The Great 2011 Review Contest [Reviews: 200]

Make games! Discuss those games here.

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Spoonweaver
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Post by Spoonweaver »

I reviewed Labyrinth! ( not THE Labyrinth)

I also did a play along review that you can watch. The link is at the bottom of the review.

http://www.slimesalad.com/forum/viewtop ... 9307#89307
Last edited by Spoonweaver on Thu Feb 02, 2012 2:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by charbile »

Really enjoyed your video, Spoon. Would have liked to have seen whatever Baconlabs had too, these play-through videos are great.

sidenote: i'm still in this. i want to do something special for spellshard.
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Post by Spoonweaver »

REVIEW: Armored Devil

First thoughts...

Starting up the game I'm blasted with quality music and a nice looking title screen. I'm pumped. Reading the readme teels me that the music is all from community members of the OHR. I'm even more pumped. This game seems like it might be the game of the year that got away. Then I start the intro. Blam, an animation. Then some deviant talk from the characters really gets things moving.(I chuckled a bit.) However the plot seems a bit odd at first.
Image
I seem to be a Mech Pilot. I start off with 2 characters in my party and Get a neat looking item to equip. Flipping through the menus I really notice the quality of graphics this game offers. Custom menu borders aren't the only things that make this game nice to look at. The Mechs don't seem to walk though, but the little thruster animation behind them seems to fit. It works.

Then, I get into my first fight. It's against a group of like 8 guys who all start swarming me 2 party members with attacks. Thankfully, they don't seem to be doing much damage, but I'm super annoyed super quickly. A quick look through the special moves the characters have to offer shows no mass targeting attack, and so... I reluctantly hold down the space bar. Oh, how my hopes have fallen. After the fight I go to heal up from some laser demons that say they restore hitpoints ( heh WHAT?! {The sound effect only further confuses me}). The laser demons don't seem to run out, and even though I have 2 I'll only ever need 1 to restore myself to full after every fight. (Score!) {{Then I make the mistake of holding down the spacebar to heal myself more quickly with the items and the whole game seems to freeze. This is most likely an engine bug, and has nothing to do with the game but I figured I'd mention it here.}}
At least the battles are nice to look at. The attacks seem to be chained for style and the attack graphics are all very nicely done. The sound effects are the cherry on top.
Image
As I play on I get a bit confused trying to figure out the plot and the generally goal of the game. There seems to be something about a deathmarch that I seem to be collecting things for. I can't seem to go into any of the buildings I come across which is a bit of a let down but I'm still excited about what else this game has to offer. Then I reach Doxmagnus!!! The fanfare plays And I'm expecting the freakin game to freakin deliver. At first I think the game has frozen but then start hitting buttons and I'm presented with a menu that seems to be asking me where in the great "city" of DOXMAGNUS I would like to go. This is actually kind of cool. I like this touch, the text based town is actually pretty awesome. My hope for the game goes up a few notches here. In the city I find a Mech painting place (neat), An equipment store that sells a bunch of stuff I don't understand (not so neat), and a place that seems to further the plot (finally). I leave the city after gaining a new member of my squad.

After a bit more fighting I see that my previous thoughts about the special abilities of the characters were wrong and I do have an area of effect attack. However, I still get creamed by the first boss. I'm just not sure if I have a good way of healing, and that guy just didn't seem to want to go down. After I grind a bit (bleh) I finally manage to beat the boss, and right afterwards my main character seems to flip out and grow to the size of the screen. Then all my characters die and the guy the size of the screen gets attacked but lasers forever.... I'm not really sure what was suppose to happen here. I assume not that, and that the game goofed up or something so I beat the boss again (thankfully I saved right before him) to see what happens THIS time.
As I expected, the game seems to have goofed last time but this time, even though I lose that strange battle, the game continues. I play a bit longer and the game seems like it has a lot more to offer. I'll definately come back to this later.

After Thoughts:

This game sports some pretty nice graphics. It has some interesting equipment, once you start to understand what's there. The battles aren't completely terrible. The text based towns add a nice touch. Last but not least, the style of this game is fairly uncommon for an rpg.
Though I thought the plot was a bit too weird and the dialog a bit too crude. I think this was a fairly decent game. I recommend this game to anyone wanting to play a non traditional RPG.

