Turtle Towers
By
Oasiscircle
Theme: Turtles All the Way Down
1st Place
Result: Polished
One of the first entries I received was from Oasiscircle with this game in its original form, and I knew then I had a contender for first place. The level of polish and use of theme leave me no choice but to give this entry first place. You control a small force of turtle warriors who must protect a tower (which holds up the earth, so where are they standing?) against endless swarms of evil enemies. The title/help screen is well executed and provides everything you need to know to jump in. The strategy is present without being overly complex, the units are easily recognizable, and gameplay is very enjoyable. My only complaint (seriously, my /only/ complaint) is that this game is similar to my favorite GiaD entry from last year. There's a lot of good surprises in here, and I havn't seen them all. Very easy to get addicted to.
Gaoithe
By
Acebloke
Theme: Flight, Mechanics
2nd Place
Result: Complete
Returning Participant, Third Event
For the third year in a row Acebloke has shown tremendous effort and produced a game worthy of the top three. He managed to make an entire RPG in one day. &$^*$#!? Okay, so maybe some things are missing, like equipment, learning new skills over time, anything resembling balance, or even a blasted saving system. Still, what developers on BYOND have failed to deliver in months and years, he's put together in the span of 24hours. Had this game had just one or two less bugs, or made just a little bit better use of the theme, the shear scope of this project would have carried it to first place. Some notes from play testing: Great help file present. No way to tell which class is which before you pick (and are stuck) with your party, though. I simple way to cancel out would be great. My eyes, they burn! Normally I don't comment on bad graphics; I never take away points (or add many, mind you) so long as the graphics function well, but for the sake of our testers one of the freely available icon packs could have been used. Great clean interface, but much too small. With BYOND's ability to stretch the map, I don't know why this window isn't resizable. The way NPC dialogue and other information is displayed to the user is absolutely fantastic. The use of the mouse in combat saddens me; I was really hoping this game could be played with the keyboard alone. Bug: When a player is healed (and brought back to life), their icon does not display. Game does not reset after death, requiring a manual reboot. Bug: When you run from battle, that battle's monsters will appear below the monsters in the next battle. Bug: Skills and items stay on screen after use. Simple attack graphics would help a lot in understanding what is going on in battle, especially if little floating damage numbers were displayed. The high encounter rate forces levels up much too quickly. No special attacks, and seemingly no other actions from monsters except attacking. With this many bugs, it's certainly not "polished", and I don't expect it will attract many players unless Acebloke fixes it up. Acebloke, I spent countless hours testing your game, you must finish it.
Gears of War
By
Jp
Theme: Mechanics
3rd Place
Result: Complete
Returning Participant, Fourth Event
Gears of War may be nothing much to look at, but there's a lot going on under the surface, and a little bit of graphic work would start to make that much more apparent. Two years ago Jp gave us Ragnorok as his GiaD 2007 entry, and the two games share a great deal in common. Where Ragnorok was flat and deterministic, though, GoW allows for greater planning, use of terrain, variety of units, and a touch of chance... maybe too big of a touch. Where GoW is lacking is in the same area as most GiaD entries: polish. There are minor problems here and there, and no entry ever has the time to get balance quite right. All in all, a good game with a lot going for it, but only if Jp takes the time to polish it up. Notes from play testing: Help file present, nice backstory. Good waiting list (excellent). Colors are hard to see; everything is black and yellow. Redrawing of movement permissions is clunky. AI attacks itself. Very nice reset movement feature. Bug: Someone started a game while ours was already running, and their robots were placed on top of ours, and our game couldn't progress. Help file could use to be condensed, or at least a "quick start" section added. Essay help file. Use of macros for all commands could be detrimental to the retention rate of new players. Nice use of different systems on each robot for extra theme points. Cannot view own units on other player's turn, which makes strategy hard to plan. Some visual cue as to who's attacking what would be nice. Graphics could be improved to assist unit recognition. Odd that turtle cannot move over units. No runtimes. Deep, but tedious.
Super Jetpack Ninja Duel
By
Vexonater
Theme: Flight
Result: Complete
This was a simple fun game with clear start, goal, and end. Players duel against each other using ninjitsu and jetpacks. It's great for casual games, but the chatting can be clunky, I'd prefer a soft reset instead of rebooting at the end, and the help window can be annoying with how it always pops up. Perhaps players should be given a number of lives so that people don't play for only two seconds. Timing is probably the only thing keeping this game from achieving a "polished" rank, as there just doesn't seem to be a lot to the game before you find something pointy to die by. Bug: Gravity doesn't take place after dash attack if dash attack placed player off cliff (Wiley Coyote syndrome). The jetpack seems unresponsive sometimes. Many special moves are basically the same (projectile goes forward), but are fun nonetheless. If gravity were weaker gameplay could be better. This game carries on the great GiaD tradition of quick, fun, random death. A note from one of our play testers once he figured out the controls: "Oh, this is fun."
