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dislekcia
03-04-2008, 03:44 AM
Comp 17 Results

Forcing people to be aware of their total playtime seems to be a good thing... There are many different ways to approach the goal of building something complete and self-sufficient as a play experience, but one of the best is to say "Ok, if I can put together a few minutes of gameplay and then end it, we're on to something!"

Some game types are clearly not suited to this type of limitation, but there's learning to be found in that too ;)

REVIEWS:

Alien Armada Attacks (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=3093) - H1pp13
AAA, or the secret name (as H1pp13 wanted it known), is a Paratrooper clone with the addition of bullets that bounce off the edges of the screen. You are tasked with defending a city from a bombardment of meteors with a slightly more sinister purpose. Unfortunately the demo released is rather short and ends after the first few waves of meteors.

Antisense (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=3117) - FuzzySpoon
Antisense isn't really a game... It looks pretty and there's a menu and things you can click on, but you're not given a goal or any clues as to what you're supposed to be doing. Eventually you manage to make some proteins and stick them into the bars at the bottom of the screen, which magically gives you points of some sort. But those points, the bars and what you're actually trying to achieve are never explained. Sure, you can reach the end of the program in less than 10 minutes, but you have no idea why you've just spent that time. This needs gameplay and a lot more feedback to the user.

Command and Congregate : Retro Alert (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=3198) - O1dt!m3r
Retro Alert is a Tower-Defense-style survive the attacking waves of enemies game. It's got a ton of potential thanks to the unit positioning and purchasing mechanic. At first the unit capping system confused me (as well as hitting space to deselect units) but quickly I had a setup that annihilated all but the last 90 seconds of monsters - which were destroyed by constant nukes ;) ... All it needs is a little more attention to detail and a slightly better control system to lift the game to another level. My personal hope is that Oldtimer (sorry, not a fan of the l33t characters) keeps working on this and turns it into a really enjoyable experience.

Elven Raiders (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=3127) - Infinitely_Blue
According to the blurb in the thread, the game is to be a Tower-Defense-style experience. Unfortunately Infinitely_Blue didn't get very far with his entry and all that's available to download is a 3D perspective plane that begs for some sort of action to take place on it... He's now started working on it again, let's hope that a playable game appears :)

Froccer (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=3098) - Fengol
Based on a physical game that Fengol has sweated his way through for multiple hours, Froccer is a very interesting game. The frisbee dynamics in particular are very well done and match the real world game quite closely. With a little more attention to user control of the players, the game would really shine. There's tons of help to support new players, a good readme and a solid gameplay system... A little more playability under the polish would go a long way.

gGuardian (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=3122) - Gazza_N
Now THAT'S a setting! Protect hapless cryosleepers from ravening alien menaces! You have 10 minutes of power left, no map and your weapons are scattered! Tension! Suspense! Drama! All right there for the player to get pulled in... And all this before seeing a single stitch of gameplay. Who said the art of the background story was dead?
Then, once the game itself gets underway, you're given a set period of time to set up your defenses (after FINDING them!) to hold off a tower-defense style horde of aliens that seem to be able to take far too much punishment before finally pegging it. The feeling of panic as a swarm of the bastards start hacking the cryobay is exactly what this competition was built for. This is a stunning game, nail biting, fun and rewarding. And the best part is that as soon as you've finished playing you want more: Teleports for the player, different waves of enemies, movement boosts, a melee attack, etc.

Inevitability (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=3640) - Thaumaturge
An experimental game, Inevitability gives you a limited amount of play-time and two actions: Feed or kill particulate entities that meander around the play area. There's no stated goal except for the innate curiosity that a player might bring to the game on their own, as there are apparently different endings and achievements to unlock by playing in different ways.

Mental Blocks (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=3029) - H1pp13
Puzzle games tend not to fall under the 10 minute "It has to end" rule of the competition, H1pp13 has gotten around this by adding in a time-limit which feels a little extraneous to what you're really doing: Adding and subtracting numbers from each other in stacking piles to try to reach either 0 or rows of matching numbers. As a puzzle game the core mechanic is well done - if not immediately obvious - the reward for planning a strategy is palpable and enjoyable. It could do with a little better mapping between the numbers to make the matching mechanic easier... Add in some animations and remove the arbitrary time limit and there's a very promising puzzle game there! Well done H1pp13.

Situation Typo (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=3089) - ShadowMaster
The president of the United States forgets his email password (hence the typo) and his whimsically homicidal security system decides to kill him unless he makes his way through 10 doors to safety, answering a question at each to escape death... That's the story of Situation Typo. It's plain to see that a lot of effort went into the game's rooms and transitions, as well as the humor that the game relies on. Even though sometimes the questions are a little hit and miss, you can generally figure out enough of them to get out of the White House in a couple of attempts. Though some of the "funnier" questions can get a tad frustrating if they pop up late in the game and leave you dead for the sake of a quick laugh...

