The 2015 In Review Contest [Reviews: 74]

I didn't realize I'd been so "prolific" in putting out so many "games." Genuinely sorry about some of them.

Thanks for the review, though! Honestly, I just appreciate feedback on the thing. It was such an underwhelming project that I'd entirely forgotten it even existed. Whatever message I was trying to get across, I think you got it, so maybe it was effective after all.

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My pronouns are they/them
Ps. I love my wife

Teekee by FnrrfYhmSchnish

Going to have be honest and get one thing out to begin with: if I didn't know there were bits beyond the house, I would've just given up before ever figuring out how to get out. There's your first problem.

The game doesn't have a proper intro, just popping you into the cat's house, where you fight bugs, interact with stuff, and jump up onto things (that last one is the best part of the game, and really sells the whole being a cat thing). Eventually you figure out how to get outside, ending with you judging beer in !Germany and getting sucked in by the nose of a head-shaped spaceship (???). The second half of the game's one big non-sequitur, and even just the barest of introductory exposition could have helped alleviate that.

As for the whole game part of this... it's alright. The game suffers from the typical fnrrfian curse of having too much pointless stuff put in, made even more aggravating by the fact that one of the few things that was actually important (the one door you could actually open to the outdoors) had no descriptive text whatsoever until you actually got into position to open it. The other areas were a little better at this, but even the two outdoors areas (the area outside your house and !germany) had a lot of extraneous stuff in them, and were the battles not triggered by on-field NPCs they would have been incredibly tedious to get through; good job on not going that route.

One of the gimmicks is the time of day changing as you play. All I saw it change was some of the enemies in the house and the palette, while I thought that something would happen that would actually let me outside the house after I ended up sleeping through to the second day. The enemies thing is neat; the palette stuff could be done more intelligently, seeing as reading the text when it was 3AM ingame was a pain. Maybe it could actually be used for something important, too.

I'm not certain on the battles. Teekee has a fair amount of abilities, some cruder than others, but beyond using the healing ability once or twice they never seemed all that useful to me. The two non-special attacks seemed interchangeable; apparently one is more influenced by defense than the other, but the difference never felt that useful. You get a partner in !germany - I got the crocodile, but I have to assume you'd get the pig if you're not a jerk and actually go along immediately with the voting - but you never have to fight a battle after that point, making the whole thing seem a bit pointless. I fought one enemy in the last area, but given how much time it took it hardly seemed worth it.

The enemies have a lot going on with them, to the point that the one(s) I fought in the last area could almost be said to be doing too much. High defense AND status effects AND summoning enemies AND [there's probably another thing I'm forgetting here] just seems to be stacking a lot onto one entity. A lot of the stat-reducing attacks, or what I'm assuming are stat-reducing attacks, don't say what stat they're reducing.
Of course, it doesn't really matter, seeing as the game doesn't require much more than your basic attack, but it's worth considering.

Graphics are your typical fnrrf; cartoony and generally pulled off well. The writing still feels cruder than it needs to be, given the tone of the opening area, but I can't expect much else from this guy. The way it's structured makes me feel that were this to be worked on more it'd continue in the random events plot direction, and I'm unsure if I can condone that.

tldr:

<TheGiz> A cat-life simulation would've been fine, maybe even great but he had to get greedy and drag intergalactic bullshit into it


2 bugs I encountered (beyond the enemies):

1) sometimes the random enemies triggered twice? Think there's a script on the wiki that prevents that.
2) after the 'this bit ain't complete' text, Teekee walks incredibly slowly.

1. Paladin Traducer
2. The War on XMas
3. Fridge Racer
4. Devs Like Waffles
5. Charbile's Lovely Home
6. Allu in the Demon's Cave
7. Teekee
8. Martin Van Buren, Monster Slayer
9. Lab Rat
10. Painted Space
11. Phlan
12. Linear Quest II

Gonna post here to second most of the stuff Feenicks is saying. The start of the game, being a cat and wandering around the house seeing what kind of mischief you can get into is the strongest part of the game. It's where the jokes are the funniest and it's where the basic concept "I am a cat in an RPG" really shines. Getting outside of the house is basically an easter egg as far as I'm concerned, given how obscure it is.

