The Less Than A Week Terrible Halloween Contest Is Go!

[Spoonweaver]

This all seems fantastic so far.

I can't wait to get all judgy.

[Feenicks]

Status update: my game is totally playable, but still needs most of its plotscripting done, as well as chests, npc graphics, and three larger graphics.

Sound effects and all the enemies doing intersting stuff is bonus stuff after I get the important stuff dealt with.

[Gizmog]

For anyone curious about the deadline, Spoony made some comments in IRC this evening that might be relevant.

Spoonweaver you were asking how much time left in the halloween contest
Spoonweaver 8 hours
Matokage yep
Spoonweaver poof, there goes the count down timer
08:46 Matokage 8! 0.0
Spoonweaver yep
Spoonweaver honestly, more
Spoonweaver it's till I log on here tomorrow and ask who people here thinks should win

That means you'd have about... 5ish hours left? Or obviously more, 'cause I doubt Spoony's gonna get up at 4 in the morning just to yell at you. Get to it! That's more than enough time! Just put something together! Learn from it! Goooooo!

[Mogri]

MVB has 47 downloads. I'm not sure how that happened, but I'm glad that people are getting into the spirit of the season (Election Day, that is).

I've only mentioned it here and on Twitter (@hoursgoby if you're curious), and while it did get favorited by Robert Boyd of Zeboyd Games, Twitter tells me only one person clicked the link. Maybe there's just an untapped market for games about 19th-century presidents.

[Gizmog]

One of the games that could've been Fallout 3 was codenamed Van Buren, though I gotta doubt that factors into it at all. It was a fun game! It deserves 50 downloads!

[Feenicks]

witch.rpg is up!

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

VAMPIRE'S CURSE

A bit of a family emergency cropped up this evening so I wasn't able to complete as much of the new content as I would have liked. If nothing else, the new village area in the game has at least been mapped out and can be used as a shortcut, though there's nothing to do there (YET)!

In hindsight, I sort of wish I hadn't started a few days ago, and that this contest was kicked off at the start of the month! [/list]

[Mogri]

One of the games that could've been Fallout 3 was codenamed Van Buren, though I gotta doubt that factors into it at all. It was a fun game! It deserves 50 downloads!

Did you finish it, then? I'm curious what you thought if so. I suspect it turned out really easy, but it's hard to tell from where I'm sitting.

Gilbert made a similar game many years ago that was a definite influence. I don't know if you remember it, but if you enjoyed this game, that one is worth a play, too.

[Gizmog]

Did you finish it, then? I'm curious what you thought if so. I suspect it turned out really easy, but it's hard to tell from where I'm sitting.

Gilbert made a similar game many years ago that was a definite influence. I don't know if you remember it, but if you enjoyed this game, that one is worth a play, too.

I vaguely remember Gilbert's game.. was that the one where you had to look up information on the real internet?

As to your game, I did feel like it was missing something, though I'm not sure what. 20 minutes was a pretty good estimation of the time it took. It's hard to judge easiness in a game like this that's kind of a puzzle. If it were still hard, even after "solving" the battle, you'd never feel like you'd really figured it out.

Spoilers for Moogles game:
In my case, I almost died to the zombies because I thought hardtack would be restorative rather than a combat tactic. I did die to the Grue, because I'm an idiot. I was literally sitting there like "Heheh, eaten by a grue, eaten by a grue, eaten by a grue" and fighting until I was horribly devoured, not once thinking of.. you know, escaping from this certain and untimely demise. And then I died to Medusa because I was unable to escape.

Then I got smart and realized it was a puzzle game. Figured out the silver platter to beat Medusa right off the bat, but thought that it was like... a trick and would work against the werewolf too. While walking to the werewolf I saw the torch and was like "Oh, that'd totally beat the grue!" but did I pick it up? No I did not. I tried to Silver Platter the wolf to no avail. The balcony was a fun trick. There's some games that are really cheap with stuff like this, like "Oh no, I needed to talk to the third weird blue brick 3 times!" but I felt like all the items here were just subtle enough.

I thought it was a really nicely put together game and I've seen games like it on different Flash sites that get a lot of views. I enjoyed it a lot, like.. perfect example of what a game can be. Doesn't need to be big and crazy or overblown. Does a little but does it well, I guess? The difficulty was just right. Makes you feel like a rocket scientist when pull it off, and the "X Monsters remain!" text is a perfect way of letting the player know they aren't screwing things up.