SCORE: 7/10
Last edited by Spoonweaver on Sat Feb 18, 2012 2:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Spoonweaver »

Review: Arms Race

This game's title screen is fairly awesome. It informs the player of a lot and keeps things simple. Kind of like the old arcade games, like pac-man's, title screen. I like the music, it's a good choice.

As the game starts up I instantly think that this was most likely an entry into Mogri's battle only contest. Having not played any of the games in that contest I'm not sure what to expect or if this was one of the good entries even. The graphics lead me to believe that this might be one of the bad entries into the contest. Anything featuring stick men is just begging to be called terrible.

As the massively long fight goes on I come to understand the design behind the game. Enemies level your characters up as you go along, and you have to try to make yourself buff enough to beat the boss before running out of monsters. Seems interesting but I find myself simply holding down space bar for just about every monster. (Pro tip: don't hold down space bar for the shield enemy)
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I end up having a fun time playing this silly little game, and even go back and try it out a second time. I'd recommend this game to anyone looking for a quick RPG fix without all the hassle of a plot.

SCORE: 4/10
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Post by Spoonweaver »

I also reviewed Angel Whispers.


These are some nice games so far, hope it keeps up.

Edit: guess not...
The Black Heart of Exile.
Last edited by Spoonweaver on Sun Feb 19, 2012 5:00 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Gizmog »

Gomey's 2011 Year In Review #34 - 48 Hours Contest Pt. 1/LudumDare "Escape"

2011's first 48 Hours contest saw a controversial change from previous editions. Entrants would be encouraged to obey the rules of the popular LudumDare contest, a one man 48 hour indie-game making challenge where everything has to be open source or original content. We'd follow their theme, stick to their deadline, and try to spread the word about the OHR and what's possible with it. There would be a community vote to decide who had made the best submission as always, and anyone who didn't obey LudumDare's rules but followed the traditional 48 Hours rules would still be elligible for the prize: A bug-fix/feature request from James himself!

James posted the idea on July 15th and people were instantly wary of the LudumDare thing. Some of them wanted to work in teams, some of them were afraid of embarassing themselves in front of the entire internet and some of 'em were just busy that weekend but wanted to play too. I've always been annoyed at girly man contests where you can reuse anything you've got lying around and liked LudumDare's rules, though participating in an "Indie Game" event was somewhat outside of my comfort zone.

There wasn't a whole lot of discussion in the month leading up to the contest. Shizuma wanted to keep things in the family. TMC and Blue Train joined forces once again. Baconlabs yielded to his bad luck with contests and withdrew pre-emptively. Things heated up when the theme of Escape was announced. Master K instantly announced his intention to make a game based off "Castle On The Night Land" called "The Labyrinth". Spoonweaver tempted us with promises of Oregon Trail with zombies. James was doing something with wolves and also showing off his breakfast. Mystic was bummed because he was unable to enter and escape was the exact theme he'd been hoping for. I wasn't sure what to make of it, so I just started drawing.

Master K was done after only twenty hours. He initially was only entering the OHR Contest, but waffled and entered the less regulated Ludum Jam. SpoonWeaver clocked in five hours later and was among the first 50 or so entries to LudumDare proper. jcenterprises popped out of nowhere to enter "Escape from Strong Castle" and faced harsh criticism. He might get more later, stay tuned. I finally got around to posting my entry at the 45 hour mark. James posted "Escape The Wolf: OHR" with only an hour to go, and Pepsi Ranger took his own sweet time, entering 20 minutes AFTER the deadline. TMC and Blue Train were also tardy, and shamefully showed up with nothing but a tech demo. They'll have to see me after class if they want a review.

The OHR vote was unanimously for James' "Escape The Wolf". I stumbled into second place with "Virtual School 2", Master K's "The Labyrinth" came in third. I have no idea how James tabulated the votes, but it was some bizarre system with points and rounds and temporary ignorings. We did pretty good in LudumDare, too. I believe it was their biggest year yet, with 599 entries. James made the biggest splash of the OHR crew, scoring in the top 20 of two categories and just missing the top 100 overall. Spoonweaver posted early enough that he got a lot of comments and downloads. I didn't even embarass myself too much which was kind of a surprise.

All things considered, it was a pretty good contest. It's always seemed unfair to me that OHR games get compared to professional ones. Every now and then we get one that could stand up to that challenge, but mostly we're all doing this for fun and it shows. It was nice to compare ourselves to other amateurs for a change, especially since we proved ourselves not totally incompetent. Imagine how well jackasses like Spoony and I did and imagine how much better the real talents in the community could've done. There's a lot of great gamemakers around here who could find a very receptive audience with contests like these, if only they'd try.

