Winter 2010 Dualstream Day of Zeux Scoresheet:wildweasel
Weasel’s Judging Results
Winter 2010 Dualstream Day of Zeux hosted by Kuddy, 01-03-2010
Preface
Had a pretty decent-looking haul here. The submissions account for a bit over half of the entrants to my knowledge. I’m not much for statistics here – I’m just here to create them. Would have been an competitor this time around, but nobody was really offering to help Kuddy judge, and I didn’t want to make him judge everything by himself, so that reviewing muscle of mine gets put to use once again. Let’s get started…
#11617: isolation puzzle puzzle platform
Theme: Isolation Scoresheet: Theme-heavy
THEME (1/100)
The most "theme" this game attempts is putting the word "isolation" in its title. The one available level doesn't really do anything with the theme either, outside of there being two strange eggplant-like creatures trapped in a room in the corner.
GAMEPLAY (14/90)
It's a pixel-perfect sidescrolling game, which is somewhat more forgiving in platforming than most char-based sidescrollers, but the problem is that the game's help file makes no mention of you being able to jump in mid-air if you walk off a platform, and the very first platform jump requires the use of said physics oddity. Falling into the bottomless pit at the bottom of the screen resets you at the beginning, sans one health point. The only level in the game seems to be more geared towards a technology demonstration than an actual game.
GRAPHICS (22/70)
To its credit, this game does have a pretty well optimized pixel perfect engine, being able to run quite smoothly without any major frame rate hiccups. Unfortunately, the artwork is not exceptionally clear (I still have no idea what those red eggplant-shaped things are supposed to be, aside from red eggplant things that hurt you), and as pixel perfect engines go, there is a slight bit of color bleeding around terminals. The enemies and giant fans animate (a bit), but the player does not, outside of flipping when traveling left or right. The level design is just grey solids.
TECHNIQUE (29/60)
As stated above, the engine is decidedly well optimzed and smooth, and even has support for Mario-like momentum and fans that propel you high into the air. These are not used that much, though, and while the game appears to have support for displaying the player's diminishing health when being attacked by enemies or falling off platforms, the player can never actually die from any of it, as I assume the health system was never properly finished.
STORY (5/50)
This game has no story. Therefore, it shall receive five pity points for not being an adaptation of "Until The End Of Time" by gofer-chan.
SOUND (5/30)
Like the story, sound is also non-existent, therefore five additional pity points for not playing a PC Speaker rendition of any song by Taylor Swift.
OVERALL (76/400)
What would have benefited this game is actual levels, gameplay, something we can do. Tech demos won't win you awards. Logicow already proved that last year.
#13210: ALIENS ON AN ELEVATOR
Theme: Alien Invaders (Concrete) Scoresheet: Theme-Light
This one starts off apparently posing as a ZX Spectrum, MSX, or Commodore 64 type game, complete with loading screens and what I assume are floppy disk noises. The title sequence appears to have the most work put into it. I didn’t see this team mention which scoresheet they wanted, so I’ve taken the liberty of assigning Theme-Light to them myself.
THEME: (1/20)
While the game’s title screen mentions aliens, there don’t seem to be any in the game whatsoever (the included text file even states that it could easily be Isolation instead because there aren’t any aliens). So we’re left with…air vents? On closer inspection, this game has neither aliens nor elevators in it, and while the air vents might contribute to an Isolation theme, I’m pretty sure the author(s) wanted to go for Alien Invaders instead. One point out of pity here – right idea, wrong theme.
GAMEPLAY: (13/120)
What this game appears to actually have in it is a single pseudo-3D maze, with a few hotkeys you can press that don’t appear to affect anything. You can check your Status (which is always “Peachy!”), look in your Inventory (“Nothing!”), or use a Gadget (which is a rather tiny and barely helpful map function). While I was wandering through the maze and dreading what confusing architecture was at hand, the game suddenly tells me that the aliens just decided to leave, thus the game ends. Not really much of a game, is it? I’ve given this one a low score, but more out of the fact that this game effectively tricked me into thinking that it would be a game and then pulled out at the last second.