The most important critique Feenicks made (Outside of the night stuff being impossible to see. It should never be so dark of a night that you cant even read the GUI) is that the game starts with no fanfare whatsoever. Since this is REALLY an RPG and not just a giggly "I'm a kitty!" sim, it needs that little bit of narrative kickstart and maybe even a start to the gameplay. Having a little teaser of things to come makes you feel more invested and gives you a reason to feel excited when you get out of the house and weird shit starts happening.


Here's what I said about it in the voting thread for the Stinkman contest:



I still stand behind most of those points. The graphics ARE really nice and colorful. There's a few cutscenes where people's eyes go big and they claw at the ground and those are very nicely done. Bouncin around on the couch could've had that same level of love given to it, cats love that shit.

No idea what the difference between biting and scratching is even now and it might've been better to slowly introduce the attacks rather than starting with such a big chunk. Plus.. I don't want to use most of 'em. I'm not a big fan of debuffs. I do like that you can restore your MP with abilities in battle, but for some reason, possibly enemy-inflicted debuffs, later in the game my attacks did basically no damage and my MP-Restore did basically no restoration. Was frustrating and weird.

Reloaded my save from before the CTD and was able to finish out the last couple of minutes... weirdly, just as I typed that, the minimized window CTD'd. The power of suggestion, I guess. Ending was a disappointment. A giant robot playing the Humpty Dance? Chalk up another one for Feenicks, Non-sequitur is the perfect word for it.

The little squid dude has an awesome design, he's probably my favorite NPC. I sided with the pig, though. I think my least favorite part of the game was Beerfest. There was just too much beer. Beer in and of itself isn't a funny concept, and even though there were a few funny beers I was so numbed from the damn near thirty other beers that they didn't feel as special as they could've felt.

The beerfest is also where I got stuck last time, trying to find out where to go. I had been in the right place, but you have to walk on the SOUTH side of the chair and a cutscene triggers: I had walked on the north side of the chair and "talked" to each chair. A big pointy arrow to the table would've helped, and that same big pointy arrow would've made the "Hey, you can get out of the house!" thing more obvious.

This is the game of Fnrrf's I'd suggest the most, just for its basic concept and level of polish. Even if you don't get out of the house, you'll still have fun screwing around for a bit. Battles are still kind of wack for my tastes, but that's how he likes them and I know he's not alone. Jokes could've used a little more setup, but there was a contest deadline so I'll give him that.



That's why I made that comment: With a limited amount of time to work on the game, I would've focused on what I perceived as the strongest element: The "Meow! Meow! Kitty chillin' in his house!" element. You don't need to be a cat to get sucked into another dimension and visit a Beerfest and run into aliens. A hamster or a teenager or anybody could do that. Only a kitty can enjoy hunting bugs and lizards and playing on the furniture and those were my favorite parts.

EDIT: I did appreciate the Magitek Armor bit in the last battle. That was a neat change of pace. The only thing I didn't like about that part is that it was too dark to really appreciate and that unwinnable battle (I'm assuming it's unwinnable, I lost but wasn't punished, hehe) stretched on forever. Probably 30+ turns, on my try.

Yeah, the "Join Crocowilliam" path is terribly incomplete at the moment -- I only had time to get one complete path through the game finished during the contest time period, and ended up going with the one where you join Hans Stinkman for the beer judging since I had that whole thing planned out more in advance. That path's actually a complete game already, with three boss battles, two more party members (if you win the second of those boss battles), another whole area you never see at all if you end up joining Crocowilliam, and even an ending.

I had also planned on getting more done with the game before 2015 was over rather than leaving it in its current incomplete state, but... between being busy with work and my old computer dying not much of that plan never really got done, unfortunately.



Was unaware there was a script out there to prevent that annoying double-triggering that sometimes happens -- I'll have to go look into that! Thanks for mentioning it.



The Big Humpty Star fight isn't unwinnable, but it does sound like I might need to tone it down a bit if that's the impression that everyone's getting (has anyone won this one and gotten to the actual final boss of the join-Hans-Stinkman route? I don't think anyone's mentioned that part of the game at all so far.)

...and holy crap, how did I not notice how ridiculously dark the Bierfest area got at night until now? Yeah, I think I will need to change the palette-swapping for the later nighttime periods, especially for the indoor areas since they definitely do get way, way too dark the way they are now with all their dark brown floors and furniture.
Would probably make sense to just not have the Bierfest place get dark in the first place since there should be lights on inside, now that I think about it.

