2011 OHRRPGCE 48 hour contest (also Ludum dare) Theme=ESCAPE

My time to vote!

1. Escape the Wolf: OHR - James Paige
2. Escape The Zombie Horde - Spoonweaver
3. Monster Out of Six - Pepsi Ranger
4. Virtual School 2 - Gizmog
5. Escape from Strong Castle - jcenterprises

Games I cannot rate:
*Forest Temple - TMC & Blue Train --> I did not play it.
*The Labyrinth --> Thats my own game!

You are allowed to vote for your own game. But you don't have to if you don't want to.

I streamed all of the games, you can watch the replays here:

http://www.livestream.com/jsh357

(If I say something mean, don't forget I'm very sarcastic and well aware you only had 48 hours, heh.)

1. Escape the Wolf: OHR
Clear winner. This game's music, animation, and AI were one of a kind for the OHR and all well-implemented.

2. The Labyrinth
While the maps are TOO BIG conceptually I really enjoyed this game and the riddles were great.

3. Virtual School 2
Has that classic Giz charm, and an excellent trolling mechanism. Not the best thing he's ever done though.

4. Escape The Zombie Horde
Love the concept but it was really boring with such minimal interaction.

5. Monster Out of Six
I'm mainly assuming this is a better game than I thought it was because I couldn't get the keycards to work. Loved the concept.

6. Forest Temple
Really incomplete but I was impressed by what was there. One of these days, TMC.

7. Escape from Strong Castle
... And Forest Temple was still better than this.

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My website, the home of Motrya:
http://www.jshgaming.com

MOST->
Escape the Wolf
Virtual School 2
The Labyrinth
Escape The Zombie Horde
Monster Out of Six
Forest Temple
Escape from Strong Castle
<-LEAST

I noticed in the credits of The Labyrinth, that Master K didn't make his own music. While this isn't a problem for the OHR contest, it is for Ludum Dare. I'm not going to go on the Ludum Dare site and try to be a whistle blower on your game, but I'm pretty sure you broke the rules there.
Please tell me the music was at least written in the 48hr window.

I don't think he entered Ludum Dare.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Oh, nvm Master K. I just noticed you entered the Ludum Dare Jam, which means your music is completely fine.
Oh and here's his entry page for those that might want to rate him on there. too.
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=5799

Also, how do you rate games on Ludum Dare? Can you yet? Lastly, if you can, can you see how well things are rated?

Oh and here are my votes.

1)Escape the Wolf
Sigh... I was almost going to put this last because I don't think James should win his own contest. But I'd only be trolling if I did that. This game is the best without a doubt.

2) Escape The Zombie Horde
You can say I'm unfairly partial to this one, but I honestly like my own more then the others below it.

3)The Labyrinth
It was pretty simplistic, and the mazes seemed too large, but I did enjoy it.

4)Monster Out of Six
I actually went in and fixed this one in order to play it correctly. This game suffers from the same thing Labyrinth suffers from. Huge empty hall ways. I don't know why but they really kill games for me.

5)Virtual School 2
You're a cool guy and everything Giz but this game just seemed like it was made to be annoying. The very worst part in my book was the lack of the other endings promised by the 1of3endings text at the end of the game.

6)NONE
7)NONE

--Forest Temple
This reminds me a lot of TMC and BlueTrain's last 48hr contest entry. It's another terribly incomplete sidescroller, except this one is even less done then the last. What are you guys going to do for the next one, an even more incomplete sidescroller? That would be amazing to see, because I don't know how a sidescroller could be less complete then this.


--Escape from Strong Castle
Annoying music. Jarring graphics. Silly concept. Poor gameplay. Terrible game.

Escape the Wolf - Outside of production values not sure I like the game that much, but that's the 48hr contest for you.

Virtual School 2 - Delivers where Metal Gear Duck failed to.

The Labyrinth - I almost hate voting it this high given how painfully huge the maps are but well.

Monster Out of Six - Broken cool idea.

Forest Temple - Unfinished pretty shiny. Learn Scope.

Escape From Strong Castle - A bad joke.

Escape The Zombie Horde - So much lost potential I'm slapping you on the wrist in anger.

I see everybody hates the large maps...oh well. They are meant to annoy you. It is a Labyrinth, after all! But, it is nice to see it is getting high votes. And the riddles were nice. I searched two online. I think the last one is the hardest, because the answer is not clear.

Also, seeing as James is a clear winner, how will the prize apply to him? I mean, hes a developer. He can make the feature he wants at any time, or do his own bugfixes perfectly.

My Votes:

Escape the Wolf - Since it looks like I am winning this contest, I'll give the feature-request to the 2nd place winner. After watching a few people play and reading a few responses, I really wish I had scattered a few hint objects around the forest. Like, you find a big round rock, and when you touch it, the hero would say "THE BIG ROUND ROCK! I THINK THIS IS SOUTH OF THE CABIN"

The Labyrinth - This game was simple and straightforward, and it worked. Thank you for leaving the "Save" feature enabled. I had a harder time than I probably should have with the riddles, but the fact that I didn't have to start all over again kept it fun, and not frustrating.