But enough blowjobs and bellyachin', time for the reviews.

Part of Gomey's 2011 Year In Review
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BONUS FEATURE - IN SEARCH OF... THE 48 HOURS CONTEST

In researching this article, I got curious about the history of the 48 Hours Contest. Of all the great contests that've been held over the years I always thought 48 Hours was the one that was the most fundamentally ours. I was a little bit disappointed when I discovered that the Official OHR Wiki suggested that our 48 Hour Contest was a spin-off from LudumDare. Something about that didn't ring true though, so I did some digging.

LudumDare's origins were easy to determine, their website plainly states their first contest was in April of 2002. OHR Contest history is a bit murkier. A quick google search took me to the fourth issue of HamsterSpeak, dated June 2007, in which DJFenix claimed to have started the 48 Hour Contest about ten years earlier. The engine itself was barely around in 1997, so that was an obvious exaggeration. It was clear I was going to have to dig deeper to solve this mystery.

My next stop was Operation: OHR. The news archive went back to November of 2000. That was promising. It was annoying to navigate, and by February of '01 I was getting frustrated. Then I looked a little bit harder at the screen. Luck had smiled on me. On February 2nd Tarot Master had stepped in to help out CodyWatts with the news and that flagged something in my memory. Tarot Master had made "Seizure Inducer" for a 48 Hours contest. But which one?

A trip to the reviews archive later, I had my answer. July 1st, 2001. 9 months before the first LudumDare. My mission was accomplished.. or was it?

Something about the reviews made me think this wasn't the first 48 Hour contest. They seemed too familliar with the concept. I checked other reviews around that time and found Gilbert's immortal "I Made Dis". I just knew "I Made Dis" hadn't been in the first contest, but I couldn't find anything older on Op:OHR. Another dead end.

There was only one older publication I could think of, Rinku's "Reasonably Septaweekly/OHR Monthly", but I didn't think it was still around. I couldn't think of anything else, so I threw the hail mary. Punched "Reasonably Septaweekly" into Google and...

Archived on CastleParadox! Who knew? The earliest issue was dated September 2000. It was only two months more than Operation: OHR, but it good enough. Highlights of the first 48 Hour Contest in August or July of 2000 included Rinku and Charbile's "And (&)", Jsangspar and Ben Ohki's "Stickman with a Chainsaw Anime Edition" and there were entries by many notable authors including Jazz Man, Ralfo, Royal, Dr. Greg and Specsplosive. It's interesting to see how many two man teams competed in the first contest, as opposed to the solitary approach taken today.

There were a lot of memorable names in the second installment of 48 Hours too. I already mentioned "I Made Dis" and "Seizure Inducer", but how about "Tightfloss Maiden", "The Last Job", "Ninjahs", "Never Go West" and "Scars of Glory"? All of those and more, though Haggard didn't list the authors so I have no idea who did what. They also didn't host any of the games, preferring to link to outside sources. I can only presume most of them are lost. Still, it makes for some good reading if you're interested in the history of the community and the development of contests.

Which brings us to the end of the story. The OHR's 48 Hour tradition predates LudumDare by almost two years. A stunning triumph for all of Hamster-kind.. or so I thought. As I was doing a victory dance and extolling the fighting prowess of our father over that of LudumDare's, a more dedicated historian than I came forward with evidence that the Verge community had held a "48 Hours of Verge" contest in May of 2000, two months before DJFenix's inaugural OHR edition. On top of that, the Verge contest wasn't even their first, with a tradition going back as early as 1999, maybe 1998 and who knows what inspired them?

It's entirely possible "Make a game in a weekend" contests predate the internet, with a genesis in college student rivalries, or early programmers goofing around in their downtime. We may never truely know who was first, but it was a lot of fun to look into.

FURTHER HISTORICAL READING:
Reasonably Septaweekly/OHR Monthly
Operation: OHR
HamsterSpeak
Last edited by Gizmog on Sun Feb 19, 2012 9:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Sh4d0ws
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Post by Sh4d0ws »

Haha, Charbile's reviews are just about the best thing ever. I'm definitely not finishing Quest Game, though. See, it was a game I made to explain basic game-making concepts for the "Activity Period" I was in, for my school. I never planned on finishing it in the first place, In fact, the only reason it made it as far as it did, -was because the OHR was the class's favorite. That's out of Unity, GameMaker, and Oblivion mods, too.