GRAPHICS: (54/90)
I’ll give this one credit for graphics. These are some pretty slick graphics, even if the char editing kind of bleeds across the colored blocks at times (like the FUTUREMAN picture in the title screen, and the walls in the air vent). The majority of the work put into this game seems to have been graphics alone, with the title screen being far more elaborate than the rest of the game, though the pesudo-3D engine should be noted for its attempt at a light diminishing effect (really just clever char editing, not so much actual coding). When the game ends, we’re presented with an ASCII version of Somethingawful’s famous “awesome” emoticon which is actually a neat old-school touch but doesn’t earn it any real points.
TECHNIQUE: (30/80)
For programming efforts, this entry gets just shy of a middle-range score. On the one hand, a pseudo-3D maze engine designed from scratch is relatively novel, particularly one that attempts a (faked) light diminishing effect. But on the other hand, a lot more effort seems to have been put into drawing the NES-throwback title screen graphics, which could easily have been done using Charcon or a similar program and probably didn’t take much time at all outside of drawing the pictures. The 3D engine appears to be powered mainly by the 40-some char sets lying around in the game directory, as opposed to the old-style method of Copy Block commands and clever use of the overlay. This brute-force method seems a little cheap to me, but hell, it’s resourceful, I’ll give them that much.
STORY: (13/50)
After the crazy 80’s-style story text at the beginning of the game that describes the awesome new SPACE ELEVATORS and the ALIENS that take them over, I expected this game to keep up with the bombastic style and throw in a few MC Hammer references. But as soon as the Story So Far ends and we’re sent into the game itself, the story just kind of stops. Then the game just ends with the cheesiest plot hand-wave ever, making me quite disappointed. I wanted to see how far it could go. LASER PANTS, maybe? More games should have those.
SOUND (35/40)
Sound is also a stronger point of the game, with music selections being exclusively chiptunes, even though only three songs are actually used out of the six included. Sound effects are also chippy, contributing to the 80’s feel. Bravo for keeping to your style, if not the competition theme.
OVERALL (236/400)
Which is a shame, because this game will most likely end up getting disqualified due to its utter lack of theme.
#18030: PRISON ESCAPE
Theme: Isolation (Abstract) Scoresheet: Theme-heavy
Welcome to Prison, arguably the most common start to any Megazeux game ever. Of course, your goal is to escape, in addition to figuring out just why you were thrown in here in the first place.
THEME: (79/100)
This game plays with the idea of isolation as loneliness. It seems like the prison’s only real inhabitants are the rats, the sentry guns, and yourself, and there is barely any evidence that there’s any living humans left. You only find some skeletons and bloody corpses, and the occasional outdated newspaper. When you get outside of the building, you find one person standing there, but of course he’s a guard and decides to shoot you. If you manage to dispatch him (i.e. by having the correct inventory item when this scene is triggered), you come to the realization that you are now the only human for miles, in what the board title refers to as “ultimate isolation”. It’s pretty heavy stuff, especially for a medium typically known for cheesy community in-jokes and old-school action games.
GAMEPLAY: (47/90)
This being essentially a traditional-style Megazeux adventure game, your only real concern is touching the correct objects to trigger reactions from the game script. In this case, you’ll be picking up various inventory items that will be used automatically when needed. I’m sure at least one person might have trouble figuring out the (few) puzzles on occasion, but they’re really quite simple, if you’re the kind of person that searches through everything indiscriminately. It’s actually more interactive than I expected it to be, with even the “ending” cutscene requiring some input from the player. Somehow it seems like the author is drawing inspiration from Hideo Kojima (i.e. more than just sound effects). While the game provides numerous opportunities to die, the author is merciful enough to make things not kill you on the first try, interestingly; you can be injured once “for free”, with the second injury killing you, and your health is reset every time you change boards, giving you some margin for error without forcing you to abuse saved games.
GRAPHICS: (36/70)
This game uses only a few edited characters over the default MZX character set, though it does at least make its environs look appropriately dank and unsettling, with a few good uses of water puddles, corpses, the occasional wandering rat. The player character (and all other humans) is just an edited MZX smiley, however, making the ending scene seem a little too light-hearted, and almost difficult to comprehend without the accompanying sound effects. The special effect used in the end-game actually contributed a lot to it, though.