Virtual School 2 - As angry as I am about the LIE in the ending, I can't deny that I really enjoyed my first playthrough, and this game made me laugh more than once. This game could have been on the top of my list if there really were other endings. They wouldn't even need to be fancy.

Escape the Zombie Horde - I enjoyed this Oregon Trail Homage, and I played it quite a few times (although I never survived) I just wish it wasn't so bare-bones. Zombie Elephant made me happy. The fact that everybody died of disease no matter how much medicine I bought bothered me.

Monster out of Six - This was a cool idea, and I was pretty excited about it. Unfortunately, it was too broken for me. The two red doors in the main area led to the void in the corner of the title screen map. Also, although I was able to find several keycards, and all the other prisoners, i never found the four witnesses that the intro promised to me, so I never got the clues to know who I should and should not free.

Forest Temple - The most important part of a 48 hour contest (or even a 72 hour Jam) is to scale your goal down to something that can be completed in the time allowed. This game looked really cool, and I know from what TMC said in IRC that he just got bogged down on re-implementing the physics of a side scroller. For future reference, I want to draw your attention to Ludumdare special contest exemption #1

Base code and personal code libraries are allowed, but should be declared and shared with the community prior to beginning your entry. To do this, make a blog post.

According to that rule, Forest Temple could have borrowed scripts from any of the existing OHR sidescrollers that provide source code.

That all being said, wouldn't it be cool if TMC's frustrations on this game lead directly to real array support in plotscripting ;)

Escape From Strong Castle - I did make it all the way to floor 1 with only mimimal debug-teleport-cheating. I didn't make it past the Ogre. He was too fast for me. jcenterprises, I salute you for trying, better luck next time. We give people a lot of criticism for their newbie games, but all of us have made newbie games, and it takes a lot of guts to make one for a contest.

My vote:

There's two kinds of games in this contest:

Games that are

1.Escape The Wolf

and games that are

2.Not

For anyone interested, I did repost Monster Out of Six with the cell door fix. It doesn't change the fact that it is still highly incomplete and mostly empty (I spent most of the time working on the NPC generation scripts, so actual map design suffered this round). But at least you can "free" prisoners sort of. I thought I had posted the fix immediately after the deadline, but I guess my zip file was frozen and the one I uploaded was the same one that I had uploaded initially.

I'm still confused about the door links. Two doors lead to Map 0, Door 0, but there is no Door 0 on Map 0. I always thought empty door links didn't teleport. Plus, when I test it, only the door to the left of the main hall transports. The other doesn't do anything. If two doors are broken now, then I think it's an engine bug.

I didn't have time to implement the witnesses. The master plan for the game is to create puzzles in each room that utilize a menu system for using objects, and to find the keys you have to solve the puzzles. For figuring out who's innocent and who's guilty, the witnesses (and the prisoners) will answer questions based on "guilt level," and their own personal needs (food, bathroom, and fatigue meters will expire gradually under certain circumstances, affecting how they answer your questions). Each prisoner is ranked according to guilt. The shadiest innocent may look a lot like the guilty man (or woman). The most innocent may be hated by the others and thus spoken about badly. It'll really take a mixture of puzzle wits and psychology to figure this game out once it's finished.

Just wanted to share that for those who were hoping for more. I will get a better version to you soon enough.

Oh, and the game is fully randomized. Just because you solve it this time doesn't mean you'll solve it next time. I'm even tempted to go one extra step and create multiple versions of each room just to keep you guessing. That, too, was part of the plan.

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Place Obligatory Signature Here

Wow, the surge of activity has suddenly died down...so, when shall the winner be announced?

Forest Temple was a Jam (72 hour) game, and wasn't a serious entry in the 48 hour contest: the preview was just to swell the ranks of the entries. Unfortunately we dropped out of the Jam (I lost motivation at the 60 hour mark due to horrible scripting problems including engine bugs, and Bluepxl disappeared), so there was a lot less point in releasing the preview. I don't think it was too ambitious for a 72 hour contest. At least it wouldn't have have been had I not wasted most of the first 12 hours creating a customised HSpeak and for Bluepxl's false start. I'm still working on it, but now that I have the time to do everything properly, it all takes 4 times longer...


1. Escape the Wolf

2. Virtua School 2

3. The Labyrinth

4. NONE


Did anyone notice that every game (aside from our non-game) this contest was pretty annoying, either intentionally or unintentionally? And it was intentional half the time! I wonder whether it was intentional in Escape the Wolf... :P

PS: I actually beat Escape the Zombie Horde on my first try... unfortunately nothing happened. Just kept pressing space until I starved :(