Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

Make games! Discuss those games here.

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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

Post by kylekrack »

Bob the Hamster wrote: Thu Apr 28, 2022 2:08 am I need strategies for beating Chadbile. I can't even get his life at down to half.

The charge is what kills me most. I can dodge with dashing, but it isn't quite sustainable, and I can sometimes knock him out of the charge with a hit, but he goes back into it so quick it doesn't help much.

Charvile was hard, but I still managed it after about 4 or 5 tries. Realizing the slimes could drop heals helped a lot

(I know the pigs drop heals in the Chadbile fight, but I'm too busy dying to farm them)
The real answer is that I need to increase the pause after he does his jumping moves. Fights should be split into "running away" periods and "wail on him" periods, but while 400 ticks sounds like a lot when you're writing scripts, it feels like nothing when you're getting pummeled by a big-boobied fox man.

I uploaded an update on the 18th that made him slightly less frantic, in case you downloaded it before then. (also @Feenicks the regeneration after death bug should have been fixed in that upload as well, let me know if it's still happening)
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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

Post by Fenrir-Lunaris »

Feenicks wrote: Thu Apr 28, 2022 3:43 am Bob vs the OHR - 3 [The march towards the platonic ideal of a Fenrir game continues on; take that as you will. Feel the 'stuff' density is fine, except in the ice cave. Should've gone through with the joke of being penalized for stepping on flowers. Has a vore level and toilet humor so two points are deducted as a matter of principle]
Nobody knows what the platonic ideal of a Fenrir game is. Especially not me. I still feel like as a joke game, there should've been more of an emphasis on the jokes, but it is what it is. You'll be happy to know there is SOMETHING planned for the flowers in the future.

I was actually half tempted to have a prompt to just "skip" the vore level outright. There've been games that let players skip cutscenes and even whole bosses before - but an entire level? Haven't done that before. Plus it'd be funny.
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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

Post by Bob the Hamster »

kylekrack wrote: Thu Apr 28, 2022 5:19 am I uploaded an update on the 18th that made him slightly less frantic, in case you downloaded it before then.
Nope! I downloaded on the 22nd! It was even harder before!? :v:
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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

Post by Idontknow »

Feenicks wrote: Thu Apr 28, 2022 3:43 am the final boss dropping everyone's speed to 0
Oh dear, the final boss' attacks target SPEED instead of hp... Thanks for catching that, surprised nobody else did. Will upload a fix right now.
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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

Post by TMC »

I'm amused that Fenrir managed to beat the apparently unbeatable final boss.
polkakitty wrote: Wed Apr 27, 2022 2:43 pmthose scripts seem to make extensive use of features like expanded slice extra variables
So he went back and rewrote his scripts instead of meeting the deadline?? (So that his scripts would be even better examples??)
(For what it's worth, this "remove random entries from one array and add them to a second, initially empty array" trick is the method that almost every computer program uses to accomplish tasks like shuffling a deck of cards, so it's worth remembering.)
I prefer shuffling in-place (though admittedly that's may be less natural for shuffling slices).
kylekrack wrote: Thu Apr 28, 2022 1:32 amAlso I made the CHA GitHub repo public if anyone wants to fork it or just check it out.
Great! Then anyone can lower the difficulty as far as they want :P
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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

Post by Fenrir-Lunaris »

TMC wrote: Thu Apr 28, 2022 5:12 pm I'm amused that Fenrir managed to beat the apparently unbeatable final boss.
Equipped everyone with speed boosting gear to boost my chances of getting the first turn to act. First few turns were spent alternating between breaking the boss's strength and speed, and boosting my party's own speed when possible. The boss never got a turn to act, and any damage they did was basically non-exisitent. Not an exploit, I swear.
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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

Post by kylekrack »

Significant updates to CHA are incoming, but I want to release it all at once to feel more substantial. Ultimately, it should be easier (for a number of reasons), but will include new challenges. I'm also taking the time to add stuff to explore the world for that I didn't have time to add initially. Time to bust out the list of charbile puns.
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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

Post by polkakitty »