TECHNIQUE: (25/60)
Somehow, this game doesn’t strike me so much as a programming masterpiece as a way to prove how much can be done with only some simple commands (and without built-ins). I think the game could really have done with at least some advanced effects for graphics, though.
STORY: (34/50)
The game makes no attempts at exposition at the beginning; you are merely a man in a prison and of course you have to escape. But as you’re escaping, you uncover some newspaper articles presumably detailing who you are and why you’re here, as well as a potential motive. Then, upon breaking out of the prison, I’m confronted by what I assume is the only other living human in the area: the guard that wants to kill me because I escaped. For those people that didn’t obsessively search the lockers, the story would end here. But if you found the syringe, that scene continues with you getting back up and attacking the guard, then (I assume) concluding that you are now completely, utterly alone. This was actually executed quite well, but some of the newspaper articles seemed a bit amateurishly written, which wasn’t entirely fatal to the mood of the game, but did kind of jar me out of the experience for a few seconds. Also, I kind of wish there was a more conclusive ending than just the black screen. I waited for 30 seconds before I realized there wasn’t any more.
SOUND (22/30)
Pretty good use of ambient sound effects, voice effects pulled from Metal Gear Solid, and appropriately timed uses of them during the final scene. Pretty well done. Lack of music might prove to be a turn-off to some, but in my opinion it all works nicely. But then, I’ve always enjoyed games that place such an emphasis on sound over music for atmosphere, so…
OVERALL (243/400)
It really needed some graphical polish, I think, in addition to perhaps adding some more interactivity.
#30641: Celestial Altar
Theme: Alien Invaders Scoresheet: Theme-Light
This one starts off with a pretty slick title sequence with appropriately spacey music. It’s apparently intended to mirror the classic Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, with a visual-novel type approach, bookended with console-style RPG battles as the story deems appropriate. The game is entirely mouse-controlled, and I find that it works pretty well.
THEME: (18/20)
Well, it’s initially stated that this game is about alien invaders, and at first that doesn’t seem obvious, but at a certain point in the plot, you realize why it’s been themed as such. It’s not quite as ham-fisted as “NO JOHN, YOU ARE THE DEMONS”, which is good, because the chosen genre really lives and dies by the quality of its writing, though I can’t help but think that perhaps this team picked the wrong scoresheet, as I think it would have done better as a Theme-heavy entry.
GAMEPLAY: (74/120)
While I certainly had fun playing this game, I should probably mention again that I think this game was really filed under the wrong score sheet. The game’s strength really isn’t in its gameplay. While it’s not bad – it’s basically an RPG, but without all that clumsy wandering around on world maps and random battles – I can’t help but think that this sort of setup really kind of simplifies things a bit too much. It’s almost as if Killer 7 were an RPG – there are branching paths, but they’re all spelled out for you with little opportunity for players to do something unique. Granted, it’s a great throwback to the Fighting Fantasy series (Lancer did say he was inspired by those on IRC).
GRAPHICS: (75/90)
The people behind this game (it’s GOT to be more than one! There’s no way one person was capable of all this! But apparently it was only Lancer so I’m completely dumbfounded at how this is possible) obviously put a lot of love into the way it looks, even though the writing is the real star of the show. Backgrounds are very pretty, with things being pretty well defined despite being made entirely of half-chars. The backgrounds will transition between one another when going between “pages”, which is a neat effect and makes page changes a bit less jarring. When battle scenes appear, the animations use cross-fading transitions and lots of palette changes (despite this being done in SMZX mode, I’m assuming there’s more than a few palette modifications going on in the background here, with how smooth the cross-fades are). It’s really quite beautiful, but judging from the score I put above, there’s actually one flaw to it – the double-wide font used for all in game text. I do run MZX in a window, though, meaning I can easily just resize the window to be slightly more narrow, which helps a lot with making the text more readable. But all this double-wide text is a bit difficult to read at a normal aspect ratio, and since reading is so crucial to the operation of this game, that prevents this from getting its coveted perfect score.