Totally Terrorising Tribbles (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=3140) - Kensei
With a completely-non-Star-Trek-at-all, honest? theme TTT is a carpal-tunnel inducing clickfest where you need to kill as many poor tribbles as possible. As a first game it definitely has a lot more effort and enthusiasm behind it than most, which places Kensei in a very favorable position as her game development skills increase. She'll be someone to watch in future, not least for her flashes of humor ;)

Whodunnit (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=3620) - Nandrew
Film Noir. Freelance Detective. Poison. Who did it?! Play this game. Right now. It takes the 10 minute time limit and makes it an integral part of the game, using the time you have left to inject tension into the game and turns a logic puzzle into a deliciously tense experience.
Question the survivors, manage your unbalanced detective's stress levels and work your way towards nicotine dependence as you frantically try to establish exactly who the murderer is. But beware those panic attacks!

Xeno Fighter (http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showthread.php?t=3661) - CyberNinja
Xeno Fighter is a top down shooter that's still early in its possible evolution. I don't say this to be harsh, I simply say it because it's true: Few genres are as well-defined as the SHMUP, so making a new one from scratch can be very, very difficult. Thankfully Cyberninja has good ideas for enemies and a nice feeling of progression through waves of difficulty. All the game needs now is a better-realised hitbox, a fire key you can hold down instead of tap and quite possibly a little bit of slowdown and tightening of the controls.


RESULTS:

The 10 minute maximum playtime either helped or hindered entrants... Those that took the time limit and expanded it into a bona-fide mechanic were clearly visible and usually great fun to play. Those that designed without the limit in mind ended up having to tack on a timing system. I think we can all learn a lot from this comp about how to design within constraints and when to toss a constraint as unhelpful for certain ideas. Which leads us to the winners:

First place: Whodunnit - Nandrew
A study in pacing and effectively creating tension and unease in the player with a rather minimalist set of tools, Whodunnit is a treat to play and deserves to take top honors.

Second place: gGuardian - Gazza_N
Gazza_N took the lessons he learned from Overseer Assault and applied them to a time-based design to create this masterpiece of replayability. There's a lot to like here, well done!

[b]Third place: Command and Congregate : Retro Alert - O1dt!m3r/b]
Not wanting to inundate people with Tower-Defense games, this was a tough decision to make. In the end, Retro Alert won out due to the potential it has to grow into a self-contained bundle of fun.

...

Congratulations to all who entered! It's nice seeing so many diverse engines to go with a lot of the new faces that are appearing in these competitions. Plus it's good seeing old hands flexing their design muscles and getting down to the business of showing us all how it should be done... Inspiring to say the least :)

-D

dislekcia
03-04-2008, 03:46 AM
BTW: I just got back from a trip to Cape Town yesterday, hence only posting the results now. Competition 18 is on the way, as well as a definite date for the next DevLAN!

-D

Thaumaturge
03-04-2008, 05:52 AM
Congratulations to the winners! Very well done to all of you - Nandrew and Gazza in particular. Yours were very good games indeed, as I recall. ^_^

Thank you for your kindness to my game, by the way, dislekcia. ^^;

(For any who might be curious, probably the simplest of the "achievements" available in the game can be earned simply by causing there to be more than a threshold number of particles of a given colour at some point during the game. Other goals were trickier to achieve. I think that some of the other available goals were: Not killing any of the entities, killing more than a certain number, and not allowing any of them to die of "starvation".)

edg3
03-04-2008, 08:17 AM
Congrats to the winners :)

Gazza_N
03-04-2008, 08:45 AM
Yaaaay! :D

Well done to Nandrew for a very well-deserved win, and well done to everyone else who submitted entries, especially the competition newcomers. Cyber? Kensei? Comp 18 entries plz. ;)

Squid
03-04-2008, 10:15 AM
Well done guys, very nice!

BlackHawk
03-04-2008, 10:16 AM
Congratulations to all the winners!

01DT!m3r
03-04-2008, 10:19 AM
WELL DONE to gazza and nandrew both lovely games . Dis can we have all the competition entries on the may dvd , pleeeaaasse ! and to everyone else who entered keep it up all lovely ideas and games . Hope to see more in the competition 18 . I cant wait !

Fengol
03-04-2008, 10:23 AM
Congrats to everyone!

Definitely need to work on my game design so I can a place in the Comp. Whodunnit and gGuardian are masterful and deserve to win; but I want to see my name in first place!

ShadowMaster
03-04-2008, 10:31 AM
Congratz to all the winners. :)

FuzzYspo0N
03-04-2008, 10:37 AM
winners! thats great guys, keep it coming.

congrats :)

Kensei
03-04-2008, 10:59 AM
Congrats to the winners :D

:: places another light on the Nandrew shrine ::

Tr00jg
05-04-2008, 01:15 PM
Congratulations guys!

Nandrew
05-04-2008, 04:00 PM
Oooh, excellent -- and thanks!

I had loads of fun with gGuardian, actually, and I was amazed at the depth of gameplay that it could offer (especially at higher difficulty levels where I had to start juggling turrets).

Cyberninja
05-04-2008, 05:20 PM
Congrats all. Well done Nandrew. =]