Fenrir-Lunaris wrote: Thu Apr 28, 2022 9:02 amI was actually half tempted to have a prompt to just "skip" the vore level outright. There've been games that let players skip cutscenes and even whole bosses before - but an entire level? Haven't done that before. Plus it'd be funny.
For what it's worth, I have actually seen porn games that have opt-out options for scenes that involve some really out-there fetishes. The first time an encounter involving one of those fetishes would happen, the game asks you a question that essentially boils down to "does this appeal to you?", and if you answer "yes", then those encounters continue appearing, but if you answer "no", they don't. I don't think this forum is a good place to talk about those particular games in any more detail, but if there are people who don't want to play Bob vs. the OHR at all because of the vore sequence, I feel like giving an option to skip it would be a viable solution.

(Although I imagine letting players opt out of certain scenes must cause a lot of headaches from a design perspective, because you have to make sure those scenes aren't the only sources of any resource, so that opting out doesn't lock you out of parts of the game that don't have anything to do with the controversial fetish. I don't think you even want those scenes to give the player better rewards than any other scenes in the game, because then the player would be handicapping themself by opting out. But then, it becomes hard to design those scenes in such a way that, for the people who have opted into them, there's a point to doing them outside of the fetish.)

Myself, while vore material doesn't do anything for me, I don't object to it. If I'm honest, what offends me is the latter-day attitude that vore fetishists are the only group of people that can be freely kicked around, to which anyone can say any disgusting, hateful calumny they can think of, and nobody is allowed to disagree; nobody is allowed to think it's anything less than the funniest joke they've heard since the one where there was a number, and it was over 9000! (In stark contrast to most numbers, which instead are *under* 9000!) Any disagreement means you're #TakingTheInternetSeriously, and so you're wrong. (So basically, it's exactly like how the majority of people on the internet would treat furries about 10 or 15 years ago. Mark my words, whenever you hear anyone shrieking "cringe" or "ratio", those are the words of someone whose entire motivation in life comes from righteous fury against the intolerable injustice of not being able to just say "that's so gay" anymore.)

And now that 95% of the internet today consists of feigned shock and outrage about something completely stupid (a tourist in Japan took a picture of herself wearing a kimono, and what's even worse, actual Japanese people were happy about others taking an interest in their culture! It's our solemn duty to educate other cultures about how #Problematic they are, because we're staunchly against colonialism that way!,) I honestly have no idea what kind of sexual content most people genuinely feel is offensive anymore.
TMC wrote: Thu Apr 28, 2022 5:12 pm
polkakitty wrote: Wed Apr 27, 2022 2:43 pmthose scripts seem to make extensive use of features like expanded slice extra variables
So he went back and rewrote his scripts instead of meeting the deadline?? (So that his scripts would be even better examples??)
My bad, I didn't know that feature wasn't added to the nightlies until after the deadline, and I overestimated how much it was used. One of the first things I looked at, in the scripts for Mystery Dungeon Friends 2, was the script in wave_dudes.hss that sets all the stats for newly created enemies, and one of the first things that script does is to call "resize slice extra" to expand the number of extra variables in the container that holds the sprite for the enemy to 4. However, it turns out that's the only place "resize slice extra" is actually used, and the extra variable in slot 3 (the fourth slot) is only used in the one battle where you only have Kef, so that must have been a late addition to the script. For all the other stats each enemy has, the game is using the old approach of creating child slices to hold more variables, 3 at a time (which I'm glad isn't necessary to do anymore.)