TECHNIQUE: (74/80)
Proof that you don’t need vector-based, free-rotating graphics or silky-smooth pixel-perfect platforming to really impress. The game engine really goes above and beyond what most would consider to be needed in a visual novel, with the screen transitions and battle effects. Though the game is controlled with the mouse, the author insisted on making the mouse pointer pixel-perfect as opposed to Megazeux’s basic 80x25 mouse system, making it almost seem like this isn’t even a Megazeux game anymore. And all without a single instance of the word “raytracing.” Unfortunately, however, because of a debilitating glitch, I found myself unable to continue playing the game after a certain point in the second village, as one route just showed me a monolith that I couldn’t do anything with, and the other route gave me no options to choose from, effectively stopping the game. However, after some conversing with the author over IRC, I was at least able to fix the issue I was having and finish playing. It should be noted that there are also some mild glitches with the text system (Lancer says he did not put numbers in the game’s font, so some text screens will omit the prices of items on sale) and occasional typos.
STORY: (44/50)
Celestial Altar handles the Alien Invaders thing a bit differently than expected: while it seems like a basic fantasy story at first, you eventually learn that your existence on this unnamed planet is because of a project on Earth to migrate all of Humanity into space, with your character apparently being either a member of the crew involved in said project, or a descendant of one of them. You eventually track down the whereabouts of the space ship, which due to some massive metaphysical glitches involving the way it circumvents faster-than-light travel, is completely messed up, twisted and bent like an Escher painting. You manage to put it right again by battling the dimensions themselves, and after an almost Kojima-esque period of exposition, you fight the final battle. Even for as short of a game as it is, this is positively epic stuff.
SOUND (34/40)
Excellent selections for music, with occasional sound effects for menus being manipulated or battle effects. Great stuff all around, but the caveat here being that since the music is in a streamed format instead of tracked, some more care should have been put into making sure that the tracks looped properly, as it is somewhat jarring when a song fails to loop and suddenly drops off into silence, only to start fading back in from the beginning.
OVERALL (310/400)
Only four entries into the list and already I’ve stumbled upon a real beauty of a game. Wonder how the others compare?
#34477: Duck Rescue
Theme: Alien Invaders, I assume Scoresheet: Theme-Light assumed
I’m assuming Logicow had a part in this one, an Amiga-style sidescroller featuring a waterfowl protagonist…and it’s not really too friendly to those of us with older machines (it’s NOT old! **cough**).
THEME: (7/20)
After a pretty long and drawn out argument on IRC involving Logicow and other people that I respect, the unanimous opinion is that this game is supposed to be Alien Invaders themed. And I was supposed to immediately realize this based on the fact that the guy that carries off your girlfriend is big and green, and that there are UFO’s later on. I begrudgingly give this 7 theme points out of 20, meaning that it’s not really that tight in the theme but it’s not low enough to disqualify it.
GAMEPLAY: (34/120)
What could have been a fun little platform shooter is kind of deadened here by some questionable design ideas. For starters, why does the game run so slow? Checking out the robot code tells me that it’s running at MZX_Speed 2, meaning it should be working fine, but I’ll get into that in the Technique area. The questionable designs I mention are the occasionally odd jump physics (it feels like I can’t jump as high if I’m jumping against a steep slope) and the fact that the game level stops scrolling on occasion to allow some enemies to spawn. Fighting them is just too easy with the game running as slow as it is; at least once I’d be able to pass the screen-locked section by simply shooting at the edge of the screen until the screen decided to scroll over. This game also suffers the classic sidescroller pitfall of not making it clear whether an object is something you can stand on, or if it’s merely part of the background. I was initially confused at an early section until I realized that you could stand on a rock, which I had foolishly assumed was a mountain in the background. Then I fell through a tree branch.
GRAPHICS: (78/90)
I didn’t expect this game to get very low of a graphical score, and it really does quite well here. This game looks decidedly un-Zeux-like due to its usage of half-chars with liberal use of outlines and cartoon-style shading. Because the on-screen characters are so large, this loss in screen resolution turns out to not be much of a problem at all.