But now I'm ACHING to work on another OHR game. >:/

I need a good time waster, anyways..
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Post by Pepsi Ranger »

I really like Giz's series. The 48 Hour review might just be one of the best I've ever read (well, I can't call it a review as much as a walk through history, but it's still one of the best accounts of the OHR's past to come around in a long time). This entire series needs to be duplicated for Hamsterspeak, especially the 48 Hour history lesson. Excellent job, Giz.
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Post by Bob the Hamster »

The history of 48 hour contests is darn interesting. I participated in the Verge community before the OHR was released, and I had forgotten about theirs. I really do wonder who was the first.

I had mistakenly believed that 48 hour game making competitions were inspired by 48 hour filmmaking contests, but according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/48_Hour_Film_Project the first one was started in 2001
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Post by Master K »

Yeah, I did make Labyrinth in half the time I had. I was going to be doing a lot of travelling in the next few days, some of which clashed with the contest. However, I had an idea and determination, so I said "Might as well try." and The Labyrinth came into existence after starting in the morning, working past midnight, and then polishing it up the next morning and eagerly launching it.

Ah well. It's another game on my list.
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Post by charbile »

Master K and Giz are the best. I'd love to see more games by you two. I like reading what Giz has to say, don't get me wrong, but I'd much rather see him in action if you know what I mean~

Spellshard review:
http://www.slimesalad.com/forum-devo/vi ... php?t=4940
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Post by charbile »

developer talk about Spellshard...

I didn't want to dwell on every nit-pick I have with the game in the review, but I feel I would be dishonest to not voice them here.

Among the games in this review contest, Spellshard is in another league. I understand emotions can run high when dealing with work you've put some amount of time into. Most games are at least interesting on this level, but as a reviewer, I need a complete game with some stuff in there to really get into. It doesn't make sense to give complete reviews to incomplete work.

___its release

Found it odd that the authors would release without any teasing. Not that I mind. Lots of interesting things here but probably too hot for forum talk.

___game nitpicks

Graphics were amazing. They were so good I didn't even feel the need to dwell on them in the review. Truly the mark of a game that gets you hooked. I didn't like a few though, a very small few. The one that comes to mind the most is the cthulu optional boss where you get the item to make the game's title namesake. Just felt out of place and uninspired.

Music may bring the game down a bit. I didn't mind it, but it was distracting to hear stuff like... turtles boss music and musicals in a game of this quality.

The monkey scientist rubbed me the wrong way slightly. Very very slightly. Think this is more of a personal nitpick. It wasn't out of place, but it wasn't exactly necessary either. Maybe it was that it changed the tone a bit away from a more serious 'this is it' for the final chapter. The captain shark (can't remember the exact name) was awesome, so maybe the monkey after that was what it was. And not putting general tso in his place was a let down.

The permanent stat boosting items should be available at the end. Not during the middle or so where you can't go back later. Found that silly.

Some of the bosses felt wildly difficult and it's never fun to make your way through a dungeon, fighting randoms, to die at some cheap npc-touch trap, given the ohr will trigger a touch even when you're not seeing one.

I remember falling asleep during one or two of the more tedious dungeons, but that might be party a result of playing well into the night, so I don't know. There were low points, it wasn't a constant high. I don't want to give the wrong impression.

Probably more here, but fond memories are winning out.

___misc

My saves are at the end of the game. I wanted to talk about some of the scenes and text that happen later, like the final 4 or so world maps, but my memory is too fuzzy on what exactly was said and I don't have the time to go back through it. This is the kind of stuff I'd look up discussion on to see what people thought about it. Having access to the author and talking to him about it, I was pretty spoiled (in a great way).

I didn't have to grind at all. I think a lot of people here forced themselves into it with the wrong expectations. Found that interesting. Is that how a lot of people here play rpgs by default?
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Post by Spoonweaver »

Just mentioning on this thread that I reviewed Bufunda and I'm going to review Cardians of lore next.

