The Great 2011 Review Contest [Reviews: 200]

i think that tileset came from the jormandgundling's belly from wandering hamster.

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Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy... So here's some lunchmeat... Sandwich, maybe?

Oh.. I didn't actually notice.
I'm investigating that right now.
Oh man, why wasn't this brought up during the contest?!

EDIT:



.......damit Nathan, you tricked me. Maybe you said you had ripped those, and I didn't notice, maybe you didn't. Either way I was under the belief you had made all those graphics.

I knew those tiles looked too good to be Nathan's.

I did give him specific permission to use them, and I do think he mentioned it somewhere. Maybe in the contests thread?

I'm happy with the results myself, and No Eat is the best game Nathan Karr's made so far. From what I hear he's actually working on cleaning it up and even adding a bit of content to it, so it'll be interesting to see what it looks like after all the changes go through.

Not so with RD, there's no going "family friendly" with that one. But it does do a few things with it battles that I haven't seen in many OHR games, and if anything it's been more of an excuse to experiment with the transforming mechanics present in the newer nightly builds of the engine. So here's a few of the things it DOES do right, and if anyone wants to steal them, then by all means let's see them in a cleaner game. My verdict? - Transforming is awesome.

-> Most enemies suffer from the "Going Red" gimmick in that they power-up when reduced to a critical threshold of HP.
-> There's an enemy that has certain stages where it visibly swells up before bursting and dealing a large chunk of damage to the player. (how exactly it survives "exploding" is up to the player's imagination)
-> A dragon "brood mother" that spawns eggs. After a while the eggs hatch into little baby dragons.
-> The whole FF4 Bahamut fight where the enemy in question counts down, then transforms its appearance to unleash a devastating attack before reverting back. Superficially this is pretty much the same as the swelling-up bomb enemy.
-> Rita Repulsa's whole "make my monster grow" thing.

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To friends long gone, and those I've yet to meet - thank you.

Checking No Eat's readme, I don't see any mention. Pretty sure he mentioned it somewhere else, yup.

Transforming enemies is very awesome. It's a step below animating enemies, but leagues above static ones.

One thing I have to credit Fen with is using that Fist of the North Star sound effect: after hearing it, wondering what it was from, I finally introduced myself to the most manly of manly anime. This is my preferred style of pop/cult reference, where I can find out about something I may have never cared to discover before. The same with that Harbinger thing that was pointed out. (still looking forward to the walkthrough.)

Nice to see Spoon reviewing some. Though I think most of these games really don't deserve much of a review, it's been fun to see what people think, (even if Giz is a super suck-up.)

Or maybe it doesn't have to survive. It could burst and that would end the battle. However, the final step in the attack would also erase the enemies rewards. Meaning, if you want the reward, kill it before it goes ka-boom!

Quest Game
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Game info on the download page: "Educational game uploaded for transportation purpose. Please don't rate, and especially don't review yet."

You naughty, naughty people! Should be ashamed of yourselves.

Well, here goes :3

Saying it was for transportation purposes, it gave the impression this might be some kind of driving safety interactive school project kind of thing. Looking at what's in the zip file, it seems to be more like the author doesn't have a flash drive. There's an artwork and documents folder. Taking a peek, while it's a good sign that the author has documented their story, reading the few paragraphs that are there, I'm not expecting much. At this point, the interest is to see how well they implemented what little they wrote.

Graphics aren't bad. They remind me of Moytra's slightly, like if Newbie Newtype were half his current Kitten Master level.

Can't really write anything else. I have to agree with the author's wishes on this one.

Judgment: Don't review yet.

Ruin (25% Demo)
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Best title screen so far. No contest. It's a cloaked figure on a mountain looking down at a castle and village. There's rain, but it doesn't look like it so much as it adds an interesting grainy film texture effect. (What is that logo image for HOCBJ Software?! a sippy box?)

Good intro, though the pacing of all the camera pans is a bit much. Need to speed it up, get the player pumped. Now's not the time to slow it down.