Gerdal the Turtle
By
Gakumerasara
Theme: Mechanics, Turtle, Flight
Result: Polished
This entry is a simple looking single player puzzle game with a straight forward goal: Use simple mechanical devices to Guide your turtle friend, Gerdal, to the Lettuce, without getting him trapped or eaten by crocodilians. Gameplay progresses through several predetermined stages which present progressively challenging puzzles. I was very impressed by stage seven which throws you a little twist just as you think you've solved the first part of the puzzle. Despite it's simple facade, this is a well executed game which is worth your time. Pleasant fitting music on every stage. One bug present (eye can walk to other stages), but no runtime errors. This is one of the few entries I played like an actual game and forgot that I was judging - for me that is one of the most important aspects of "scope" or "polish". The only problem is that it is short; one less board and this would not have been polished. I would like to see more boards added, and perhaps an overhaul of some of the graphics. Just don't update Gerdal or the crocs.
Turtl
By
Metamorphman
Theme: Mechanics, Turtle
Result: Complete
This game and the above two are all very close in the ranks, so much so that I'd like to think they may be tied for fourth place. Where this game shines is in its use of cut scenes to carry a simple story and give the random combat some purpose. It uses a mix of original graphics and copyrighted graphics used without permission, though. As per the rules of the event, it was evaluated with those graphics removed or replaced. Good title screen. Option to adjust volume or turn off sound would be preferable. Notes from play testers: I expect to hear someone screaming "MORTAL KOMBAT!" Adjusting screen size would be good, too. In game tutorial was a big plus. Your character's arms flail oddly, like he's dancing to the music or something. Why do evil entities have to live in these blasted mazes? Nice use of sound effects. Impressive radar mini-map. Why is the ammo dense? Significant runtime errors and bugs associated with loading a game after dying, as the map isn't cleaned from the previous game, fix this and the copyright issues and this would be polished.
Ace Bomber
By
Techgamer
Theme: Flight
Result: Polished
Ace Bomber is an overhead scrolling shooter, except instead of shooting forward you drop bombs. Obstacles come in the form of anti aircraft artillery installations and giant rocks we call mountains. Players are awarded points for destroying civilian targets, more points for destroying military targets, and are penalized for each bomb used, so the technique is to maximize the damage done with each bomb. The score is displayed nicely, and there is a sense of progression through levels. Unfortunately, this game suffers from a fate many in this genre share: the player is placed in the center of the screen, meaning that only half the game area is ever in use. This isn't exactly true because AA installations can sometimes get off a lucky shot from behind, and it is good to see the devastation caused by your bombs, but a quarter or third of the screen would have sufficed. At these speeds, five tiles is not enough of a play area. Only one bug was encountered while playing, and that is that the map isn't cleared between games. This entry sits right on the edge between polished and complete because it is so limited in scope, and for some of the reasons mentioned above. It sneaks in just barely by virtue of the 'levels' and the score display at the top. PS: I have to wonder if Techgamer has ever seen the tail of an aircraft.
Iron Reaper
By
DarkCampainger
Theme: Mechanics
Result: Complete
I like this game. You play as a giant mecha which is animated rather nicely. Your mission is to obliterate other giant mecha, working your way up to the final boss general guy. It's missing some polish in its start and end game, but the gameplay is very promising. This game scores a lot of points on the tweaking front, where a couple changes here and there could turn it into a powerhouse. Weapon upgrades would be nice. The gameplay is too deterministic, and there's not much strategy; mostly because the weapons don't miss. Our play testers like it because it has a clear beginning, goal, and end, and the time taken is displayed at the completion. Nice purple missiles, btw. The play testers were also hyped up on the teamwork aspect, perhaps because they recently came from playing contra. All in all, a good short game which could be used as the frame on which to build a larger game.
