The Great 2012 Review Contest [Reviews: 94] [CLOSED]

Make games! Discuss those games here.

Moderators: Bob the Hamster, marionline, SDHawk

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charbile
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Post by charbile »

After a quick shower, it's back to the grind!

This week is ponies to make things painless. What did you think of the game?

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*edit: typo
Last edited by charbile on Mon Sep 09, 2013 2:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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JSH357
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Post by JSH357 »



Game #4: Open Trail

Open Trail is the most chilling horror game released for the engine. What starts as a bad port of the classic Oregon Trail evolves in to an unsettling piece of nightmare fuel that will haunt you for hours afterward. Distorted character portraits, statistics that make no sense, random screamers accompanied by acid rain, and a feeling of entrapment when the game screeches to a halt in the end... it's so effective that I was left in awe.

Unfortunately, Open Trail was not trying to be a horror game. It was trying to be Oregon Trail with a hat, and it ends up being less fun to play as the original. Walking around the towns adds nothing to the game, and the creator does not make the map design interesting enough to make blazing the trail manually any fun. I think that the concept has a lot of potential. A full Oregon Trail RPG could work a bit like the original Final Fantasy in a weird way: choose a party of characters with different strengths, avoid dangers on the way, see who survives to the end. However, this product seems rushed and conceived as a bit of an afterthought.

The game has some nice touches like mouse controls and thankfully has gotten with the times and used MP3 music. None of this distracts from everything else wrong with the game, though. It's flawed down to the very core, and there's not much that can be done about it. The creator needs to re-examine the idea of a more interactive Oregon Trail and really make it have strong gameplay. Then, I may actually pay attention: he's clearly a competent scripter who could handle such a thing.

1.5/5
Last edited by JSH357 on Mon Sep 09, 2013 3:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Mogri
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Post by Mogri »

HYPER THANKS to SDHawk as usual for updating the Games pages with their review links.
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Meowskivich
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Post by Meowskivich »

charbile wrote:I'd love to review it, am a fan of turn based games :)

And I forgot to tell Meowskivich that I'll accept his dare. But so help me, Meow, if your game be trolling and wasting my time, so help me >:(
*Meowskivich still awaits his spectacular super comic review of epicness
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Gizmog
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Post by Gizmog »

I'm gonna stick to the Random Number Gods for now, but with all the hype I'm looking forward to it.
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Spoonweaver
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JSH357
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Post by JSH357 »



Game #5: The Death of Von Stabbingmore

It's really hard for me to evaluate something like this. Von Stabbingmore is a great game for what it is and does everything it was trying to do, but it's so short and on rails that there's ultimately not a lot to say. That said, it's worth playing for any OHR developer.

The main gimmick of the game is that it has a funky battle system. You must win a duel with Von Stabbingmore through wit and cleverness instead of brute force, which is something I like to see. The game makes clever use of transmogrification to create its unusual battles, and James made tall walkabout sprites using slices just to make us feel even less worthy. It's a game that looks good, runs well, and has a great sense of humor.

It's a shame that a game this neat is reserved to the same pit of forgetfulness as tech demos and other solid contest entries. There's not enough meat to chew to really escape that fate. What's here is good, though, and worthy of examination to understand how it performs its tricks.

3/5
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charbile
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Post by charbile »

You'll get what's coming, Meowskivich. Don't worry~

If I can make it... It's not slapping together something in photoshop or yapping about my thoughts that's hard, it's playing the games, sadly.

Tune in tonight for a special episode of Reign of Grelok. What did you think of the game?

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Post by TMC »

My goodness this is great.

It was also the kick I needed to finally make a couple extra tweaks and upload a bugfix release of Ortega Colonies (I had to give up on fixing the remaining lighting glitch though).

I watched some of JSH's reviews. Do you hardly ever read textboxes fully, or can you really read that fast? He even skipped My Little Gahn's intro!

Also, thanks to Charbile for 'A Wanderer Above a Sea of Mist'; I had been trying to figure out what the name of that painting was. And for Best Review Format.
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JSH357
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Post by JSH357 »

I do read very quickly. skipping that intro was a mistake though.
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marionline
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Post by marionline »

I once wrote an review to Universal Wars for Hamster Speak:
http://superwalrusland.com/ohr/issue63/index.html
It might be a bit old thoug.
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Post by JSH357 »



Review #6: Pilgrimage

SDHawk's Pilgrimage is an incomplete game released for the Terrible Games Contest. Apparently he worked on the game for an hour each day, no more, no less, and this was the result. For something made it so little time, it's not as bad as it could be, but it's not really enjoyable. Aside from a cute meta trick near the end, I didn't get much out of the game.

You play as an angel, priestess, or something sent to the surface of a planet to... do things. After saving a woman from a cave and beating a boss, the game starts glitching out and soon you've entered an area that looks like the End of Time from Chrono Trigger. Lost souls wander the place, commenting on how they are parts of games never released or give up on. It's a one dimensional joke, but one worthy of a chuckle from game developers.

It's clear this game was made in a hurry and not made to have a lasting impression. What's there is amusing, but once it starts getting interesting everything comes to a halt. That's the tricky part of these joke games. You wonder if there could have been more to it, but that would have just been running things in to the ground, so probably not. In summary: It's a game, and it's at least self aware rather than just being bad.

1.5/5
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Meowskivich
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Post by Meowskivich »

Oh, come on. No one to review AR-PUH-GUH! yet. I must hear the comments to laugh at! And to take suggestions on the eventual release of v1.0 gamma(?).
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SDHawk
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Post by SDHawk »

marionline wrote:I once wrote an review to Universal Wars for Hamster Speak:
http://superwalrusland.com/ohr/issue63/index.html
It might be a bit old thoug.
There's not enough version history on the game to determine whether it had a significant update in 2012 after July, so I think it's fine.

Also I've noticed you've posted several reviews in the reviews section but not linked to them in this thread yet. For ease of book keeping you need to at least post a link to them here when you want them counted as part of the contest. Whether you do that all at once or as you go is up to you, just making sure you know. (Don't ever hesitate to flood this thread with reviews- that's what it's there for.)
Meowskivich wrote:Oh, come on. No one to review AR-PUH-GUH! yet. I must hear the comments to laugh at! And to take suggestions on the eventual release of v1.0 gamma(?).
Dude, stop begging. It's a review every game contest, people will get to it eventually. Most of the reviewers are going in random order so it could happen at any time.
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Meowskivich
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Post by Meowskivich »

SDHawk wrote:
Meowskivich wrote:Oh, come on. No one to review AR-PUH-GUH! yet. I must hear the comments to laugh at! And to take suggestions on the eventual release of v1.0 gamma(?).
Dude, stop begging. It's a review every game contest, people will get to it eventually. Most of the reviewers are going in random order so it could happen at any time.
But I must be impatient! It's in my contract!

I'm mostly eager to hear from people on it after so long. It was literally years worth of work. But yeah, I understand it's mostly rando'.

/restrains self
Last edited by Meowskivich on Wed Sep 11, 2013 10:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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