The graphics are wonderful. Top tier for an ohr game, excluding the ones where the artist has an understanding of certain technical things that's lacking here. Things like, knowing when and how to use gradients and that you don't need to use them for everything, being more selective with diffuse/dither shading, and basically knowing it's okay to not shade, understanding the overall palette color-contrast of a scene. Choosing colors wisely, not because the brick must be bright red, the floor a yellow brown, the overalls a bright blue, ie coloring the individual parts with the entire game screen in mind.

Love the hero's haircut. Finally, an ohr game where I get to play a manly man. Suggestion: for his portrait, give him bigger eyebrows. They look too wimpy compared to his beard and guile poof.

Derf talks too much. Need to cut text in the wakeup scene.

The prospects (side quest) menu is great. This game has some serious rpg meat to it that none so far have had.

Wow. If you explore the first house, you can find items where you wouldn't think you would. For instance, I found Derf's private journal, and after reading it, it asked what city was mentioned. Answering correctly, it gave me EXP points! Though I'm not 100% on the 'were you paying attention' aspect, it is a very nice touch.

You can search most anything. And you can push NPCs around.

Died in the first random battle on the overworld. While it's neat that the hero is smaller and moves slower there, it's not exactly more fun this way. Pacing, pacing, pacing. Don't draw anything out unless you mean to for special, limited effect.

I accidentally started a new game instead of loading, and noticed you can load from the in-game menu. It crashed the game.

Completing the first side quest earns you the ability to sprint. Don't know if the 'A' key is the best for this. Though it said it may not work everywhere, it's confusing if it can't work in the map or map thereafter once you get it.

Explored the underwater city, which is really neat. This is what rpgs are all about. Naturally, I died at the first random encounter.

I keep dying. I don't think it's best to have 1 hero face randoms stocked with 3 different types of enemies at the very beginning, who each can do things like poison, lower speed, etc. I've made the mistake too, and you don't have to change it for me, but it would feel wrong to not say this.

Judgment: Definitely worth a play.

PS, the quit arrow npc looks funny cause it begins by pointing down. A better solution would be to show a text box with a yes/no choice, and script a game over there (if you can without it returning to the title).

Spectrum
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NO EXE FILELELELELEE

The title screen isn't much. But the subtitle: "beware of the void" has me hyped. It's a better title than the actual title.

Starting the game at x=0, y=0, I find myself on a grassy field full of houses. BUT! And this is important: I can see it all on a single screen, the first NPC I talk to says something short and highly interesting. So far the design is flipping expectations by doing no-no's in a way where they are okay.

Well, I was trying to be positive. The weapons in the store decrease speed by 5, and give only 5 or so to attack. It's not worth it. The writing and maps just bombed.

I love some of the flavor text, but the rest of this is pretty bad.

Judgment: In the right hands, this could be made into a winner.

Next up is Spellshard and Star Quest! Until next time~

Half of my current Kitten Master level is Motrya itself. Half of that looks way different from Quest Game.

You know. Maybe a DPS-esque (damage per second) display might be a good addition to the editor so people have an idea how to balance speed/damage.

Also yeah, I apologize for all the games that really don't need 5 reviews that are in the list. Next year I'll try to figure out some way to filter out the 100% newbie games. (with an opt-in for authors who really want their newbie game called out several times.)

Damage per second is a really good idea.

Don't know how to make the contest better. I don't mind the bad games so much as... games that don't have much to them, or who haven't fully realized their plot or design, who have so little that can be said about them... it's difficult to review one if a couple of people already have, who have said more than there ever was to say about it.

Maybe some rule like, if you feel the game is really bad, too short, etc, you can opt to write 3 paragraphs on what you would do, where you would take the game if you were serious about it. (with bonus points for every other user who gets offended haha)


And I was measuring Kitten Master levels as exponential. Sorry if that came out wrong. It only makes me wonder why you aren't using your MAX POWER

Yeah it's mostly the games with nothing in them that I meant- if it's bad then at least there's something to talk about. The substitute idea sounds like a better way to deal with it than outright removal.

You could just do what I do and ramble about something tangentially related to the game for 2 paragraphs

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