GIAD
By
Mikau
Theme: Flight, Mechanics, Turtle
Result: Complete
GIAD (what ever happened to naming games?) is a collaboration between Mikau (programming) and Zxcvdmn (art). You play as mecha-gamera, appearing uncredited, in an endless quest to avoid spikes and Tootsie Rolls. If hit by a missile, you will loose control of the turtle for a brief moment while he plummets to the spiky earth below. To try and stave off this fate, you can attempt to collect the Invincibility powerups that fly by at breakneck speed. It's a well made game with a pleasing interface and no run time errors. I only have one nit to pick with this game, and that's that, like all other BYOND games of its genre, the camera and the player's mob are fixed in the center of the screen. This effectively cuts the game area in half because the stuff behind you isn't really part of the game anymore. Not only that, but the stuff above and below you is hardly part of the game, either, because by the time you moved up or down it would have passed by already. This leaves a thin wedge of viewing area to interact with. To get around this, I suggest that you use the diagonal keys (which the developers forgot to disable) to move your turtle back to the left edge of the screen. Once you've done that, the game is much more enjoyable. The score and level are displayed very nicely with onscreen text, and the fading background gives a clear sense of progression. Over time Your turtle falls under the influence of gravity, the kind of maintenance feature designed to give you carpal tunnel. In the end, I couldn't give this one a pass considering its very limited scope (you press up or down, and try not to touch stuff), so this game ranks in at complete.
TurtleRacer
By
Android Data
Theme: Turtle, Mechanics, Flight
Result: Complete
Ever played the board game "Cats and Dogs"? This is like a cross between that and "Team Fortress". The help file and spectate features help to add to polish, but it is lacking in some other areas, such as team balance. Another problem we encountered was that our play testers couldn't get a good feel for the game with the number of people we had; this entry requires a large number of people to make fitting use of many of its features, and most BYOND games are unlikely to draw that large a crowd. There were no bugs encountered, and combat worked fine.
Empyrean War
By
D4RK3 54B3R
Theme: Flight
Result: Complete
Of the games tested, this was perhaps the hardest to judge. The game is presented well, and the interface is fantastic. Playtesters, however, felt that they weren't playing a game so much as configuring their armies prior to watching the simulation take place. Ship movement and other commands seemed unresponsive; some ships refused to attack at all, even when under fire, while others were trigger happy and required no orders from the player to run across the map and attack. The background was distracting at time, in that it had clear visual priority but made no impact on gameplay. All in all, I don't know what's happening in this game, but it seems to be working, and it certainly looks and sounds impressive. Complete, but in need of tweaking (especially on lower end computers) before it could attract a fan base.
Ambrosia
By
Jeff8500
Theme: Ambrosia, Fluid
Result: Complete
Returning Participant
As per the rules of the event, Jeff8500 was allowed a different date for his game in a day, and so was supplied with two different themes to choose from. To try and be fair to the other participants, I gave him what I thought were terrible themes: Fluid or Ambrosia. Like almost everyone else this year, he chose to use all available themes, and made a game with fluid movement where your goal is to deliver ambrosia to mount Olympus. The graphics are minimalist and there are only four objects in the game, but the gameplay itself is enjoyable. Well, if you're into that sort of thing; here's a hint: ever play "The Marriage"? There's not much here by way of depth of gameplay or "scope", however you define it, but it runs smoothly and is well presented.
Untitled
By
Tiberath
Theme: Mechanics
Result: complete
Complete, but now we're really stretching it. We had trouble getting a feel for the game without a large group of people playing. Further, we feel that it would be hard for a game of this nature to attract that large group. ATP's "Airsoft" in 2006 and Smokey Joe's "Flame Wars" in 2007 presented similar problems. In these cases the gameplay changes drastically according to the players' behavior. As a result, this game, and games like it, could score much higher or lower on this scale. In essence, the player supplies the AI and challenge, thus 'completing' the game. There were some interface issues, such as the text output being out of view at Resolutions of 1024x768 and lower. All in all it was a standard capture the flag game, but scored points for a good use of theme: there were several useful powerups, and turrets that could be built from spare parts. Defensive structures seemed underpowered, though, so in the end it came down to who could find the opponents' flags faster. No bugs or runtimes were encountered.
Graw Kitties All the Way Down
By
Zaole
Theme: Turtles All the Way Down
Result: Complete
Title screen / movie made it all worth it. Game goes downhill from there as the atomic tile based platformers have always struck me as clumsy. You play as a stick guy out to defend your culture's faith from the heretics who insist that the world does not rest on the backs of an infinite number of Graw Kitties. It is your job to travel down through the center of the earth and prove the ancient sages correct. The game tracks both things smashed and lives lost, though it doesn't reward or penalize for either, and is overly simplistic. Nice ending, though a manual reboot was needed to get the game back into a playable state. ...I think the idea might have been that no one would play it more than once. Could have benefited from moving obstacles. Death by poor game control is not a source of fun. Death by random surprising things sometimes is.