So, to anyone who might be just making their first steps into HamsterSpeak now, and who's decided to use Mystery Dungeon Friends 2 as a model: in order to get more extra variables in a slice, you should do what the "resize slice extra" part does, not the part where it creates some child slices that don't have any purpose but to hold more extra variables. You might have needed to do that in the very recent past (like, a couple of weeks ago,) but you don't anymore.
kylekrack wrote: Fri Apr 29, 2022 5:33 amSignificant updates to CHA are incoming, but I want to release it all at once to feel more substantial. Ultimately, it should be easier (for a number of reasons), but will include new challenges. I'm also taking the time to add stuff to explore the world for that I didn't have time to add initially.
I actually have something I need to say to you about that. Please, stop using the slimy version of geometry.hss that I hastily hacked together because we needed it for Digital Soul Data, when I didn't know basic HamsterSpeak concepts like how (and why) to make something just a regular script instead of a plotscript, and use this updated version instead, which I'm using in my current projects. It fixes a glaring design flaw in the original, which was that GetXSubpixels() and GetYSubpixels() could handle angles outside of the range of 0 to 359 but LookUpSine() and LookUpCosine() couldn't. I changed it so that the check to correct input values outside of that range is done in LookUpSine() and LookUpCosine(), which means that correction also works for GetXSubpixels() and GetYSubpixels(), because they feed their input angles directly into LookUpSine() and LookUpCosine(). (I also made the function names CamelCase instead of snake_case because that's what I usually use in my own projects, but you can just change them back if you want, it doesn't make any difference.)

In all seriousness, though, I'm glad you're planning to do more with the game, because I think there's a lot of potential in the mechanics that are there, but in the version that was released for the competition, I felt disappointed that there was so little I got to do with them. And when it comes to the difficulty of the battles, I think they would be more fun and less frustrating if they just didn't take so long. I don't object to difficult battles in general (I mean, I'm a big fan of Hollow Knight,) it's just that the bosses' attack patterns are simple enough that you can learn them fairly quickly, but they have so much HP, and so you have to dodge and counter the same attacks so many times, that they start to feel like tests of endurance more than skill. I think the boss battles would be more fun to do if the bosses had the same attack patterns, but about 1/3 to 1/2 as much HP.
kylekrack wrote: Fri Apr 29, 2022 5:33 amTime to bust out the list of charbile puns.
I've been coming up with some suggestions there, which I was going to post when I wrote up my in-depth thoughts about each game (i. e. not just numbers,) but I'll let you have them now:

Chartbile: A cartographer who can show you the way to faraway lands, like Charbali and the American Chardillera.

Arrrbile: A salty sea-dog^H^H^Hfox and captain of the HMS Charbubble.

Charboil: A pasta chef, known for his signature dish, Spaghetti alla Charbonara.

Sparbile: A master of the ancient art of Wing Char, who wields the fearsome Charbalisong.

Chubbile: A Charbile who's, like, fat. (They can't all be gems.)

Clearbile: A completely transparent Charbile. What do you mean, there's no such thing? He's standing right over there, probably.

Charabile: A Charbile who was really you all along, and you mercilessly slaughtered all the inhabitants of this innocent fantasy world just to see your stats go up. You heartless monster.

Heck, why not have a Charbile design contest, like they used to do for the Mega Man series, where fans would send in designs for new Robot Masters? (Apparently, Dust Man and Crystal Man were both designed by Yuusuke Murata, who would eventually go on to create One Punch Man, the world's most famous manga series with a name that sounds suspiciously like a Robot Master itself.)
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Close your eyes, see what I see, Canajoharie..."
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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

Post by Fenrir-Lunaris »

polkakitty wrote: Fri Apr 29, 2022 2:07 pm (Although I imagine letting players opt out of certain scenes must cause a lot of headaches from a design perspective, because you have to make sure those scenes aren't the only sources of any resource, so that opting out doesn't lock you out of parts of the game that don't have anything to do with the controversial material. I don't think you even want those scenes to give the player better rewards than any other scenes in the game, because then the player would be handicapping themself by opting out. But then, it becomes hard to design those scenes in such a way that, for the people who have opted into them, there's a point to doing them outside of the content.)
Think back on how many RPGs you've played. Think back to the dungeons in them. Which one would you cut out?

I'll use FF1, since I tend to play randomizer a good bit, as it's the one I'm most familiar with. FF1's got lots of examples of awful dungeons that feel like they're laughing at the player.