TECHNIQUE: (46/80)
It’s a sidescroller. But rather than be the usual brand of overdone single-character MZX sidescroller, this game is half-char driven, giving it not only a pleasant retro feel but also making the game physics far more accurate than the chunky old MZX scrollers (without needing to be pixel-perfect). What kills the Technique score here, though, is the fact that it runs so terribly on my system. Despite being set at Speed 2 (which should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 FPS), FRAPS tells me that the game is hovering somewhere in the 20 FPS range (but it lies), and upon sharing a video recording of my computer running the game, I have it on good authority that it should really be running about twice as fast. This slowness not only causes the ensuing game to be boring as hell, it also makes it too easy on part of the action not being quite frantic enough. For reference, my system is a Pentium D 3.0 GHz running Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit. There is no reason why a side-scroller like this should be running so slowly!
STORY: (10/50)
The game’s story is presented in much the same way as the old NES action games: you and your Girly-Colored Duck partner are standing in front of your house, when a not-so-jolly green giant appears off the right side of the screen and snatches said girly duck and then runs off. It’s up to Yellow Duck to run towards the right side of the screen and shoot fireballs at all the aliens until he can rescue his love. It’s really nothing special, but it’s at least presented quickly enough to not get in the way.
SOUND (28/40)
While Duck Rescue only includes the one module file for music, that file is fast-paced and light-hearted enough to set the mood. Sound effects, however, are generated using MZX’s old PC Speaker SFX system, which does lend something of an old-school flavor to it, despite there only really being two sound effects.
OVERALL (213/400)
Come on, man, a little work on the programming could have made this so much more enjoyable! (Also please state which bloody topic your game is supposed to be filed under, so I don’t have to ask you on IRC!)
#36306: Voluntary Solitude
Theme: Isolation Scoresheet: Theme-Heavy
A narrative-driven action game with a flair for drama.
THEME: (75/100)
This game also deals with isolation as loneliness, but also the effects it can have on a man. Here, we deal with a man who has barricaded himself in his home to defend himself from “the Creatures”, preparing himself for an oncoming assault. As the player looks through the various supplies, he finds pieces of a note that, when completed, push the player’s character over the edge – that is, more so than he was already, as the game then establishes that he’s been in a rubber cell in a mental asylum the whole time, in a decidedly different type of isolation. Much like Prison Escape above, it deals with some pretty dark stuff, presenting a perfectly “valid” point of view from a person who doesn’t see the world the way the rest of the world sees him.
GAMEPLAY: (38/90)
For as good as the game did at exploring the theme, I’m actually somewhat thankful that Ryan chose the theme-heavy score sheet, as the game mechanics of this piece are a bit disjointed, and at times a bit too plain. The core game is a traditional MZX overhead shooter, with the basic Space+Arrows control scheme that prevents the player from moving while shooting, and the projectile bullets that are occasionally difficult to hit enemies with. The less fun part of the game mechanics involves the blind searching through all the random supplies scattered around the house. Granted, the game dialogue does tell you to start looking over the supplies, but making this the core goal of the game (just randomly touching everything that isn’t a wall) makes the solution a little confusing and tedious. This game really doesn’t do anything innovative with the way it plays.
GRAPHICS: (44/70)
If Megazeux hadn’t progressed beyond the features available in 2.51, this game would still be possible, as the game doesn’t do much graphically, but still somehow gets the idea across. The palette doesn’t seem to be changed much from the default, and the characters are pretty simple bipeds and circular enemies with bizarre, crooked mouths. That’s probably the closest a simple MZX character can get to a proper eldritch abomination, and I do give points for at least doing that, but as far as its placement in the competition, it somehow doesn’t stack up with its simple graphical techniques.
TECHNIQUE: (30/60)
Pretty much a middle of the road score here. I didn’t encounter any major glitches or issues with the way the game worked, but it also doesn’t seem to do anything really amazing code-wise. The player’s sprite doesn’t even animate when moving. This game could at least have benefited from some extra effects, perhaps a better weapon system, or even a Resident Evil-style “glint” for hidden items among all the random supplies and stuff. Anything to prevent the player from having to touch every single object in the house.
