of when you started playing games. UntouchableOne built himself a Snake variant with a nice twist: Collect letters in the order that they appear in a word to then spell that word in your tail, if you try to pick up the wrong letter, you get longer as a penalty. He's also added in another interesting game mode where letters fall from the top of the screen and it's your job to collect either vowels or consonants as directed: If a letter hits the bottom of the screen it's bad. If your tail gets hit by a falling letter it's bad. Your tail gets longer the longer you survive, making it a challenging and enjoyable experience.
To add to the already very solid gameplay, Alpha Snake has some very well done sound effects for each letter (reminiscent of Quake 3's announcer sounds) and offers some interesting font customisation just to prove that the game is doing all that text dynamically somewhere under the hood. The only issue we encountered was a slight lag in the menu, but that's of small consequence compared to the rest of the game.
BattleTechst (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=796) - Gazza_N
Giant mechs are awesome. Gazza exploits this proven fact to bring us his take on text-based top down mech on mech combat. Pilot your armored robot around a randomly generated level, taking out AI foes using nothing but a text parser and your wits. Decide when to use which weapons from your arsenal and how close you can risk getting to your enemies, it can take a bit of time to get used to the tactical finesse needed to lure opponents to their doom as sometimes your doom isn't that far off either, but the game is fun in a retro, laugh-like-you're-destroying-giant-robots way.
Gazza also showed an utterly insane aptitude for coming up with awesome names this competition, a talent that started with the epiphany that brought us "BattleTechst" and ended with several entries sporting Gazza-riffic monikers.
Furious Frets (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=713) - CinimodZA
Guitar Hero certainly managed to make a mark that other rhythm games before it just couldn't pull off, especially in the emulation stakes... Furious Frets is a Guitar Hero/Frets on Fire-style game concept: Match the scrolling notes as they come down the screen and "strum" at the right time to get the correct audio to play. Technically there are few problems, except for the effects system sometimes playing multiple sounds if switched too fast, the notes play when you expect them to and the song is fun to get into - if a tad difficult for completely new players.
Unfortunately the game isn't finished, so there's a lot of exploration that could have been done: The free-play system is something that could have really pushed the envelope and gotten people amped; Whilst a single song would probably be acceptable for a once-off demo, but it'd be nicer if it didn't end just as the holds started getting interesting ;) (One quick word of warning, Furious Frets manually sets screen resolution and changes all your open windows, beware)
README (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=734) - Thaumaturge
Every once in a while someone has an idea that produces a really interesting game. README is exactly that: An exploration of what would happen if a game's readme file was both the game itself and its own help, or if the help was the game. You never really know, which is one of the things that makes it intriguing. Topped off with a beautifully minimalist presentation that somehow manages to be just freaky enough to feel haunting, README is a prototype that needs to be taken further. The idea of collecting punctuation to use as attacks and abilities in a bid to stave off the corruption of a document by evil is something that needs to be explored to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
RetroTank (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=788) - Evil_Toaster
Shooter games occupy a soft spot in many people's hearts. Retrotank is a shooter built around one idea: What if you had to take out ships made of letters? The rest of the game is simply Evil_Toaster applying his trademark levels of polish and good design. Dodging bullets that you don't manage to shoot down as your tank blasts letters off alien ships hits that zen shooter pressure point. Having to try and aim well enough to leave ships' central cores unmolested so that they drop down as powerups is a great touch. As is usual with an Evil_Toaster game, there are humorous levels to be attained by the player and all the text in the game contains at least 1 joke... It wouldn't be surprising if a few of the letter ships spelled things too if you paid enough attention! The only issue with the game is that currently there's a tail-off point on the difficulty curve if you survive long enough to get fully upgraded: Nothing else can take you out once you're there and the game becomes an excercise in getting ludicrously high scores. It's still great fun at 12 million points though, which says a lot for the gameplay.
RUBIX (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=731) - BlackHawk
At first RUBIX feels completely impenetrable. The controls are alien, don't work correctly the first time you try to enter something in and are given to you as part of pink text on a baby-blue background. Not exactly the most visible combination. However, once you've spent a bit of time understanding how you're supposed to interact with the game and carefully reading through instructions (honestly, who still does that these days?) you're ready to dive into quite possibly one of the most detailed stories created by the local community. In fact, the reason you're playing the game is to get more of the story and find out what happened to Julia's father and why... The story itself is a little predictable and sometimes suffers from being influenced by too many spy stories, but it's still a fun and well-paced read despite ending up feeling rather short and rushed towards the end once you finish the game. The puzzles themselves are letter-rearranging grids in which you have to create the answer to a riddle in a specific location on the grid. This is the most difficult part of the game to get to grips with as the control scheme is overly complicated due to multiple entries needing to be made per action. The controls could have been worked out better, but somehow they feel retro enough to compliment the type of game this is. RUBIX wouldn't feel out of place on a C64, passed around on floppy disk, so if you're into that sort of nostalgia and want a bit of thinking in your short stories, give it a whirl.