Marsh cave is awful because there aren't really many opportunities to pick up extra treasure before it, and they introduce both enemies that need magic to beat (slimes), and packs of creatures that can stun the party well before there's a way to defend against it. There's also bats flying around the map, which while harmless, tend to jump in your way and won't move unless they feel like it.

Earth cave has a similar problem with it's monsters being status-effect-happy nutjobs, but also only lets you get halfway through before you find a roadblock that forces the player to have to backtrack out and go on a fetch-quest before it lets them finish the rest of the dungeon. In short, you do it twice. It's also consisting of mostly narrow, winding passages that are filled with bats - except this time if a bat gets in your way, you're forced to wait patiently for it to move.

Ice cave teases you with your goal a third of the way through just beyond some falling pits - fall in one and work your way to the treasure, and you still have to go through the exact same rooms you went through to escape now. Plus, it's got those stun-touch enemies as before in HUGE packs, and then throws in whole flocks of birds that like to petrify the party (birds are jerks) and to top it all off, has enemies who can kill off a character outright that even bypasses protective equipment.

Waterfall cave is one huge room, but is pretty much nothing but dozens of branching paths, and only one leads to the goal - unless you know which path to take, you'll end up blindly searching for it, or hugging a wall for the better part of a half hour, unless the RNG favors you. It's filled with bats that like to get in your way (they're harmless) and birds (birds are jerks).

The *actual* water-level starts you off in the middle of it - both the top and bottom contain an item that you must have to beat the game, and unless you picked up a certain spell, you're forced to backtrack out. There's no bats or birds, though a good chunk of the encounters are unrunnable, and you're going to be dealing with them a LOT because this is an old-school RPG that was designed in the 1980's and that's how we rolled back then.

Which one of these do you cut?

The real answer is "any one dungeon in FF2". Every single one of them is awful and has no redeeming qualities. Every. One. Except maybe the last dungeon, but only because the music's pretty good.
polkakitty wrote: Fri Apr 29, 2022 2:07 pm I honestly have no idea what kind of sexual content most people genuinely feel is offensive anymore.
If Non-con doesn't check any boxes, there's something wrong with you. Though, this really isn't the place to dig any deeper into this particular subject.
polkakitty wrote: Fri Apr 29, 2022 2:07 pm Charbile design contest
This is the best idea ever.
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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

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polkakitty wrote: Fri Apr 29, 2022 2:07 pm I actually have something I need to say to you about that. Please, stop using the slimy version of geometry.hss that I hastily hacked together because we needed it for Digital Soul Data, when I didn't know basic HamsterSpeak concepts like how (and why) to make something just a regular script instead of a plotscript, and use this updated version instead, which I'm using in my current projects. It fixes a glaring design flaw in the original, which was that GetXSubpixels() and GetYSubpixels() could handle angles outside of the range of 0 to 359 but LookUpSine() and LookUpCosine() couldn't. I changed it so that the check to correct input values outside of that range is done in LookUpSine() and LookUpCosine(), which means that correction also works for GetXSubpixels() and GetYSubpixels(), because they feed their input angles directly into LookUpSine() and LookUpCosine(). (I also made the function names CamelCase instead of snake_case because that's what I usually use in my own projects, but you can just change them back if you want, it doesn't make any difference.)
On it! I've just been trying to avoid ever using angles outside of the 0-360 range, I think to avoid an issue of getting a gradually compounding angle that becomes an unwieldy number. So I've never encountered any issues with it. In fact, it's been incredible and I'm grateful to have it every time I write any movement code.
I've been coming up with some suggestions there, which I was going to post when I wrote up my in-depth thoughts about each game (i. e. not just numbers,) but I'll let you have them now:
...
Adding them to the list. Some real bangers in here.
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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

Post by Fenrir-Lunaris »

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It's still anyone's game at this point! Send in your votes, and remember that you don't HAVE to play everything! (though you really should, these games are banging)
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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

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Keeping it short 'cause I got a million problems this year, none of which involve these games.

Bob V. OHR : 5

I didn't play it myself yet, but what I saw on stream and leaked in discord was incredible, and I'm willing to float Fenrir a perfect score on credit given his track record with this kind of project.

