The Less Than A Week Terrible Halloween Contest Is Go!

[TMC]

Wow, although I thought this was doomed, it really is one of the better Halloween contest turnouts.

thriller.rpg:
With the doom and gloom that Giz put out, I assumed this would be MJD upgraded to mp3 music, but here, there's actually something here. Somehow the exploding skeletons don't have the appeal that they have on paper. Also, I'm surprised that some of you haven't played the original MJD2; it's only, what, ~15 years old. Giz actually ripped very little of it. (Am I misremembering that there were two games, MJD1 and MJD2?)

overgrowth.rpg:
It's a nice start, especially the graphical style. The snap alignment when you hit a horizontal wall is a bit annoying but it's something hard to get right. You can always restrict it to corners specifically rather than walls.
I only ever found two modems through a number of attempts, but thought I'd looked everywhere. I didn't persist for too long though.

witch.rpg:
Pretty fantastic. And aside from a couple minor items it comes across as a complete game, even if there's more that you wanted to put into it. It's fun and looks nice. Here are some criticisms:
Regarding balance, I liked that you level crazy-fast, as I hate grinding. However, almost all battles were very easy except for the final boss. You mentioned making the last two bosses harder, but I have no idea what you mean by the 2nd last boss, since it's not linear, and none of the other bosses were a challenge except maybe the very first.
I found that the battles went really fast and I had a great deal of trouble seeing what was happening (especially when I wasn't used to it), what with the heroes not moving for most attacks. Attack delays were very short, e.g. if both heroes use Spell the attacks happen almost simultaneously. It also doesn't help that the battle captions appear over the heroes, so you can't see the damage amounts for as long. It would be helpful if you increased the damage digits display time.
The UI colours are a bit weird: in the spells menu you can't see your cursor, and when you move over an item in the items menu you can't see it (in and out of battle menus are a little different).
I wonder why you start with less than full MP.
Typo: sexulization.
The mummy disappears after the screen fades out rather than before. Inversely, Carmilla disappears before the map fades back in after the battle.

[Feenicks]

Most of that stuff comes down to not really have the time to fix it (the items you start with boost your MP, and the vanishing issues were due to giving up trying to get them to disappear correctly after they didn't work the first time around).
Regarding the difficulty: I consider the witches to be the hardest battle in the game, personally (and that was even more true initially, when they could cast Hi-Fire/Hi-Ice), but it's true the difficulty largely vanishes once you get Hi-Ice/Hi-Fire. If this was a more serious game (and not just an reason to draw witches), I'd have more of an issue with this, but for this I figure it's alright if you're largely steamrolling everything.
If I find the time, I'll add in some of the stuff I didn't get around to and possibly make things not quite so trivial to defeat, but it's approaching the end of the semester and I need to get back on top of schoolwork.
I'm glad you guys all liked it.

[Gizmog]

Wow, although I thought this was doomed, it really is one of the better Halloween contest turnouts.

thriller.rpg:
With the doom and gloom that Giz put out, I assumed this would be MJD upgraded to mp3 music, but here, there's actually something here. Somehow the exploding skeletons don't have the appeal that they have on paper. Also, I'm surprised that some of you haven't played the original MJD2; it's only, what, ~15 years old. Giz actually ripped very little of it. (Am I misremembering that there were two games, MJD1 and MJD2?)

I really wanted to animate the bones spinning, but never found a satisfactory way to do it. Maybe next time. And you're kind of misremembering, check it out. And while you're reading that thread, slime you Iblis, MJD was great!

overgrowth.rpg:
It's a nice start, especially the graphical style. The snap alignment when you hit a horizontal wall is a bit annoying but it's something hard to get right. You can always restrict it to corners specifically rather than walls.
I only ever found two modems through a number of attempts, but thought I'd looked everywhere. I didn't persist for too long though.

One's to the right, ones down and left, one is up and left. I went right, up left, down left.

witch.rpg:
Pretty fantastic. And aside from a couple minor items it comes across as a complete game, even if there's more that you wanted to put into it. It's fun and looks nice. Here are some criticisms:
Regarding balance, I liked that you level crazy-fast, as I hate grinding. However, almost all battles were very easy except for the final boss. You mentioned making the last two bosses harder, but I have no idea what you mean by the 2nd last boss, since it's not linear, and none of the other bosses were a challenge except maybe the very first.
I found that the battles went really fast and I had a great deal of trouble seeing what was happening (especially when I wasn't used to it), what with the heroes not moving for most attacks. Attack delays were very short, e.g. if both heroes use Spell the attacks happen almost simultaneously. It also doesn't help that the battle captions appear over the heroes, so you can't see the damage amounts for as long. It would be helpful if you increased the damage digits display time.
The UI colours are a bit weird: in the spells menu you can't see your cursor, and when you move over an item in the items menu you can't see it (in and out of battle menus are a little different).
I wonder why you start with less than full MP.
Typo: sexulization.
The mummy disappears after the screen fades out rather than before. Inversely, Carmilla disappears before the map fades back in after the battle.

I agree with the speed being a little off, especially in the last battle when I was just desperately spamming spell and stuff to try to inflict that last little bit of damage, and there was basically no delay at all between me hitting her and her hitting me. It's a fun game though, and I think the progression is about right for this kind of a Holiday Contest game. Saves hours of grinding, keeps my impression of the game as fun and exciting and new.

[Spoonweaver]

OK, after much random debate.

Pheonix has officially won this years terrible ohr halloween contest. Second place is a tie between Mogri and Fenrir.

THIRD PLACE:
The Official third Best OHR Halloween Game This Year Is....

Kylekrack's [game]OVERGROWTH[/game]


Let's give everyone else a big round of applause. You all made this contest great. It turned out better than it ever should have. I can't wait till next year.

[TMC]

Re: witchs.rpg:
Ah, I forgot about the Witchies battle, I think that was fairly hard though I can't remember any more. Also I didn't really run from random encounters until later in the game, so my level might have been on the high end.
The fast levelling didn't really hurt my enjoyment of this game. The final boss still provided challenge. Even when you can steamroll most enemies (or just run from them) the game is still pretty long (a lot of content) for a contest game.
Also, I forgot to mention (except in IRC) that the Bar item doesn't get consumed on use.

Re Overgrowth:
But the spawning location of the things seems to be randomised, so I wouldn't think the same order is always ideal.

Re: MJD:
I'd totally forgotten that sad story, but thanks for digging it up. MrNintendo made MJD2 sound like the second coming of Christ.

Re: Third place:
Since it's a tie for second place, isn't this actually fourth? Congrats to Kylekrack regardless!

PS:
If you played the games, why not give them scores on the gamelist pages?

[kylekrack]

I gotta say, Pheonix's game was really great overall. I loved the art style, especially the house. The music was really fitting as well, in addition to just being fun to listen to.

I think this contest had a pretty good turnout. I really wasn't expecting much given the time frame. Although, I didn't start until Thursday night...

@TMC: You're right about the random spawning. However, I've noticed some orders are safer than others. In fact, I would consider it a design flaw. Every time you get a modem, two mobs spawn in a fixed location and don't despawn. That fixed location may be too easy to get around for some and too difficult for others. Either way, I plan on revamping the game entirely to give it more of a story and not have 1-hit death. But honestly, two days was not enough time for all that.

EDIT: I updated the games to say 'demo' and not have copyrighted music anymore. I think I might actually go somewhere with this game.