Voting for 2014's OFFICIAL OHRRPGCE RANDOM COLAB CONTEST

Just to make things clear in case you missed the part where all the teams are required to vote. Your game stands very small chance of winning if both team members don't vote.
I'm not doing this specifically just to get more votes for this contest. I'm doing this in order for contestants to not vote for their game and not be penalized for doing so.

At the same time, I don't want to pressure anyone to vote. So if you don't have the time to get through all the games don't feel too bad. I do hope you'll all still honor the contest and reward the winner with their fanart and hype.

Oh, crap! Voting deadline tomorrow!

I wanted to finish the games before I voted, but I haven't done that yet. Just in case I don't get a chance to do that before tomorrow, i better say my impressions so far

1) Carcere Vicis - I am a sucker for a good Roguelike, and this is a good roguelike. I agree with what others said that the differences between the elemental planes was often too subtle. I spent a lot of time in Renovamen, hoping my health would regenerate faster, but it was hard to tell if it was working. I did like when I would slip into another plane and find it was full of scary monsters that didn't exist on the other planes, but it was so much easier to step away than to fight them.

2) Spy Game - This seemed polished. I liked how it played, and although I didn't finish the story yet, I liked how it was being presented.

3) Dungeon Cards - Very nice concept. I like the way it was more or less traditional RPG dungeon progression with the map replaced by cards. I was a bit baffled by the "Discard" feature which seemed to let me throw away any card except a boss. Maybe I misunderstood the feature.

4) Location - This looks really cool, and has a lot of things about it that seem innovative. Where it really falls down is the battles. The movement system for the battles seems cool, but with no obstacles, and no attacks that make any use of the spatial arrangement, the battles I have played so far are just a matter of (a) move into range (b) attack repeatedly. I would have loved to see cone-of-damage rays, area-of-damage bombs, and battles with enough foes to make such attacks critical for success

Voting deadline is not tomorrow. It's the 20th.

1. Spy Game - Not as obviously ambitious as the other entrants, but the one I enjoyed the most. For one thing, it was very smooth and (mostly) worked the way it was supposed to. I love games with flavor text, and talking to all the NPCS as all the different characters was some good flavor text. I was disappointed that some options seemed to be unfinished (I stole the keys disguised as Nils and Ezrah, which broke the script until I undisguised), and it took me forever to figure out what Katharine wanted. Was also bummed to learn there's only two endings, but it was fun looking for secrets, even if there weren't as many as I had hoped.

2. Dungeon Cards - Was an interesting spin on RPGs, though it would've been better without standard OHR Battles. Go all-in on the card angle! The "Discard/Food" system was pretty cool, but didn't force tough choices as often as I would've liked. Card art was nice, battle art was a bit lazy. Major points for working!

3. Carcere Vicis - It's amazing to see a roguelike in the OHR, but seemed pretty average by roguelike standards. I liked some of the maptiles, some of the monsters, but not the boring hero. Had no idea what the hell was going on with levelling up, read "GOT VIRTUS" as "GOT VIRUS" like a million times. Might've been higher if I was in the mood for a roguelike.

4. Location - I wanted to give this #1 just for the screenshots that were posted, but the game itself barely works. Hitting Enter and then END is awkward as hell, for a game with a "strategic battle map" there wasn't a whole hell of a lot of strategy and I'm not sure if the planet that was perpetually on the right side of the map was indicating a planet in the distance or a glitch. Can't tell if it's broken, unfinished, or what. Biggest disappointment of the contest.

It probably helped that you didn't get to the really broken later stages :)


Yes, it more than doubles regen rate, but regen is too random and only happens for 18 turns after killing an enemy... I need to change this.



Aside from not being explained, it is confusing that you can discard cards that do nothing or are beneficial, but that there is normally a cost to do so.

1. Spy Game was pretty neat. Even if the whole disguising thing is kinda silly, I still liked it (and how one of the characters actually managed to see through it after a while). I actually really like the whole minimalist deal the game has, and even if there's a few things that were a bit funky (like the text prompts being a bit too finicky in repeating themselves) I really like how it ended up.

2. Carcere Vicis was neat, even if I did manage to force the game into a loop (and kinda ruined any desire to go through it again). I liked the 4 planes thing, even if I did end up staying on one most of the time, and most of the weapons seemed awfully superfluous. I didn't have any sort of difficulty playing with the rogue, but I guess that comes with the territory?