RMZ's Game: 4

The usual production value was there, and more of his jokes landed than usual, but the trouble people had with the mandatory stealth segment and one other issue I saw that I can't remember is a big enough turnoff to dock a point.

Global Warming: 4

I treasure this game, it is great to have someone release a game that so perfectly matches the tone of what I've always tried to do. That said, I got a little lost when it came time to use the burgers, I had to read the readme or game description or something, and I wouldn't have agreed to sell my likeness for 1,000 bucks if I knew how bad inflation had struck the umm.. "local trades".

OHR Afterlife: 3

The slice work is pretty cool, and it's definitely more ridiculous than a lot of the games on the list, but not necessarily in a way that's fun? I feel like even OHR Millionaire did a better job in some regards, and I didn't ever answer the last question 'cause who has time for that, and a lot of them are waaaaay too inside baseball. Trivia about game stats?! Come on!!!

CHA: 4

This is truly impressive, and the only thing keeping it from a perfect score is the unfortunate fact that I had just played Elden Ring and was tired AF of bosses eating my lunch, and I feel like there was a repeated intro to the battle that was maybe unnecessary? Definitely a game I'll revisit one day and think "what the hell was I thinking?" (For the record, after the last couple of bosses and mandatory "WOW WANNA SEE THE CUTSCENE AGAIN?! AND ANOTHER ONE BETWEEN PHASES?!" cutscenes, I would've given Elden Ring a 3)

Mystery Dungeon Friends 2: 5

The Fenrir rule applies here too. I didn't have time to get down and dirty with it, but I've played Charbile's games before and am willing to extend him a perfect score, on-loan. You might ask, why does CHA get that same privilege? Well, CHA is about Charbile, so they must agree with me that he rules.

Hati's Bizarre Adventure Twink Episode: 5

I like what I saw, and I would've given you 5 points just for having the word twink in the title.
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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

Post by charbile »

holoo gentlemon


A Lack of a Title Annoys RMZ. And Spoon Thinks That its Funny. Tee Hee

Played it all the way to the end, unlike Gizpog. The graphics are a treat. The feeling of being in ohr land is great, wandering around to see what there is to discover. There were a lot more... for lack of a better word, fen references than i expected, notably with the fetch quest narrative, and the cave where you follow people attempting a summon. So, on the box, my expectation was 'get to see imaginative interpretations of ohr people and places and events', but what's actually there is some ohr references scattered about in a plot where you're doing things to help out a roo but then getting mixed up into a contest between furry demi god type people who are clearly bad guys? Absolutely ridiculous. 5/5


Cthulhu's Paradox

Watched it with Gizmo. It's weird to consider that the stealth segment was neat, fresh, but potentially annoying enough that people dock it points--to where if RMZ never spent time on it and it wasn't there--people would look at the game more favorably with less to it? An odd paradox. This was great. Everyone was having a blast during the stream. Nonstop ohr character action. The base/hub world is full of an entire supporting cast of cameos. There's so many cool effects: the minecraft portals, all the animation work for special walkabout actions, a pokemon fight thrown in, recreation of meh with more cameos and gags, ohr court, charbile being your best friend. Absolutely ridiculous 5/5 Also, recreating the entire first area, sans town, of Vikings--ridiculous amount of effort for something so silly to have the main character come in--with a payoff as later on you're tasked to murder something aint nobody going to kill. Ending parody of kingdom hearts. It requires a certain understanding of what it is to fully appreciate all that happens. Full of content, really picks up after you get past the random battle fake out intro segment.


