Summer 2012 Dualstream Day of Zeux Scoresheet:Wervyn
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/= INTRODUCTION ================================================================ | Well what do you know, it's DoZ time again. Seems like taking some time off | | actually encouraged some interest in the competition again, and that's | | surely a good thing. I was afraid, after the last one, that we might be done | | for good, but we got eleven entries, four of which are actually pretty good. | | I don't have a great deal to say this year, so let's dive right in. And this | | time, we'll pair my snark and cold cynicism against my wife's adorable | | naivete! | ===============================================================================/ /= 20027 = Wild Fire ===================== ALTERNATE HISTORY/LIGHT = [248/400] = - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 92/120] - | So if there's one thing Maxim is good at... Yeah, same old, same old. This | | is a pretty nice shooter though, very polished, fair amount of difficulty | | curve but not overwhelming. I initially had trouble hitting the quota on the | | first stage, but after a little advice from Maxim on approach I was able to | | overcome it without too much difficulty. There are also lots of nice | | features to keep things interesting and varied. The whole fighter/mech | | switching mechanic actually lends itself to some good tactical gameplay, | | which I discovered through play. I find the decision to disallow saving a | | little questionable for a DoZ (always a quick way to make the judges hate | | playing your game), but the game is short enough that it's not that huge of | | a deal, and in this case the issue is simply game difficulty, not crippling | | bugs, that makes restarting frequent. So, my biggest criticism is that the | | game is shorter than I'd like it to be. Maybe it balances out with the | | difficulty, since working up the skill to succeed at it takes enough time. | | And to its credit, I wanted to spend the time to get there. Solid game all | | around. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 37/ 90] - | The art is serviceable but not a lot more. This is usual for Maxim's games, | | and he definitely knows where his strengths lie, so props for not getting | | bogged down in his weaker areas and just doing what needs to be done. But, | | to the point, the large, solid char backgrounds are pretty bland, and the | | default palette makes everything look like a technicolor mess. On the plus | | side, the division of the background and foreground elements into dark and | | light colors makes it fairly easy to tell what's going on, so at least | | Maxim's graphical theory is solid. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 72/ 80] - | As I noted with gameplay, this game is very polished, and the engine is | | quite respectable. The only thing I noticed that might be a bug was a | | power-up traveling backwards against the flow of the game, and who am I to | | say that it wasn't supposed to be doing that? I also feel like I might have | | gotten snagged by an invisible bullet once when I was fighting the last | | boss, but it's a fast paced game, could have just missed it. One technique I | | really liked was the "piano roll" approach to enemy wave planning, encoded | | into the level MZMs. It's a clever way to plan out each level with a minimum | | of fuss. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 18/ 50] - | Mostly, this is just the obligatory vehicle text to provide some sort of | | context before getting us to the engine that comprises the actual game. It | | does what it needs to do and then gets out of the way, and ultimately that | | means there's no real emotional or narrative connection to the game; in the | | end you're just a blob of pixels shooting at other pixels, because shooter | | engine. The draw for completion really comes from a drive for mastery, not | | to find out what happens next. | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 21/ 40] - | Likewise, this music is largely just a generic action game backdrop to me. | | It works, but it's mostly just there because something needs to be. It | | doesn't help that the beginning of the first level song is really obnoxious, | | even though it evens out later in. During the brunt of the action, you're | | not really paying attention to the music. You only notice it when you have | | to restart, and that's the part of the song that sounds particularly bad. I | | would have picked something with a better hook. In the same way, the PC | | speaker blips for the sound effects do the job they need to do, but not in | | any particularly noteworthy way. | | | - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 8/ 20] - | Workable and largely delivered by the story. "It's WWII, but with | | transforming mecha!", so I'll buy the connection to alternate history based | | on that. But that's really the only connection. Good enough, and what you | | tend to expect from a theme-light game that's trying to succeed on its | | technical merits more than anything else. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [248/400] - | Maxim really needs to team up with some people who can do art and story | | work. His prowess in the technical categories is really impressive, so if he | | had someone equally strong in the artistic categories, he could be a pretty | | unstoppable team. | | | | Wervyn says: "Haven't I done this review before?" | | | | Puella says: "The first song was annoying, but I like the dragon sprite! | | The background was kind of boring, but I really liked the helicopter and | | it's giant pink laz0rz of awesome." | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 24966 = Hipster Quest ===================== INDIVIDUALITY/HEAVY = [157/400] = - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 78/100] - | So it looks's like Tait is running a double or nothing gambit on high theme | | score! And to his credit, I actually buy it. The game makes sport of | | hipster-chic while being pretty hipster itself, and there's certainly | | nothing else in the DoZ quite like it. So, well done sir, well done. Doesn't | | earn much for the rest of the score, but it was at least an entertaining | | take on the topic. | | | - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 18/ 90] - | Largely consists of moving a robot sprite around at far too great a speed | | to hit collision boxes that are far too small. Even beyond the fact that | | there's no gameplay apart from that, the game itself is more frustrating | | than it should be due to the speed 2 decision and the tiny sprites. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 21/ 70] - | Somewhat cute robot sprites, but otherwise it's just big, empty fields of | | color with some blocks in them. The title screen, despite it's incredibly | | innovative use of scroll char (hah! sarcasm!) is a visual disaster, and | | ultimately resolves into some half-char lettering. Hooray. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 12/ 60] - | Looks to me like a very rudimentary sprite engine, and one that can't even | | do collision right. I went through and discovered that all movement and | | interaction is handled by overlapping the default player, which is why you | | have to line up perfectly to actually bump into anything. Come on | | Taitorian, I wrote a tutorial on this, a decent MZX sprite movement engine | | with collision handler is like 20 lines of code. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 28/ 50] - | Well if nothing else, this game did make me laugh. That's an emotional | | connection right there! I was compelled to finish so I could get to the end | | of the joke, and that in itself isn't bad. Not great, but not bad. | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 0/ 30] - | Ow... | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [157/400] - | So I guess, props for a great joke entry, probably my favorite of the | | competition as far as that goes. Apart from that, what an excruciating | | experience. | | | | Wervyn says: "Posers, I was making fun of hipsters before it was cool." | | | | Puella says: "Owww....oh geez, make it stop my ears are bleeding! I like | | the hipster talk. 'Yeah, my husband is an admin on this site where people | | create primitive-style games, like the NES but more simplistic and colorful, | | and it's all in this complex code, so they're all really smart. It's called | | MegaZeux, but you've probably never heard of it." | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 30154 = President Skeleton ============ ALTERNATE HISTORY/LIGHT = [157/400] = - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 20/120] - | After the amusing enough intro, the game we're actually treated to is | | pretty terrible. There are a number of really bad decisions that take this | | from just a generic default MZX shooter to a really awful one. Number one: | | gooptouched. Great for a one-off joke, terrible idea for an actual game. I | | think I would have forgiven this if the label had been zapped afterwards, | | but the joke wears out its welcome. Number two: similar vein, text boxes in | | response to :shot. Have you just never heard of the * command? Number three: | | the whole random level generator in general was just a bad idea, it's pretty | | much all negatives. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 51/ 90] - | So I'm torn, because the half-char artwork for the cutscenes is actually | | pretty awesome, but the graphics for the actual gameplay segments are | | eye-stabbingly terrible. Swathes of dark cyan, a chaotic mess of random | | characters thanks to the "level generator", and control robots that are | | never hidden. The boss board, just a big empty black room with debug robots | | in the top left, is particularly symptomatic of this sort of design | | laziness, and I kind of have to wonder why, with all the work that was put | | into the other art. But it's okay, because those four large pieces are still | | worthy of a decent pity score. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 19/ 80] - | So you want feedback on the random level generator, eh? The biggest problem | | is that it's too random. All you're doing is randomly plopping a selection | | of obstacle items all over the board, which does not make for particularly | | compelling gameplay, and is pretty easy to do. Typically, good random | | dungeon design looks pre-fab on a small scale and random on a large scale, | | whereas you've done the reverse, pre-fabricating your board and then filling | | it with random garbage. A better way to approach this is to create a | | palette, so to speak, of rooms or groups of objects that have internal | | cohesion. You also want a good way to algorithmically chain these elements | | together. A scoresheet isn't really the best place to go into details, so | | basically, your approach is backwards, try something else. Oh yeah, and as | | for the rest of the game, it's all just run of the mill newbie level coding, | | not really worthy of much in the way of technique points. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 29/ 50] - | Humor is an excellent vehicle for player engagement, and that's getting | | this game some decent points here. It's not the funniest thing I've ever | | seen, and it's certainly not a terribly compelling plot, but it made me want | | to play through to the end. When the game itself is as forgettable as this | | one was, that's at least some sort of accomplishment, right? | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 28/ 40] - | There are some decently good tracks in here, and the title screen in | | particular is plotted well to come in on the hook. Poppy chip-tunes really | | do suit the aesthetic, such as it is, of this game, at least so far as the | | story is presented. So, not stellar, but pretty good. | | | - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 10/ 20] - | Another slightly tenuous story-based connection to the theme. This time | | it's "what if American politics, but with skeleton and robot?" I'm not sure | | this is really hitting the "history" part of the theme very hard, but on the | | plus side, it was slightly novel, as opposed to all the WWII-based entries. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [157/400] - | This looks like a classic case of running out of steam in the middle of the | | project to me. The discrepency in polish between the opening cutscenes and | | the actual game is just too great for me to think of this as anything other | | than giving up half-way through and submitting anyway. Those are always the | | saddest entries. | | | | Wervyn says: "A skeleton will return, in 'Naked Fury'." | | | | Puella says: "I like the detail of bones as the stars on the flag. The art | | for the story screens are great, and the dialogue is very funny :) Bone puns | | are glorious." | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 49932 = Thanatos Insignia 2 =============== INDIVIDUALITY/LIGHT = [271/400] = - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [111/120] - | I don't know about anyone else, but overall this was my favorite gameplay | | experience of the DoZ. Considering some of the stuff I heard Lancer saying | | about it, it's a shockingly well balanced game, with a real difficulty curve | | at the end. It's lengthy without being overlong (I think, at least, that an | | hour is not too long to spend on a particularly good DoZ game, this is no | | Reconquista+Escalation), and has a particularly addictive level-up feedback | | loop that made it easy to get sucked into playing it for quite awhile. The | | action is fun and fast-paced, if a bit mindless at first, and the various | | powerups keep you working for the next level to see what the next cool thing | | you'll get is. Flay II is particularly devastating on the later hordes and | | recoups its cost almost immediately. And to top it off, the last portion of | | the game is actually moderately challenging, even if you scour each area | | until it's out of spawns beforehand. Overall this is my pick for the DoZ, | | and I'm looking forward to the post-competition remake. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 62/ 90] - | This is pretty good graphical work, with good color choices, crisp enemies, | | and lovely level backdrops. The two main drawbacks to it are a lack of | | cohesion, or in other words the "what am I looking at effect"; and lack of a | | customfloor background for the levels. The latter is perhaps a style choice, | | but one that I notice particularly when I'm looking at a lot of empty black | | space. The former is a common issue with Lancer's enemy graphics, in that | | there are just a lot of random elements thrown together. We have blob | | things, bat things, evil tree things (which seem to appear in a lot of | | Lancer games, a running theme?), and a host of different environments which | | separately look just fine, but together make very little sense. Maybe this | | is a story gripe, I dunno, but it does stand out, visually. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 58/ 80] - | An otherwise nearly flawless game gets dinged by a petty game-breaking bug | | at the final boss. First, I love this engine, taking the frantic pace of the | | first Thanatos Insignia a couple years back and streamlining it into this | | monster. This is really impressive work, managing a glut of enemies, | | projectiles, and particle effects without a hiccup. Then, there's the very | | cool smooth-scrolling MZM loaded world, seamlessly and transparently spliced | | together, with subtle palette shifts. It's background to the action, but | | it's a really nice effect. Finally the HUD, while not overly complex, is | | very smooth and intuitive to boot. So really, I just have to knock off some | | points somewhere for the messed up linking for the final boss. On the plus | | side, external scripting means it can be fixed without nuking the save, so | | that's cool. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 11/ 50] - | In a continuation on the theme from the last game, this plot is mostly just | | random angst packaged around bizarre internet memes, only this time Lancer | | and Lachesis half-assed it even more! And yet somehow, there's a sort of | | continuity to that, isn't there? Still, there's no emotional draw to play | | this game, it's all in the addictive gameplay, seeing just how powerful you | | can become before the end. | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 25/ 40] - | Not bad by any means, and hell, classical music is pretty pleasent to | | listen to as a backdrop to the digital plink of computer explosions. But | | like the graphics, it doesn't really fit with anything else, it's just | | there. The sound effects for projectiles and powerups are pretty good, but | | ultimately just become a cacaphonous overlay to the music in the background. | | It's difficult to really isolate individual things that are happening with | | so much flying around and making noise, at least until the satisfying sound | | of the next level. What the sound design really could have used was a | | clearly distinguishable noise on losing a health bar, since it's not always | | easy to tell when you've gotten hit without keeping an eye on the top HUD. | | | - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 4/ 20] - | So, yeah. Obviously this was an afterthought. And to be fair, I appreciate | | getting an awesome game out of a DoZ even if it didn't really follow the | | rules. There's some weak quote tie-in at the end of the game invoking | | "individuality", and to a certain extent I'll buy character customization as | | relavent to the theme, but for that to work you really have to sell it, | | since that's any RPG. I actually think this should be disqualified just to | | prove a point, but I know that's unlikely to happen, and I'm not going to | | zero the score just to try to force it to. Some other judge will save your | | bacon. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [271/400] - | Again, this one is my personal favorite, even if it's kind of cheating. | | Lancer's action game style just appeals to me, and Lachesis' help with the | | coding means they can turn out really impressive results in a short time. | | | | Wervyn says: "Jimbo Wales has challenged you to a dance fight!" | | | | Puella says: "Really cool intro graphic! I liked the sprites, especially | | the one that looked like a tree or something with many arms. It was cool!" | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 69245 = Final Kamikaze ================ ALTERNATE HISTORY/LIGHT = [120/400] = - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 31/120] - | So like, I hold down spacebar and move up and down until I win? Not a lot | | going on here, certainly. This is the kind of thing more suited to a BKZX | | than a DoZ, and I'm not sure I understand what it's doing here. I know BBH | | has done better in the past. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 22/ 90] - | Flat, blocky, and tiny. Oh, and drab, it's mostly a lot of gray. I kind of | | wondered if the moon was supposed to be, like, a spaceship or something for | | a second. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 14/ 80] - | BBH actually did make a sort of player engine here, but it's pretty | | rudimentary and doesn't really work all that well as it is. A tip: | | overriding the player to do different things is so two decades ago. Really, | | why not just use a robot to BE the player instead of using a robot to move | | the player? | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 18/ 50] - | While I think the tie-in to WWII was kind of... actually no, it wasn't all | | that clever. But it was something. Regardless, it still boils down to "hey, | | do X....hooray, you did X!" What's my motivation again? | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 21/ 40] - | The song actually seems pretty fitting, but of course there's really only | | one apart from a little Final Fantasy victory music. Gunshot noises seem a | | little over-loud to me. Maybe it's just late. | | | - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 14/ 20] - | This is actually solid, albeit boring, theme usage. It fits the topic in | | the most obvious way possible, and I can't really slight it for that. In | | particular, playing it straight as an alternate ending to WWII actually | | works better for me than Maxim's game did. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [120/400] - | Meh, there are always a few of these in any signficantly attended DoZ. | | Moving right along... | | | | Wervyn says: "Oh no, it's a red one! We're all doomed." | | | | Puella says: "I like the monochrome! I'd reword, 'you are the only one who | | can reach on time the bomber...' but it made me giggle :) The Final Fantasy | | music is a nice touch." | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 74588 = Spirit Quest ====================== INDIVIDUALITY/LIGHT = [235/400] = - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 73/120] - | So this game was weirdly compelling, even though it eventually turned into | | a chore to play. It's probably that addictive "chasing the next level" | | mechanic at work, but by the second level it had turned into a grind (that I | | probably could have skipped), and by the last I was just trying to finish | | the thing. As far as the battle engine goes, leveling each skill through use | | is an interesting idea, but ultimately contributes to the tedium that makes | | the game feel grindy. For the amount of time that I spent trying to play | | through this properly, I was left feeling like I'd just wasted my time at | | the end of it. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 71/ 90] - | These are probably the prettiest graphics in the DoZ, and it's impressive | | to me that Thud managed to put some very nice artwork together with a fairly | | complex engine, all by himself. I really like the level artwork a lot, | | particularly the forest. Some of the later stuff in the volcano felt a | | little too dark, but it worked. Taking away points are some graphical | | glitches on the menu and battle screens, where it seemed like garbage would | | accidentally get copied around on the screen sometimes. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 27/ 80] - | And then there's that engine, hoo boy. It's a nice piece of work, but it's | | full of bugs and that really drags the score down. Good stuff to note: I | | liked the transition from the overworld to the battles, the battles | | themselves mostly worked well, and the equip screen had a decent interface | | (though a mouse-based system probably would have worked better). As for | | bugs, the game breaking one right before the castle is the real killer, but | | there are plenty of others. Speed as it applies to turn order is a huge one, | | as this really messes with the gameplay. This itself contributes to | | scenarios where you can get stuck in a fight because you have the wrong | | spirit equiped and can't do damage, but are too fast for the enemy to ever | | get a turn (and you can't run away, either). Towards the end, when Thud was | | clearly rushing to finish, things get really slipshod, and the high-power | | water spirit gets tagged with a fire attribute instead. That threw me for a | | loop in the fight. But overall, it's just a mess, on top of what would | | otherwise be a pretty solid set of engines. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 32/ 50] - | Rather simple, but often the best stories are. There's enough engagement | | and interest in the whole war with the spirits and protecting humanity's | | individuality to drive the narrative. Things unfortunately fall apart | | towards the end, though, with a rushed tag on "and so the day was | | saved...for now!" It was going somewhere up until then, but we all know what | | a DoZ time crunch can do to a game. | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 16/ 40] - | I honestly found the music a little grating. It wasn't really bad so much | | as dull, and part of the problem was the intercutting between overworld, | | equip screen, and battles, usually in fairly quick succession. This means | | you get to hear only the very beginning of each piece, over and over again, | | whether it's droning, over-mellow guitar riffs, silence, or...suspenseful | | piano music? Really? | | | - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 16/ 20] - | This is pretty good theme use, actually. Mostly carried by the story, but | | that runs throughout, and is what I expect from a good theme-light game. I | | might grade this a little harsher on the heavy sheet. It does seem to me, | | too, that Thud might have been going for an interpretation of the theme on | | leveling skills _individually_, so that's something. Maybe I'm reading too | | much into it. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [235/400] - | There's a lot of potential for a great game here with some polish, balance, | | and most importantly bug fixes. That's really what killed this one. | | | | Wervyn says: "What am I looking at here, floating condoms?" | | | | Puella says: "I like the intro graphic :D Music repetitive, but I like the | | hook. Story concept was interesting! Interesting graphics in general." | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 74770 = Ununhexium ======================== INDIVIDUALITY/LIGHT = [180/400] = - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 51/120] - | You know what this reminds me of? That turn-based robots game where you | | have a little guy being chased by evil robots, and you have to maneuver | | around so that they crash into each other and explode before they reach you. | | Except here you can just shoot the robots, er, skeletons, so much for | | strategy there. Instead, it's a relatively simple game about health | | conservation and careful exploration, while picking up random macguffins. | | Oh, and you can't see anything while you do it. Gameplay-wise, I accept the | | rationale for this, even though it's not that much fun (although the game is | | short enough that it doesn't become too much of a tedious slog). | | Graphically, well... | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 35/ 90] - | Seems like an awful waste of screen real estate to just draw a tiny piece | | of it at a time. I don't know what else you might have put in the rest of | | that big, empty black space, but as is you really have to squint to play | | this thing. Doesn't help that the palette is drab and limited to a few | | colors, and the character work is mostly generic enemies and items, and then | | a lot of solid blocks. Nice work on the title screen, though, some simple | | but effective graphical tricks make for a reasonably cool first impression. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 48/ 80] - | Oh hey, remember how I was talking about random level generation before? | | This is a good example of what I meant about a palette of room elements. Now | | there's nothing overly complicated going on here, the level gen is pretty | | much a paste and go, and the gameplay engine is pretty straightforward. But | | it all works just fine, and bug-free is helpful in the technique department. | | Also, is it weird to anyone else that nooodl and Guy both turned in entries | | involving skeletons and random level generators? A little more attention in | | the enemy AI department might have been enough to push this out of the | | "average" level. The game is way too easy as it is, and smarter skeletons | | would have both improved that and provided a way to show off. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 15/ 50] - | There's some opening screed about dungeon crawling to save your crew blah | | blah, but it's really more of an explanation of the game rules than anything | | else. It reads pretty much like "just hurry up and play the damn thing | | already" to me. So, better than the complete nonsense that is Thanatos | | Insignia 2, but not really even as good as Final Kamikaze to me. I don't | | react well to being beaten over the head with the topic, it just feels lazy | | to me. Of course, we'll get to THAT in a second... | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 30/ 40] - | I found myself really enjoying the tracks i this game, perhaps I'm just in | | a chiptune mood this DoZ. But I found all of them fitting, even if I'm not | | sure exactly why. Nice sound design with the high score entry and table, | | that was a good decision both in terms of music choice, and in sequencing. I | | like that I had ample time to enjoy the pieces, instead of having | | transitions cut them off as in other games. | | | - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 1/ 20] - | So, heh. You went to a lot of effort (read: the bare minimum) to shoehorn | | the theme into the game, and you got the wrong theme. Ouch. I award you one | | pity point for the attempt, but Isolation was four DoZs ago. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [180/400] - | A somewhat interesting game idea, but ultimately rather boring. This one | | should be disqualified too, but I'm not holding out for the other judges to | | realize that, since theme disqualification usually only gets applied to joke | | entries, not seriously attempted ones. | | | | Wervyn says: "Oops, I think I just shot President Skeleton." | | | | Puella says: "Cool animation at the beginning. Premise is cool, that you | | get weaker as you go back. The ring of light thing is REALLY cool, how do | | you do that? The music is fun too. Great to eat cereal and read Weird Al's | | twitter by." | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 80483 = DUI 20XX ====================== ALTERNATE HISTORY/HEAVY = [292/400] = - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 65/100] - | I'm not sure I understand the decision to cross-sheet this game. Alternate | | History is kind of a difficult theme to do on the heavy sheet if you don't | | really sell the connection. I mean, it worked well enough story wise, I buy | | the idea of travelling through time and changing history, but it's still a | | real stretch, and comes across as a joke most of the time (probably because | | it was meant to). That's just average theme use, not superlative theme use. | | | - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 71/ 90] - | This is probably the most polished overhead driving game I've seen in MZX, | | let alone a DoZ, and I'm really not sure why people haven't done more with | | them up to this point. One innovation that definitely helps a lot are the | | velocity and direction pointers. Risu and Otto correctly realized that the | | car graphics alone weren't enough to convey this information, even if you | | could accurately do it in MZX's low res. The granularity of the markers | | isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than the alternative. Combine fun | | physics interactions with decently challenging courses and time limits, and | | you've got a pretty good game. Some nitpicks: I really would have preferred | | spacebar as a handbrake, instead of down. Clearly I've been playing too much | | GTA. And collisions are, frankly, kind of hilarious, although I'm not sure | | if I'd like fatal crashing or dead-stopping better. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 54/ 70] - | Excellent work on these, like them about the same level as Spirit Quest, | | they're vibrant, varied, and evocative of the environments. There's better | | artwork out there, of course, but this is high-level work, and what I'd | | expect from someone as accomplished as Snigwich (great to have him back and | | MZXing again, by the way). I loved the little touch of terrain damage from | | having your car skid off the track or crash into things, really added to the | | emersion a lot. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 51/ 60] - | As I said already, this is one of the best engines in the DoZ, about on the | | level of Maxim's. The physical interactions of the car with different | | driving terrain, collidable objects, and angular momentum, all made for a | | really cool experience. And it all worked very well. Though the driving | | pretty much IS the game, that's good enough for sizeable points there. Of | | course, there's that map restart bug, which makes the challenge level of the | | races particularly punishing. At least you can save in this one. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 33/ 50] - | Fun, light-hearted stuff, generally above average fair. There were no | | really strong story games this time (well, there was one that might have | | been, but it was unfinished), but drawing me into the world of the game, | | even if it's a silly world, is what you need to make that emotional | | connection I value so much in this category. I did dock a few points for the | | DELIVERY of the story, since unskippable dialogues with text you can't | | manually advance through is frustrating, and some of the fourth-wall jokes | | wore themselves out in the process. My opinion is you shouldn't deliver | | story text this way to begin with, but if you do, pay attention to your | | dialogue breaks; it's always jarring to stop in the middle of a sentence and | | have to wait for the dialogue to proceed. | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 18/ 30] - | Good musical selection, and I leave it at that. What this game was really | | hurting for was sound effects, they were extremely conspicuous in their | | absence. Stuff like driving noises and crashes go without saying, but when | | there's no noise for stuff like going through a checkpoint, lack of sound is | | impacting gameplay, and that's a problem. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [292/400] - | Looks like we have a DoZ winner. I think this actually would have done even | | better on the light sheet, but a game that hits all of the categories at a | | fairly strong level will do better than a game that hits a couple of them | | really strong but falls flat in the others. | | | | Wervyn says: "The booze must flow!" | | | | Puella says: "SPACE HITLER! But the exposition text is too cut up, hard to | | follow. Fun premise, cool sprites, and I really like the 4th wall jokes!" | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 82246 = Argrablehuble ================= ALTERNATE HISTORY/LIGHT = [135/400] = - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 41/120] - | So as far as this goes, I'm considering the game to be the slider puzzle, | | as the rest of the stuff isn't in nearly complete enough a state to tell | | what it was supposed to be. Using one of the mechanical slider puzzles from | | MZX Manor was humorous, but has gameplay problems as some of the tiles are | | identical, but not recognized by the engine as such. Thus, you can solve the | | puzzle, without actually solving the puzzle. And of course, putting things | | together practically requires looking at the hint, since unless you're | | really familiar with ZZT slider puzzle mechanics it might as well go | | together any which way. Hey, you know what would have been cool? If once you | | finished assembling the slider puzzle correctly, you got to play through it. | | Except that would have gotten this game disqualified even harder. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 32/ 90] - | I'm incorporating judgements on some of the scrapped level design here too, | | and it looked like it might have been interesting (if very...red). I can't | | really give you a lot for that, though. I certainly can't award much for | | running a bunch of stock photos through an image converter. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 29/ 80] - | Slider puzzle! That's about it though. It works well enough but that's | | literally all that's here, engine-wise. Except maybe a WASD shooting engine | | on one of the project scrap boards, because those are REALLY hard to make. | | Okay granted, for whatever reason there's actually a sprite maanagement | | engine here for player movement and shooting, but the lack of a game that | | uses them pretty much makes the argument for why spending time on something | | complicated was a bad idea. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 5/ 50] - | This is about as generous as I can be. There's nothing tying this together | | at all, and of course that's what you might expect for a project dump. But | | even then, you might have included a story dump along with it with a little | | more depth than "Papa Rufus". | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 17/ 40] - | I'll grant that the music played over the puzzle was nice and suiting, but | | what else do you expect for a single mod? | | | - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 11/ 20] - | Ahahaha, I get it! Because, see, the HISTORY is all mixed up, or | | ALTERNATED, if you will. What a card you are Old-Skool. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [135/400] - | So, did you oversleep, or fall asleep, or what? Oh DoZ motivation, you are | | so fickle. | | | | Wervyn says: "We have to say Swiper no swiping! Swiper no swiping!" | | | | Puella says: "I'm really bad at slider puzzles :P" | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 83889 = weltzschmerz ====================== INDIVIDUALITY/HEAVY = [201/400] = - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 55/100] - | So this game started with a lot of promise, and I was expecting something | | that would be, if perhaps a little cliche, then at least suitably epic. But | | then it broke off after the first little segment, before things really had a | | chance to get going. Sucks. As for what's there, I can definitely see a | | "fight the power" theme developing in the story, which is a good use, and it | | definitely could have gone further. But I can only give about half points | | for a half-finished game. Oh for what might have been. | | | - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 34/ 90] - | There's a promise of some mildly entertaining stealth gameplay with | | environmental puzzle solving. But since there's only the one scenario in the | | bathroom car, I don't have a lot to go on. I might be slightly too lenient | | here because of the potential I saw, but I still can't give that many points | | for unfinished. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 38/ 70] - | So 2000 years in the future, everyone has turned into furries? Okay, I'll | | go with it. The graphics are nice enough, if a little muted, but nothing | | really amazing. Art design is mostly small-scale, here, which makes things | | feel cluttered. Also, there are some glitches in drawing the player when | | traversing the roof of the train. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 25/ 60] - | There's some decent stuff on display here, but all of it is fairly basic | | stuff. I like the simple choice system implemented in the conversation | | engine, and the puzzle worked well, even if it played out a bit like a | | quicktime even more than anything else. Maybe if there'd been more game, | | we'd get to see more programming. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 29/ 50] - | As I already said, I really liked the direction this was going, but we | | never do get to find out what happens next, and so the story is incomplete. | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 20/ 30] - | Pretty good musical choices, fighting with the fact that there's not really | | enough game to go on. What's there is atmospherically on target, and the | | sound effects peppered throughout are a nice touch. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [201/400] - | I think this game is the one I wish had been finished the most. Of course | | it's well known that I'm predisposed to story-heavy games, particularly the | | dark ones. | | | | Wervyn says: "Cloud, we have to blow up the Mako reactor!" | | | | Puella says: "The music in the intro was too repetitive before it added | | more elements @.@ Naming the character is a nice touch. We named our | | character Poophead. 'CAN YOU READ ME, POOPHEAD!?!' :D Over all, reminds me | | of FF7 in a nice homage kinda way." | | | ===============================================================================/ /= 85538 = Ken: A Matter of Individuality ==== INDIVIDUALITY/HEAVY = [118/400] = - THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 49/100] - | So I think I see what this game was going for theme-wise, in terms of a | | journey of self-discovery and finding your own individual identity, but it's | | even more unfinished than the last one and I liked it a lot less. So I'll | | just give it a slightly lower average score here. | | | - GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------------- [ 16/ 90] - | Mostly consists of running around touching things and then waiting for a | | bunch of interminable message line text to finish going by before you can | | move again. | | | - GRAPHICS --------------------------------------------------------- [ 12/ 70] - | Painful to look at. It's not that I mind ZZT-retro so much | | as...well...colors, holy geez. It's like a My Little Pony exploded. | | | - TECHNIQUE -------------------------------------------------------- [ 7/ 60] - | Well I'm glad to see you've mastered the :touch label, but can you do | | anything else? Not link boards, apparently. I guess there was some sort of | | inventory engine too but it's not like it ever got used so it might as well | | not have been there. | | | - STORY ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 22/ 50] - | Another case where I can kind of see where things might be going, but we | | never actually get there. Doesn't help that the delivery takes agonizingly | | long to get through, thanks to the lack of any more complex message engine. | | | - SOUND ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 12/ 30] - | Halucin8.mod? Really? There are a couple others old saws in there too, but | | in this case, the music is all just "there" in the not good way. | | | - TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------ [118/400] - | So congratulations on producing the worst thing in the competition, at | | least by my score sheet. That's some sort of accomplishment, right? | | | | Wervyn says: "Obviously Ken is running away from his family's flamboyantly | | tacky decor." | | | | Puella says: "Fits the theme well :D Cute house design, and Werv was | | reading the voices in a funny way, so I enjoyed the dialogue too." | | | ===============================================================================/ /= FINAL SCORES ================================================================ 1. 80483 - DUI 20XX --------------------- ALTERNATE HISTORY/HEAVY - [292/400] - 2. 49932 - Thanatos Insignia 2 -------------- INDIVIDUALITY/LIGHT - [271/400] - 3. 20027 - Wild Fire -------------------- ALTERNATE HISTORY/LIGHT - [248/400] - 4. 74588 - Spirit Quest --------------------- INDIVIDUALITY/LIGHT - [235/400] - 5. 83889 - weltzschmerz --------------------- INDIVIDUALITY/HEAVY - [201/400] - 6. 74770 - Ununhexium ----------------------- INDIVIDUALITY/LIGHT - [180/400] - 7. 24966 - Hipster Quest -------------------- INDIVIDUALITY/HEAVY - [157/400] - 8. 30154 - President Skeleton ----------- ALTERNATE HISTORY/LIGHT - [157/400] - 9. 69245 - Final Kamikaze --------------- ALTERNATE HISTORY/LIGHT - [120/400] - 10. 85538 - Ken: A Matter of Individuality --- INDIVIDUALITY/HEAVY - [118/400] - DQ. 82246 - Argrablehuble ---------------- ALTERNATE HISTORY/LIGHT - [135/400] - ===============================================================================/