Ultimate Quest (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=1011) - Chippit & Azimuth
There's a certain style to oldschool text adventures. Apparently Chippit and Azimuth are both fully aware of that style and have both done their utmost to distill it in their complementary ways: Chippit built an engine in XNA (Pixel shader bloom filters for a text game? Yes!), thing like the room transitions need to be seen to be believed; Azimuth added her considerable writing talents and ascerbic wit. The end result is a game that knows exactly what it's aiming for, it parodies the familiar constructs of text adventuring (just try exiting the first screen to the right, go on, try it) while presenting an interestingly warped story, great neuvo-retro visuals and a ton of fun.
Plus any game that actually has a Lick command is just plain awesome. Our first playsession went "Look", "Look field", "Lick sheep"... At which point we fell over laughing. Play it now.
UnlimitedRPG (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=753) - edg3
UnlimitedRPG features a text-based combat/leveling system reminiscent of many older non-realtime MUDs. The core gameplay is simply to get bigger and stronger so that you can whomp the next in a train of never ending monsters conveniently lining up to fight your gradually firming ass. There's very little choice as to how you kill monsters (3 = hit it), but there seem to be a few ways to try and specialise your character: Attack heavy, Defense heavy and magic/spirit heavy. All in all it's an amusing little combat system in need of a reason to play it, perhaps a story or interesting setting to make the fighting meaningful. The ASCII animations are a nice touch though :)
Teckst (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=853) - FuzzySpoon
Teckst is a typing game, you play a hacker who has to disassemble incoming network commands during a hack. Interestingly, this means that what you have to type comes in reversed on the left-hand side of the screen, making it a bit difficult until you notice the command mirrored in the top left corner in an easier to read right-way-round format. As you successfully block commands, you go up in level, earning greater score per character and getting less time to type as the commands move faster and faster the higher you go. The game looks great (straining the spirit of Comp 16 to breaking point - it's not all text!) but the gameplay is so simple that you'll spend most of your time reading the command in the top left corner and trying to match the random number sequences at the end of some of the strings you need to type in, which are easily the most difficult parts of the game.
Zombies (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=1032) - Light
A text-based competition allows for games to pop up in some surprising places. Once such place is Javascript, as Light demonstrates with his game Zombie. It's a simple exercise in keeping your mouse cursor away from an ever-increasing horde of evil green zombie Zs. The longer you keep your cursor alive, the higher your score. The game itself is well written and stable after a couple of iterations of testing, definately a rewarding proof of concept and hopefully an educational development experience for Light. It's experimentation like this that grows multi-talented developers.
RESULTS:
First place: Ultimate Quest - Chippit & Azimuth
Seriously. "Lick sheep", what more do you need? It's funny. It makes you go "Hey! How did they do that?". It's made, ultimately, of win.
Second place: RetroTank - Evil_Toaster
It's fun. It's stylish. It works. Once the balance issues are sorted out and the usual ET-Super-Mega-Polish-Brigade decides it's time to pack away their brooms, it'll be even better.
Third place: Tie! Alpha Snake - UntouchableOne & RUBIX - BlackHawk
That's right. I was in a real pickle with this competition until I remembered that I used to give ties all the time. So here I am, being indecisive again... It's not my fault though: Both games are good and were both seriously challenging for second place!
Alpha Snake is well executed, explores new gameplay in an otherwise very established genre and sticks to the theme wonderfully. It deserves a podium position.
RUBIX is tricky, difficult to get to grips with and utterly astounding. Astounding because it's the best written game entered into any of these competitions. It hinges entirely around the player wanting to read the rest of the story, that earns it a spot on the podium.
...
So, customary congratulations to the winners, unfortunately no prizes for Comp 16 though... It's been a great competition though: The limitation of forcing people to work with text really seemed to open up imaginations and get people's creativity fired up. I think that's great. Now I need to think of other ways to hamstring you all for the next competition in December and January ;)
-D
P.S. I am a horrible person for taking so long with the judging. Yes, I know. It's just that, well, there's these jobs people want me to do, right. That they pay me for. But it's ok, I know the first step to controlling a problem is admitting you have one. I'm on the wagon now, no more work for me!