Global Warming

It's a Gizmog game and I'm willing to float PJ a perfect score on that ambition alone. The dithered backdrops are so terrible they're great. Bonus points for not making me play the default battle engine, again, for the thousandth time. I'm happy this game exists. It needed to happen. Giz needed to be put in his place. There's a bit more map stages than there needs to be for the overall gag. And the gags are really in the shops. Some flattering nods to other people. I had to cheat to make it to the end and I'm not sure what the ending conversation was about. Absolutely ridiculous. 5/5


OHR Afterlife

The game and amount of effort everyone else *should have* put into a ridiculous contest entry. Once again, Spoonweaver showing everyone how things should be done. Do you think he's going to get upset if you don't like this? Bonus sphinx question: how much time and effort do you think he put into this? The questions could have been more relevant but the point was to mess with you. It better not take my last place spot i swear to god. i can't allow him to keep getting away with this. every time, he does this to me. every time. 5/5


Charbile's Hatful Adventure

At first glance, you'd think it'd be charbile's hateful adventure. The title screen is so good. You see that hat flying away, and you know what this is about. Unlike Gizmog, I haven't played elden ring and therefore i am not tired AF of bosses eating lunch. A lot of people found this game hard. But me, being Charbile, I found this to be the easiest game out of all of them. All you have to do is sit back and let someone else get your hat. Smallbile is terrible at this. What are you doing, throwing acorns? Jeez... it shows you the hitboxes of where attacks will happen. It's like having training wheels. Generous invincible dodge slide button. If you can't do it, maybe find someone else to play it. I honestly don't know what to say. A Charbile fangame exists. I am honored. Game of the year 5/5


Hati's Bizarre Adventure - Twink Episode

My expectations were: another standard ohrrpgce experience. They were wrong. I was pleasantly surprised how well the formula works here. A single dungeon area broken up into parts. Easy way points between said parts. And a whole other half of the game where it's Persona-like, visiting friends, hanging out, advancing inter-party relations, getting skills this way. The effort to make that hug happen was not lost on me, and I was blown away there was a follow up. The Swordplay poetry was great. Seeing Dogero again, his ex's antics, was personally fun to see. The scenes were a blast. The nods to hati's adventure was amusing to see in a different context. The battles kind of worked as best they could. Meeting up at your mom's pizza shop to form your party, it's great. This has immense potential and I am definitely influenced for any future Hati work. 5/5



kept it long cause giz didnt
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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

Post by kylekrack »

charbile wrote: Sat Apr 30, 2022 11:48 pm At first glance, you'd think it'd be charbile's hateful adventure.
According to the original brainstorm doc, this, and "hatiful" were meant to be explicit references in the game's dialogue, but it never found a way to fit in organically. Also, apparently Smallbile's name was originally Charchild! You learn something new every day.
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Re: Ridiculous/Terrible Games Competition 2022 - The Homage Strikes Back

Post by polkakitty »

So I'd hoped to have an in-depth look at my thoughts about each game to post by the judging deadline, but long story short, life happened. What I have right now is a text file with a few hundred lines of inane stream-of-consciousness comments that I wrote while playing the games, like "why isn't there a heart Pokemon in the actual Pokemon series? It would be a lot less lame than having a stomach Pokemon" and "I wish I'd entered this competition so it would actually be true that exactly half of the entrants were furries, just like RMZ said" (referring to the RMZ in Bob vs. the OHR, not the real RMZ. These games are going to get confusing to talk about.) So I'm going to need to take some time to flip through a thesaurus and look up some philosophers to namedrop on Wikipedia, in order to dress up my insane ramblings so people will hopefully be fooled into mistaking them for rational thoughts.

In the meantime, though, here are my votes for the games:

Bob vs. the OHR by Fenrir-Lunaris: 3 (Finally, the long-prophesied Jacked Dude in a Hamster Suit has returned to make his first appearance in a game! There isn't much here that wasn't in Puppy Adventure or No More Villains, and I wish I got a character with some healing moves, but what's here is fun, and I really wish I could see where it goes after the end of the demo. The character writing is a particular highlight; Bob is the kind of character that I think is harder to write for than he seems, but Fenrir does a great job of capturing his idiosyncratic outlook on life and his misunderstandings of various characters and concepts, without just making him seem stupid.)

Charbile's Hatful Adventure by Kylekrack: 3 (It has very well-programmed custom movement and fighting mechanics, and an impressively silly concept that actually sounds like something Charbile might come up with. The only things I think are wrong with it are that there's very little to experience, with only 3 boss battles and some dialogue, and the boss battles tend to drag on too long and get repetitive. (It could probably also benefit from having a way to adjust the difficulty.) But Kylekrack has said they'll be adding more stuff to it, and I'm glad of that, because this game definitely has potential to become a classic.)