And mad props for save everywhere! A lot of guys would've added "difficulty" by making you repeat the whole thing everytime. That was a classy move.

[Mogri]

Yeah, that was the one. I'd forgotten about the Livejournal integration. Nice touch.

The two fights I was most concerned about were the werewolf, which you could essentially beat on accident without realizing it, and the ghost, who isn't clued at all and relies on some lateral thinking.

I would have liked to make this game about twice as large as it was, but like I said, I ended up cutting the vampire because I didn't have any good ideas for that fight. I think if I had left him in, it would have been something like making sure he couldn't turn into a bat and escape.

[Feenicks]

Mini-reviews:

Martin Van Buren, Monster Slayer

Was that window on the balcony going to be part of the vampire fight, or did it do something I wasn't exactly aware of?

Anyway, I was a bit of an idiot and spoiled myself by reading giz's spoilers, so some of the neater ways you could defeat the enemies were already given to me. I'm not sure I beat the werewolf the right way, either.
I enjoyed the first person narrative that was going on, but unfortunately I'm not the biggest fan of these type of puzzle games, so I can't really say I'm the biggest fan of this.

Overgrowth:
I like the non-grid movement and the really zoomed in nature of the game... but is this even winnable? After a while you get pinned in by those black blob things, and I'm not sure going to the two modems actually does much of anything. I'd like to see it expanded, just so I can where this can go.

Castlevania RPG graphical enhance:
Two-tile tall walkabouts are a really nice addition, and fill up the screen a lot better than 1-tile tall ones, but they're also at the point at which two frames of animation starts to feel really lacking. 3 or more frames would be look fantastic here.
Oh yeah, I guess the revamped backgrounds are pretty neat as well.
As for the gameplay; I'm not a fan of the dozen similar one-on-one battles that happen in the main room, but as you've said you wanted to add more enemies, so I won't hold that against you too much. Is there any reason the stat boost stuff has to be in the coffin at the start, and not just accessible from a menu [doubly annoying, since the return vanished after I used it once]? Maybe once I actually get to a proper boss I'll have a better idea of how I feel about this thing.

Some notes from witch.rpg:
1. good god, the hi-tier spells nuke the game [to the point that I had to drastically bump up the HP of the last 2 bosses to give them even a ghost of a chance]
2. I was going to make some new sound effects for this thing but even the harpy game ones make the battles a lot nicer [important, since I was too lazy to do attack graphics here]
3. don't wait until past midnight on the day something's due to start drawing something important [I was going to have the second character's picture before I just gave up on drawing it, but as-is I was still up to 2/3 doing this thing]; on a related note, the intro screens are what happens when I'm too lazy to even bother with simple plotscripting and end up deciding dumb one-minute sketches of what's happening is easier
4. gb restrictions are fun to work in; might throw in the gbc palette variants if I get back to this sometime

[Gizmog]

Overgrowth:
I like the non-grid movement and the really zoomed in nature of the game... but is this even winnable? After a while you get pinned in by those black blob things, and I'm not sure going to the two modems actually does much of anything. I'd like to see it expanded, just so I can where this can go.

There's a third modem, but I'm thinkingg getting pinned in by the black blob things is part of the point

[Mogri]

Pheonix: The window allows moonlight into the cellar. Closing it reverts the werewolf to human form. It's definitely not as explicit as it ought to be, especially if you did it before going downstairs. The underlying puzzle is good, but I framed it poorly here. Perhaps I should have prevented the player from closing the shutters before visiting the cellar, but that's an awkward way to fix the problem.

[kylekrack]

Overgrowth:
I like the non-grid movement and the really zoomed in nature of the game... but is this even winnable? After a while you get pinned in by those black blob things, and I'm not sure going to the two modems actually does much of anything. I'd like to see it expanded, just so I can where this can go.

It can be done. Sometimes you have to take advantage of the lack of pathfinding and trap them behind walls. That being said, Gizmog is right in saying it's part of the point. It's "winnable," but only because you get an ending if you get all three modems. 20 of them spawn at the entrance once you get all three, so you're meant to get trapped.

My main goal was to make the game spoopy. I apologize for the really loud sound effect, I should have reduced the volume on that. Also I have a ton more ideas for the game, but I really didn't have time to program more. Getting the pixel based movement took long enough as it is, and even then, the walls are buggy.

[Spoonweaver]

WINNERS postponed until further notice. (Likely a day or two)
[The games turned out to be a bit longer than expected.]

All feedback posted here may influence the final decision.