3. Dungeon cards was a neat concept that I kinda want to see elaborated on... but it felt more like you were moving along a board of some sort, rather than having actual cards you had to play out, or something. Also a few of the classes seemed kinda pointless, but whatever.

4. And man, I was pretty sure bmr was a ton more on top of things than he ended up being! Still liked the graphics I managed to do, though (even if most of them never actually showed up in what's actually accessible in-game).

To Jame's question: yes the primary purpose is that it lets you skip cards that are harmful to you, but it also costs food to discard them so you have to choose where you want to take the hits. (Man I knew I should have put a food icon on discard and a stair icon on play to make that read easier)

Now to TMC's comment 'cause I've seen it brought up from a couple other people: The game operates where every floor is composed of a static set of cards that gets shuffled when you enter. So in high level play (that is never actually necessary) you could skip beneficial cards to avoid advancing on the floor so that you can make certain to get some more desirous beneficial card (ie a healing card or one of the rarer healing items). I wanted to have classes that let you peek at upcoming cards as well as find out the deck composition of the current floor, but it didn't get done.

Ah. There was some hint that the cards get reused, but I noticed that I didn't get the same sequence of cards and didn't quite realise it was simply shuffling them. Actually, skipping healing cards to save for later would have been very beneficial when beating the game in hard mode; would have gotten through it quicker.

1. Spy Game:
-Liked the disguise concept. It would be good to see this in future games.
-Like the compactness, easy to get around.

-This game was too easy. It would be nice to see this game elaborated on. Make the lab have more depth, more keyitems, more back and forth disguising to manipulate other characters.

2. Carcere Vicis:
-Liked the resolution change.
-The element-like things were nice.

-I found it difficult, but I'm not really a rouge-like player.

3. Dungeon cards
-I think the concept is great

-Discard confused me. Perhaps a tutorial or guide is necessary for this one.

4. Location
-I was excited for what this type of game, really like the concept. Would be great to see something like this become a full scale game. Kind of like a blend between Final Fantasy Tactics and space ships

-Didn't play very much because there is no "return key" on Mac, thus I was required to press "Fn+Right Arrow" which got very annoying very fast.

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⊕ P E R S O N A L M U S I C: https://open.spotify.com/album/6fEo3fCm5C3XhtFRflfANr
⍠ C O L L A B M U S I C: https://dustpuppets.bandcamp.com/releases

My impressions:

Spy Game:
I quite enjoyed this game. The small menu/hud in the corner of the screen looked excellent and was a nice touch, and I thoroughly enjoyed the disguise mechanic. I liked how you get awkwarded out and escape when the guy catches you in his apartment while you are disguised as him, but if you copy the landlady, you manage to make an excuse, and completely miss a great deal of the story. The story of the game was simple enough, though the endings made me slightly sad for different reasons. The graphics were quite simplistic, but pleasing to the eyes, however slightly empty.

Dungeon Cards:
An interesting concept, playing more so with cards and choice making. I liked the idea of it, although the cards weren't too complex. My only qualm would be that the battle graphics seem a little...I don't know...like, there was one enemy, labelled the knight, which was simply a little pyramid. It seemed like a placeholder. I do like this game for functioning well though, and having a nice system.

The Location:
Gorgeous in graphics, but gameplay falls...um, short. Sorry guys! With a bit of effort, this gem can be turned into something really great, but for now...it could use some work.

1. Dungeon Cards
- The game was pretty fun, and the rules were easy enough to pick up even without a tutorial.
- I used the Hero/Gunner/Doctor party for the entire game.

2. Carcere Vicis:
- A lot of the items blend in with the maptiles. Items on the southern end of the rooms get covered up by wall overlays. As far as I know there aren't any shops in the game so the only way to get items is by finding them in the dungeon.
- The game crashes when I load a game so I didn't get much farther than the third dungeon.

3. Location:
- This game was really confusing. It's really weird to use "End" as a confirm key. It takes way too many hits to beat the first enemy in the game. Later something happened on the world map that crashed the game.

Last chance to vote.
Otherwise, the results will be posted at sometime tomorrow.