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FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]

Nothing to do with his comments, I only reviewed it because it was in the same directory as Teekee, I swear!

Crusty's Heyday is reviewed!



I haven't seen anyone mention it either. Ahh.. is that why the game seems to "start over" as a bad dream? So you can hunt down the other endings? If so, pretty cool!

http://www.slimesalad.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6442

Talked to RMZ in IRC the other day, who confirmed that the start of the game hasn't changed. Apparently we're the only people who bitched about it? I might see if I still have my old save and try to move forward after taking a year off, but I doubt I will. I hope the old review still stands?

I don't think there was such a script on the wiki; it was here. I just added a link to it from the Script Dump.

out of curiosity, forewarning, i read the rules here and noticed this is the only context given:



sdhawk has quite the sense of humor. also checked the site rules wondering if there is a user code of conduct (there is none) but found this:



thanks mogri. with that laid bare, here we go (to photoshop)

Allu in the Demon's Cave

lots of interesting design choices

A) rougelike

B) random dungeon maps

C) demon cave setting, story

B) seems to be the proof of concept on display, but in my play it seemed as if i would find hidden rooms on maptiles that had nothing on them. if stuff appears off map and it's supposed to, and you're supposed to go in the black 'outside' of map sometimes, well that's just weird. it could work, but it's going to be weird. it's going to feel like you're trying to say a glitch is a feature.

A) i don't think is even applicable at this point, because B) doesn't necessitate A). A) means certain things which aren't here yet besides B). Loot is very rare to see. Never see enemy encounters. Town, safe map? Twists and turns in design and story/setting to make this feel special to play? Does roguelike only mean random dungeon maps and rpg mechanics?

C) is intriguing, tell me more

Too bad! I'm an overly critical person and by the time I'm done I hope everyone will be very exhausted with me! Good luck with the reviews

Discotheque (by Taco Bot)

lots of interesting design choices

A) timed

B) no battles, narrative driven play

C) multiple endings based on how you interact with 2 characters (guessing)

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B) is very appreciated. ohr default battles have become beyond stale to me, and my expectations are as high as a kite. like a rocket man. The narrative is fun--the player is put into a disco and must talk to people to piece together the actual plot and situation.

A) is a fun concept, but the issue is it's too long and isn't conductive to replays to see the outcome of different choices. All you would need to do is add a way to end the timer early, be it you rest and kill time, or exit the building.

C) all in all, was neat. a fun game to make and every cool game developer has to make one of these at some point. i expected the outcome to change depending on interactions with other characters, but it only seems to be based on choices with 2 of them. Nothing too deep or exciting, but i had a good time.

i will play the yang to giz's yin, and in as few words as possible be more sharply critical than that retired turtle hermit

also, what's this about?

Bad Boy (by TMC GIZ HAWK)

lots of uh...

this was the prize to a contest where the hosts would make the winning idea for a game into a real bad boy game

A) i can deduce why this concept won the contest given the hosts

B) first sentence in winning entry: "I have an idea which is very simple, no dialogue necessary, no character building..."

C) amirite

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This is a successfully made Game and Watch style game. I like that it uses a higher resolution than is typically seen in the ohrrpgce. The premise of the contest was always destined to be more interesting than the actual result. Skimming over the contest thread, it does show how few people care or understand the qualities of a good design document, which in turn might very well explain the nature of most of these games.

The point of a design document is to get to a list that you are happy about and can make the initial draft of the game from. It's better than nothing to have that generalized idea, and you do have to start there and write it out. But you need to get a list of assets, so that working on the game is merely going down that list of graphics, text, functions, etc.

And the most important point of writing out the design is to see if your game is even worthwhile to make. You can save yourself a lot of headache, and your players too, by solving and figuring out as much as you can before you ever draw a bunch of sprites, type out some text, lay down some maps and toss it out--unless your goal is easy attention. Please understand you'll get all the attention in the world if you put in real attention to your game's design doc beforehand.

You've made enough games by now to understand the pitfalls in development. It's time to break the cycle and be the man (or bad boy) you always wanted to be. yeaaaah

Double up! UNF! UNF!

http://www.slimesalad.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=120937#120937

http://www.slimesalad.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6833

The Noodle Within and 1GAM Discotheque dialed 1-900-MIX-A-LOT and heard my nasty thoughts. Who will be the next to incur my wrath?!

Any excuse for a review is fine.