STORY: (35/50)
I quite like the way the main character is presented here. The player is lead to think that the events around him are completely real, but once the note is assembled, the pieces start falling together. It’s written well enough to get by, with no major typos or grammatical errors, but there are ways it could have been improved, especially with the way the dialogue is written. Perhaps the internal monologue could have been written in more of a conversational tone, as with the ending scene between the player and the doctor. Also, using the word “isolation” in the in-game dialogue somehow sounds so much cheesier, almost like a movie that tries to sneak its own title into the script (“Man, I’m so tired of all these Star Wars…”). But hey, at least most of the DoZ entrants thus far haven’t tried to put the name of the theme in their game title…(Weasel fondly recalls “Ford Exploration”…)
SOUND (25/30)
The game’s sound selection is pretty good, with only one exception: the Doom pistol sound. This sound, along with the “OW!” from Cans and the insert-credit sound from R-Type (better known as Heal.sam), is among one of the most used Megazeux sound effects ever. It’s almost Megazeux’s own Wilhelm Scream. But I won’t continue ranting about it, as while you’re firing your Doom pistol at the Creatures, you’re listening to some pretty good monster sounds and some downright intense orchestral music that may have been originally composed for a Hollywood film (though looking over the included OGG files, they might be Creative Commons – score one for the public domain!).
OVERALL (247/400)
This game is good proof that playing the right scoresheet will get you good points.
#47527: Abandoned
Theme: Isolation Scoresheet: Theme-Heavy
What’s this? Another inventory game? Well, this one’s not so quickly written off – it at least has potential, despite being decidedly short and unfinished. Regrettably, this competition doesn’t award points for potential, only for actual content. That doesn’t stop this one from at least earning a good chunk of points, though.
THEME: (44/100)
You’re in prison. You’re lonely. Isolation. Ah ha. Without a really coherent plot, the extent of Isolation being involved in this game is pretty much limited to the fact that it takes place in what I assume is prison. And there’s a guy cut in half in the cell next to yours, perhaps to emphasize that you’re alone. The author admits that the game isn’t really finished, which is a real shame – I’d love to have seen what more could be done with it.
GAMEPLAY: (38/90)
Abandoned runs with an adventure game formula, which sounds like typical MZX fare, except that the interface is slightly different. The game is effectively a side-scrolling game, with your character only capable of moving left and right, and facing into the background to interact with some objects. Inventory items can either be used by themselves, on other items, or on things in the world, which is more than most MZX inventory games have done. Of course, the game taking place in a prison, we’re about to see the next reuse of the Prison Cliché, meaning that the tools you need to escape the cell are actually already in your inventory or are easily accessible (i.e. the book of matches). At first, the puzzles are pretty simple stuff if you’re a MacGuyver fan, but as it goes on, the solutions get into stuff that should have been left to whatever Myst clones are still hitting store shelves, like the combination to the generator room puzzle. There is one major thing to take issue with, though, and that’s that the game isn’t finished. You have access to all of four rooms (not counting the elevator), with the fourth room not having much of anything to do except fiddle with switches. Once these switches are in the proper position, which you’re apparently supposed to learn by reading a randomly placed bloodstain on a wall, the elevator discreetly opens another floor in which the game ends. Dealing with the elevator wasn’t really that easy to get the hang of, despite the instructions being printed on screen. At least make the elevator shake and make noise or something when you use it. Hell, make the generator room actually tell you HEY, THE ELEVATOR HAS ANOTHER FLOOR OR SOMETHING. RAGHLAGHLHLGHHGE.
GRAPHICS: (61/70)
These graphics bring to mind some of the finer MZX games from two decades ago – Booshkies, A Hidden Anomaly, and The Beginning. Ironically enough, two of those games are unfinished, and the third was another Day of Zeux entry, but they all looked great then and still look pretty good nowadays. This game reminds me of them in the good, nostalgic kind of way. The very large player sprite, the detailed background artwork, the gritty yet minimalistic character editing. This stuff looks better than a lot of SMZX-mode games I’ve played, showing that you don’t need four colors per character and a giant palette to make something look good.