Atom Machine
By
Cbgames
Theme: Mechanics
Result: Playable
The Atom Machine is a platformer where your goal is to get to the end of each level while avoiding red things, and touching blue things. It's polished well, but makes low use of theme, and is not of sufficient scope to be considered complete. Notes from play testing: Smooth custom movement and frame rate, though could benefit from use of client.pixel_x/y settings. Pleasing, though sparse, use of sound. Third level tedious, annoying, repetitive; monster clusters much too dense. Somewhere off in the distance I thought I heard a voice saying "Fly through my rings, Superman", but I'm sure it's just the wind. What does this "flash" thing d- Oh god, the goggles, they do nothing!
GIAD
By
Qubic
Theme: Flight
Result: Playable
Qubic's entry is an auto side-scroller where the goal is to avoid touching colored balls as they go flying by. The effect could have been enhanced had the starry background scrolled, but Qubic took the high road and kept a more scientifically correct fixed starfield. Or he didn't have enough time for scrolling stars. For each green ball that goes by you earn one point, and these points are displayed at the top, along with the all time high scorer whose score is saved for future generations to marvel at. This entry was well constructed and could have scored higher if not for it's severely limited scope.
Fly
By
Mr.DJ7
Theme: Flight, Turtle, Mechanics
Result: Playable, but barely
There are games for which I do not have words. "Welcome to the old-timey cinema. Please enjoy tonight's movie, featuring a turtle-dervish magically kept in the air by his frenzied spinning. Will he achieve his goal of bursting an arbitrary number of zeppelins before he is caught by the laser? Only time will tell."
Migma
By
IainPeregrine
Theme: Mechanics
Result: Playable
Returning Participant
This is most of an action adventure game, just missing the monsters, items, and maps. You know, all the stuff the player actually plays with. What is finished is the game engine. You know, all the stuff you'd never see, but that makes the stuff that doesn't exist possible. Makes perfect sense, right? I was on schedule to complete this project until my music partner called me up and reminded me I had to be at practice for a gig the next day, both of which I had forgotten about. There goes all the mapping time. I've withheld releasing it simply because I don't have the file space left. A problem with Photoshop left me unable to reduce the file size of various images, and the title screen alone is 13mb large. It's also about the only interesting part of the project. One of these days I'll finish an entire game in one day, just not this year.
GiaD game
By
Gamemakingdude
Theme: Mechanics
Result: Disqualified
This game is a horror/escape game where the player must, for some cryptic and unspecified reason, collect three items before he is allowed to leave the zombie infested building of some sort. These items are: A button, a spring, and a cog. However, that doesn't impact gameplay at all, so those three items could just as well have been a bottle of scotch, baby diapers, and extra strength Advil (3 points to whoever first figures out how I arrived at those items). As such, this game makes insufficient use of the theme in its gameplay, and must be disqualified. I must say, though, he got the "Horror" theme spot-on through use of sounds and visuals.
Rocket Land
By
[Name removed by request]
Theme: Mechanics, Flight
Result: Disqualified
Before you begin, there is a help file present, you just have to click the screen to access it. This small game consists of five levels, the goal of each is to get your character to the rocket which is blocked by some obstacle. The first level is a standard introductory level where the player must push a rock into a hole in order pass over said hole and access the rocket; its purpose is to introduce the means by which the player interacts with the world and solves puzzles. The next level builds on this by introducing rocket powered crushy things which must be avoided, and then the player must push a rock into a hole. The third level offers a large number of crushy things. The fourth level is a maze with a nice fade in / fade out effect. The fifth level puts everything together by having the player dodge blocky things in an area which contains a couple of opaque objects, and then push a rock into a hole. This game runs well without any bugs, and I hate to disqualify any entry, but the theme must effect gameplay in a significant way, and that was not the case with this entry.
Giadentry
By
Magicbeast20
Theme:
Result: Disqualified
I'm rather confused by this entry. It came in via email right as the event started, and doesn't consist of much. You play as a robot with a nub on one end. You attack other robots by bumping this nub into them, while they do the same. Sometimes a dead robot leaves behind health. That's basically it. Effort obviously went into the interface, but there's no game for that interface to wrap around. The reason for disqualification, and not simply "unplayable" is because of a lack of use of the theme; those robots could just as easily have been tea pots, or cars, or knights, or what have you. But, like I said, I'm just confused by this robot kissing game.
GiaD
By
C_Dawg_S
Theme: Turtles All the Way Down
Result: Disqualified
Of all the games submitted, C_Dawg_S's entry is the only one to present the theme "Turtles All the Way Down" in its literal form. This is a Tetris type stacker, but extremely simplified. Two buttons, one makes a turtle fall onto the turtle stack, the other makes the world fall onto the stack and outputs "You Loose". As such, I can't consider this a game, and it must be disqualified, despite the objections of one of our testers. Bug: "You loose" can be displayed if the world bumps a turtle who is not yet "grounded". Note from play tester: "This game's awesome!"