Cthulhu's Paradox by RMZ: 4 (There's a lot I could criticize about this game. Some of the minigames can get pretty frustrating. (I wasn't bothered by the stealth sequence, but the Meh minigame really annoyed me, because it doesn't seem to be reasonably possible to win without prior knowledge of which customers give you a bad review after you kill them. That's a sentence you don't see every day.) The plot is incomprehensible unless you both know a lot about the OHR community and its influential games, and you play through it twice so you know everything that's revealed late in the game. But one thing this game absolutely is not is dull. It always has something new and surprising to show you. RMZ has created an amazing number of alternative gameplay systems for different parts of the game, putting incredible amounts of effort into what essentially amount to absurdist non-sequiturs, to a degree that I can only describe as Charbile-esque. Most of all, though, it brings to the OHR the old Space Quest tradition of having a vast selection of ridiculous ways to kill the player, each with unique text to mock them for making such foolish mistakes, and it deserves to be played for that reason alone.)

Global WARming by pjbebi: 4 (So far as I've seen, a lot of people have tried to make platformers in the OHRRPGCE, but very few people have ever tried to make a top-down run-and-gun game. This game would make a fine model for anyone looking to create such a game, with smooth and intuitive movement (including the ability to shoot in one direction while moving in another,) and a solid aesthetic in terms of both visuals and music.)

Hati's Bizarre Adventure: Twink Episode by Idontknow: 4 (It takes a while to get up to speed, but it has some good dungeon-crawling action, and the parody of the "debate battle" with Katina in Sword of Jade is easily one of the funniest scenes I've seen in an OHR game. It's at its best when it breaks away from what the original Hati's Bizarre Adventure did, and I feel it could have benefited from taking more risks and doing more really weird stuff. Unfortunately, it suffers from several annoying bugs towards the end; I downloaded what seems to be a version of the game that was updated at some point, as the rpg file is different from the first one that was uploaded, but I got "invalid npc reference" errors during a few events such as installing the triangle module in Mr. Triangle, the "Ail-Away" item doesn't seem to be usable in battle, the Chaos armor doesn't give any stat boosts or elemental resistances, the multitarget dark attack used by the "Lamia" enemies still damages speed instead of HP, and there's an invisble NPC blocking the way forward in the second-to-last room of Lamashtu's lair (right in front of where Damien is standing in this screenshot,) so I had to use the walk-through-walls debug key to get past it. According to ohrrpgce-custom, it should run a script called "progress-check-3", but that script doesn't seem to work correctly.)

Mystery Dungeon Friends 2 by Charbile: 5 (Apart from some dark humor, internet community in-jokes, and the fact that the "enemy" sprites don't really look like they came from a Pokemon game (because they didn't,) I honestly think this could pass for an official, commercially released Pokemon spinoff game. It's that well made. And the dark humor and community in-jokes are a lot better done here than in any Pokemon fangame I've seen.)

OHR Afterlife by Spoonweaver: 4 (There isn't much here, but I think it deserves points for creative interpretation of the theme of the competition. There are plenty of OHR games, both in this competition and elsewhere, that tell stories about the community, but this is the only OHR game I've seen that has a philosophical point to make about the community. I'm not trolling, this is what I honestly think. I'll explain in more detail when I post my in-depth thoughts.)

Overall, I'd say there's a very good showing for this competition. All the games clearly show a lot of passion and creativity, and have some truly great points to them. The worst thing I can really say about any of them is that they're not finished, and it's disappointing that there isn't more of them to experience, and I think that's a good problem to have. And nobody said anything about anyone in the community that was just cruel rather than funny.
"It was right through those trees; I'm not insane
That's where the fin tried to drag me in
Don't look at me, look at where I'm pointing
Close your eyes, see what I see, Canajoharie..."
-- They Might Be Giants
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