TECHNIQUE: (36/60)
The programming in Abandoned is well assembled with few glitches, but perhaps some of the engine’s elements could have been rearranged and altered a bit to be more user-friendly. The inventory system in particular presents some frustrations, where I’d need to cycle through the entire thing a couple of times to figure out where a specific item was. It almost feels like the inventory is changing its order around every time I open it. Also, the player character moves quite slowly.
STORY: (22/50)
There’s actually not a lot of story to be seen here, presumably because the author was busier with the gameplay elements than with the events that occur in the story. Had the story been written, though, I can kind of see the direction the author was going with it. They say dead men tell no tales. I say, have a look at the guy in Cell 2 – whatever killed him obviously had some story behind it! But the fact that said story is nowhere to be seen in the game is disappointing.
SOUND (21/30)
KKairos on IRC pointed out to me that some of the music in this game was pretty familiar. Turns out he was right: about two thirds of the music (i.e. two songs out of the three included) were also used in a DoZ entry from last year. Hmm. Well, they certainly do fit the game, and I’m not going to dock any points for music reuse, because it’s not like the music was made specifically for the previous game (ModArchive, heh). Sound effects are well done as well, realistic, high quality, and hey, footsteps!
OVERALL (222/400)
Gameplay’s decent and all, but I think time constraints really got in the way of this one. My advice: manage your time properly!
#49781: TurnCoat
Theme: Alien Invaders Scoresheet: Theme-Light
The story of an alien resident on Earth. Feels a bit like the basic concept of Invader Zim, except without the Jhonen Vasquez humor.
THEME: (11/20)
Well, I can’t say I didn’t expect at least one entry to go with the “YOU ARE THE ALIENS” route, I hadn’t exactly hoped for an entry to make it as cut-and-dry as this. You are the aliens. Except the aliens want to enslave humanity (and your dog, I guess) so you decide to side with the humans. So what was initially an interesting-sounding flip-flop turns into just another “Fight Da Alienz!” type thing.
GAMEPLAY: (39/120)
Another MZX-type shooter, with a unique weapon to make things at least somewhat interesting. The Squiggle Gun (hee hee) attacks over a 5x3 area in front of the player, but much like any other MZX shooter, you can’t move while shooting, so if your target just happens to randomly sidestep your beam of sorta-death, you’ll have to stop shooting, move to the side, then start shooting again, hoping that this time your beam will actually hit them. This is not helped by the fact that the aliens are just “go RANDNB” with occasional explosive attacks. Yeah, the combat in this wasn’t much fun to me. The only real upshot, I suppose, is the fact that you don’t have to worry about ammo.
GRAPHICS: (38/90)
The title logo didn’t bode well, being rather difficult to read. Getting into the game, I suppose it at least looks half decent for environmental artwork, but it’s a little dark. Character edits are a little confusing. I hadn’t realized that the player’s dog was a dog until I interacted with it, and the same goes for the toilet. The blocks that make up the levels are not bad, but the interactive things, characters and such really needed work. You can only do so much with 8x14 pixels. This is a game that could have benefited from larger character sprites, or even traditional-style overlay heads. I don’t think the overlay is really used for anything other than the status display and message boxes, and even those could be altered.
TECHNIQUE: (33/80)
TurnCoat makes heavy use of a custom text box, with a slow-ish animation that occurs every time it opens. And it opens every time someone speaks, and during cutscenes, every time someone else is speaking. This animation takes about two seconds to complete on Speed 4, making the flow of text very slow indeed. Also, I don’t understand why parts of the text are formatted in such a way that there are only three lines on the box at a time, when it’s capable of holding five. I also notice a few things like the toilet-portal being a bit delayed from when you look at the toilet (I assumed it would do nothing but give me the protagonist’s description of it, and suddenly I’m portaled away to the secret lair as I’m walking around the house), and a few instances in which the text box is open and there is no text inside it, as if the text box engine believes there is more text to display but there actually is not. I also managed to get the game to simply cease working after the first combat scene in front of the house, after which I decided to just keep playing through the editor. The Squiggle Gun, while it still uses default MZX shooting controls, feels a bit more like Hobo Dan’s famed Hobo Blaster in its randomness and complete lack of an ammunition system. It’s a little hard to kill things with it – it’s like a sword engine almost, except harder to control.