Also! I saw that you had not been able to find Escape the zombie horde. I guess I didn't really make it too widely known, but I moved it together with all my tech demos and made it open source.
http://www.slimesalad.com/forum/viewgame.php?t=1882
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Post by Master K »

Master K and Giz are the best. I'd love to see more games by you two.
Why thank you. I'd love to get more games out there as well, but unfortunately, I don't. One problem is focus. I have tons and tons of half made ideas floating in my head for games, yearning to be made. Some of these idea's actually make it into demos. However, i'd love to make a complete game. I stalled Pokemon Beige and now I want to finish Grayscale. I started fixing some things, and now I want to make Grayscale a memorable newbie game. :D
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Post by Gizmog »

Gomey's 2011 Year In Review #36 - Don't slime With Oregon Trail Edition

Maybe I was expecting too much from Escape the Zombie Horde. "Oregon Trail... WITH ZOMBIES" is admittedly a difficult concept to tackle in 48 hours. The original game was an entercational trip back to pioneer days, when men named POOPFACE caught syphillis and died twenty miles from town on a mountain of dead bears. In his remake Spoonweaver decides to integrate the second grade mentality into the game design, creating a world where zombie AIDS claims countless victims and a solitary zombie elephant holds pointless vigil over an infinite field of grass. Since the game's being silly for you there's no point to goof off, not that you get the chance. A lot of possible fun is immediately taken away from you and "Escape the Zombie Horde" didn't have any to spare.

The worst problem is pacing. You have to hit space EVERY TILE to advance the car to the next one. Oregon Trail only interrupted your trip west when something noteworthy happened. As a result, you got a sense of impact from each event. Zombie Horde misses out on that, because eventually you just hold down the button and if an event pops up it's gone before you can even read it. If I wanted to hold down the space bar I would've played an RPG, damnit!

On top of that, supplies, the essence of the game, are totally pointless. Spare tires and car parts could've easily been merged. You never get an indication someone's been cured of a disease, so who knows what the hell medicine is doing? Shotguns and bullets, arguably the most valuable equipment in Oregon Trail, do practically nothing. ONE BULLET is enough to deter every zombie battle textbox you're likely to encounter, except for one at the end that seems glitched. Food and water are the most fickle. You can tell you're going to starve long before you actually do and there's no way to tell them to be stricter with their rationing or otherwise slow your consumption.

You can't even get more supplies after you've started the game; what you pick at the start is what you get for the whole trip. Occasionally you'll find a spare spare tire or a pond from which to get water, but not often enough to plan around and not a big enough boost to offer significant aid. Oregon Trail did a really nice job in this department. You could hunt if you found yourself low on food, effectively trading bullets for meals and letting you get by without a huge stockpile of food at all times. If your wagon broke down you could try to barter parts from fellow travellers or indians, but money didn't mean much on the trail. You'd have to offer them something useful like oxen, medicine, or the almighty bullet and even then it wasn't a guarantee. It made for some really desperate bargains just to get you to the next trading post where you could try and salvage whatever was left of your expedition. "Zombie Horde" doesn't have any of those options and thus replaces fun desperation with pointless futility.

Just imagine a game that REALLY took Oregon Trail's concept and threw in zombies. Imagine shooting zombies in a convenience store as you "hunt" for food and water. Imagine trading shotguns for gasoline at the Mad Max equivalent of real world landmarks. Imagine fording a river in your girlfriend's Volkswagen and imagine having to decide whether or not to trust the army and risk having them euthanize your sick companions, just in case. Now imagine smacking Spoonweaver in the mouth for implying he could deliver all of that in 48 hours.

Judged as a game, it's not any fun and as a tech demo it doesn't demonstrate anything impressive. I've been pretty lenient with my scores so far, but Spoonweaver knows better than this. He's capable of better than this. I can understand not being able to deliver on the Oregon Trail side of things, but there's barely any zombies either, absolutely no feeling of impending death followed by undeath. It's a textbook example of biting off more than you can chew, which is a shame because this could've been salvaged pretty easily.

Get rid of all the references to zombies, put a dead body on the roof of the car and replace the generic "Something gross" that happens to the food with "A dog peed on the sandwiches". Tell the epic story of a man named Clark as he takes a break from the boring responsibilities of suburban life and tries to rediscover joy with his family at the last decent place in America: Roy Wally World. "Spoonweaver's National Lampoon's Vacation". It'd even fit the theme better.

Score: 0/10
2011 Score (Per Aug 20th): 70/100

Part of Gomey's 2011 Year In Review
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