Summer 2011 Dualstream Day of Zeux Scoresheet: Wervyn
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
/= Wervyn's DoZ Scores, Summer 2011============================================= | This DoZ makes me cry, but what are you gonna do? At the same time, there | | are some things to be happy about here. Even though we only got three games, | | an all time low, two of them were actually pretty good, which kind of | | surprised me. Anyway, I don't really have too much to say about it, so | | onward to the scores. | ===============================================================================/ /= 41356 = Nightmares of a Knight =============== NIGHTMARES/LIGHT = [157/400] = - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 49/120] - | The game basically has you go through a gauntlet of several boards fighting | | off a big pile of enemies with a fairly boring sword engine. It's | | essentially a tedious battle of attrition to see whether your health can | | outlast the horde, or if you'll die by a thousand cuts. I'll give BBH | | credit, the balance seems to be about right on this, at least for me, to | | make it a challenge, but that doesn't really make it any less dull. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 31/ 90] - | Lower tier default MZX graphics with maybe one character edit for the space | | mushrooms. And it's not like those looked all that great anyway. More | | problematic than simply using defaults is the bland composition, however, | | with boards consisting of a single solid background color, usually black, | | sometimes gray, and very little visual variation. The cutscenes were | | adequate but bare, and suffer from the same lack of artistic scope. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 25/ 80] - | Pretty much all this game has to offer is the most basic of basic sword | | engines. No bells or whistles, just dragging my little slashmark across the | | overlay and sending enemies to a hit label. The enemies are programmed, but | | of course they're incredibly basic, wander-vaguely-toward-the-player types | | and all basically the same code. I did notice on the yellow border board | | that most of the walls tended to just kill each other, and since this is an | | explicit label in the code it seems intentional, but it feels like a bug. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 17/ 50] - | Knight kills evil wizard, evil wizard's assistant tries to kill knight by | | mobbing him with monsters in his dream. About two thirds in, things take a | | turn for the "I'm running out of inspiration so just put something here". | | Overall it felt pretty half-assed to me, but then that's descriptive of the | | game itself, so I can't really fault it beyond giving it a basic "meh" | | score. | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 22/ 40] - | Serviceable, if dated, musical selection, and some sound effects which | | really could have been better or more noticeable but managed to get the job | | done. | | | - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 13/ 20] - | The premise and story of the game follow the theme well enough for an easy | | pass here, but are nothing special. It works, the connection is clear, but | | that's about it. As you all know, I reserve the really high theme scores for | | games that really sell it. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [157/400] - | All told I can't really say this was a terrible game, it's not a joke and | | it's not like BBH didn't take the DoZ seriously, it's just obvious that he | | didn't care about it very much. Which I think is a rather unfortunate | | reflection on general community attitude. That's why I was so pleased with | | the other two games submitted this time. | | | | "Screw it, let's just fill this in like a Madlibs." | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 78977 = Introspect =========================== NIGHTMARES/LIGHT = [284/400] = - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 82/120] - | So this is pretty much a run-and-gun through a dreamland maze while trying | | to find specific goals. As a gameplay concept it's pretty solid: the weapon | | is fun to use, the difficulty is pretty reasonable, and the mechanic is | | entertaining for the short length of the game. Of course, that's really all | | that's going on here, and I'm not sure it would hold up for a longer game. | | As for balance, enemies seem to continue spawning without a cap, so if it | | takes too long to find all of the door pieces in a level they can become | | overwhelming. The random spawning of enemies and health pickups works, but | | does give the levels a rather drab feeling. Still, I thought the design of | | some of the later stages was nice. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 64/ 90] - | I think of this particular MZX art style as garbage chic. It's a style | | where individual character placement is rather random, but taken as a whole | | the screen begins to resemble something; usually pulled off with dirtied | | half-block art. It's an interesting style, and it works here, but I guess | | I've never been that crazy about it. Character art is workable, but looks | | deformed, with soulless, droopy-eyed faces. Which I guess is probably the | | point, but something about it puts me off. Anyway, the art here is good, but | | not great. Also the text engine on the main engine boards could have used a | | rectangular background. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 57/ 80] - | Technically this game engine runs pretty well. I didn't notice any major | | bugs in my playthrough, and the combination of gameplay effects are pretty | | neat. Overall it's a fairly basic application of some particle effects as a | | combat engine. Enemies shoot or create blobs of particles at you, you do the | | same. I did notice that the green enemies sometimes get stuck in a loop | | moving around you without actually hitting you. I also noticed that the door | | fragments weren't collectable from all surfaces, only certain ones worked. | | They functioned through robots, and not all of the touchable area was | | covered. This seems an odd oversight, but it didn't have a huge impact on | | the game. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 33/ 50] - | Pretty good, but not great. This is a solid, if predictable, psychological | | mystery about suppresed memories. The story is rather blunt and | | straightforward and the characters lack any real depth. The ending also | | smacks of "couldn't think of a better way to finish it," with the | | protagonist shooting himself and all. Still, we're not expecting | | masterpieces here. The story worked, and it engaged all the way through even | | if it didn't really connect. | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 32/ 40] - | Good and pleasing choices for music, although not quite at that level where | | you've picked the perfect song, the only one that could possibly be playing | | for a given scene because anything else just wouldn't capture the mood | | right. Rather, it carries things along appropriately without getting in the | | way. Choices for sound effects are also pretty good, with some satisfying | | thocks to let you know when you get hurt. It would have been nice to have a | | similar but differentiable sound effect to know when you hurt or killed | | something, though. | | | - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 16/ 20] - | Very solid use of theme. Again, not perfection, but the game is definitely | | centered on the idea of delving into nightmares. I think a lot more could | | have been done to make the environments feel really nightmarish and hostile, | | though. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [284/400] - | Liked it, didn't love it. But this was a solid entry, and I'm glad to see | | that even with almost no interest in the DoZ, among the few teams that did | | participate were people who really applied themselves and tried to turn out | | a good game. Honestly, if you told me the DoZ was only going to have three | | entries, I would have expected something like this to easily win. But... | | | | "Ouch, you punched me with your nose!" | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 80741 = Pandora's Gate ======================= NIGHTMARES/LIGHT = [317/400] = - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 94/120] - | I have to say, this is a fun little game to play, the interface is nice and | | clean, the options are varied, and the core battle mechanic is enjoyable to | | do. Where I think this falls down the most is that it's just too easy, even | | when the enemies aren't being randomly frozen. I was able to make it through | | most of the battles without taking any damage, once I'd developed some basic | | tactics and strategy for the fights. Even the final boss fight was barely a | | challenge, although I finally started breaking out the potions I'd | | stockpiled till then. But to be fair, there's a lot of complexity here, and | | it's hard to find the sweet spot for game challenge in 24 hours, while | | you're spending time writing the game too. It's really easy to make the game | | too hard or too easy, and much better to err on the side of too easy. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 76/ 90] - | Very well done, overall. The level design was generally pleasing and there | | was very good use of color. Some of the detail artwork was a little strange, | | in the levels, so while it wasn't difficult to interpret the first two | | levels as a weird maze of hallways, it wasn't exactly clear what was wall | | and what was floor in some areas. Still, the character art and battle | | effects were all classic Lancer, with perhaps some of Lachesis influence, | | not sure how the work got divided. And I thought the third level had some | | really interesting design, liked the movement effect with the striped grey | | areas. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 66/ 80] - | This is some very impressive battle engine work, brought down by a number | | of bugs. The most critical, of course, is a game crashing busyloop related | | to a pathfinding problem, which made the battle right before the boss of the | | second level almost impossible to complete. Add several minor bugs like | | random status effects at the start of battles, and potions overflowing the | | counter at 10, and the game begins to want for polish. But despite that, | | it's still a very polished game with an impressive and fairly sturdy engine | | underneath. The AI may be rudimentary, but it still works for a DoZ game. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 39/ 50] - | I think the coolest thing about this was the multiple storyline paths and | | endings, based on the permanent death mechanic. Given that getting killed in | | battle was pretty hard to do if you weren't trying for it, I didn't actually | | play through on one of the more depressing endings, but I still thought this | | was a really neat touch. As for the story itself, I'd say it's pretty good. | | It's nothing spectacular, and I'm not really feeling emotional connection to | | the characters, but the plot is reasonably interesting and manages a really | | quick three-act alright. So yeah, best in the bunch. | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 29/ 40] - | The musical selection was fine, up until the point that some of the songs | | (like the main battle theme) looped back awkwardly. Given how short the | | battle theme was, this really stood out to me. Apart from that, it's the | | kind of music I've come to expect from a Lancer-X game, and it works well | | enough. Battle sound effects were appropriate and well used, too. | | | - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 13/ 20] - | I'll buy the story, storming a paranormal hotbed of alien creatures that | | take over people through their dreams. It was a bit tenuous though, and I | | felt it was really just an excuse to get the magical girls in there messing | | up some badguys with their crazy spells. So, not a bad theme connection, but | | definitely taking a backseat to the gameplay, in my assessment. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [317/400] - | Easily my favorite of the competition, though with only three to choose | | from I'm not sure how much of an accomplishment that really is. Still, I | | think I would have been very fond of this one even with a large turnout, | | it's a quality game, and it's really nice to think that even in a DoZ like | | this one, we still got a game worth remembering out of it. | | | | "It's okay Mami-chan, we're magical girls! What could go wrong?" | | | ===============================================================================/ === FINAL SCORES =============================================================== 1. 80741 = Pandora's Gate ========================= NIGHTMARES/LIGHT = [317/400] 2. 78977 = Introspect ============================= NIGHTMARES/LIGHT = [284/400] 3. 41356 = Nightmares of a Knight ================= NIGHTMARES/LIGHT = [157/400]