STORY: (18/50)
Although your character appears human, he’s actually an Alien Invader, sent to investigate and monitor the activities of Earth’s population and serve as a spy in the inevitable full-on assault. And yet, when said invasion actually mounts, you decide that you love your dog too much to let the aliens enslave all of humanity and kill them. Now I’ve heard of Stockholm Syndrome, but this is ridiculous! Also, the dialogue seems kind of stiff and badly paced, though the author does seem to have put some thought into at least making it sound like a conversation. The story ends as our hero pushes the Self Destruct button on the bridge of the alien ship, waits for it to count down (under the pretense that he should probably stop the aliens from disabling it), then has one last thought: “I hope someone feeds my dog.” Is the dog really that important? I can only think of one game in which the main character would rather save one person/creature over an entire planet full of them, and that game was Prey, and I really didn’t like the way Prey handled that either. I don’t know of anybody that actually thinks like this. It’s very harmful to the willing suspension of disbelief.
SOUND (26/40)
Music selections are at least atmospheric enough to keep me from wanting to unplug my speakers, but given the game’s focus on action, I would have liked something a bit faster paced, less depressing. The squiggle gun sounds kind of cool, but it only makes sound if you’re holding both Space and the arrow key at the same time, and while the gun continues to fire with only Space held down, it stops making noise. Outside of that, that seems to be the only real sound effect in the game (aside from the hundredth use of Heal.sam). Okay, modarchive is a great resource, but I think I ought to start pimping out places like Freesound.org, as they’d probably help games like this achieve a better Sound score.
OVERALL (165/400)
This one’s not terrible, but it’s also not great. It’s apparent to me that this team was just spread too thin.
#60441: FORSAKEN DAYLIGHT
Theme: Isolation Scoresheet: Theme-light
This one’s a two-sided action game featuring both overhead and first-person sequences. And, uh, lots of blatant appealing to the judges.
THEME: (11/20)
The authors of Forsaken Daylight initially forgot to state their theme, with no explicit mention of either Isolation or Alien Invaders in the game or included Readme.txt file. (They also forgot to mention the controls in said readme, but that’s something for another category.) GreaseMonkey said on IRC that the game was intended for Isolation and the Theme-Light scoresheet, therefore I am considering the game under these circumstances. The game toys with the idea of Isolation in a slightly different way from “isolation as loneliness” – while there are two playable characters
GAMEPLAY: (91/120)
I must admit this is probably one of the more fun action games to be submitted this time around. The first “side” of the game is an overhead action game that has you controlling DJ, where you’re equipped with a shotgun and some bombs. The shotgun uses a hitscan system instead of projectiles, making it very easy to hit most targets. It also seems to be using proper math to determine the shotgun’s firing cone, with a degree of randomness. This firing cone roughly corresponds to half of your flashlight beam (which incidentally is only really used on the first overhead scene). Shooting zombies is loads of fun with the shotgun, especially with unlimited ammo. Bombs are apparently also hitscans, detonating everything within your visible radius without harming you.
The other half of the game is the first-person scenes where you control Anthony who has a pistol. These scenes are powered by a raycaster, and feel remarkably like the original Wolfenstein. As with the overhead sections, you have unlimited ammo, and the objective is generally just to find the stairs, except in the first scene where you have to track down five coins so you can use a phone booth to contact someone who can open all the locked doors for you. Now, these sections are almost as fun as the overhead segments, but of course I’ve got something to complain about – the raycaster used in these scenes is only drawing blocks at 80x25 resolution, making it very difficult to see over distances greater than two cubes away. I suppose this simplified approach to raycasting makes it run smoother and easier to code, but it gets in the way of gaming when you have to treat your pistol as a melee weapon. Thankfully though, there’s no limit to how fast you can hammer the Fire key (which is inexplicably Control, instead of Space like the overhead segments). If only I could see things more clearly, the raycasted 3D segments would have been as fun if not moreso than the overhead scenes.
GRAPHICS: (69/90)
It’s clear to me that this game was created in halves by two people and then mashed together, as the overhead and raycasted segments have vastly different art styles to them. Overhead scenes are mainly MZX smileys and lots of blood effects, but are used to great effect here and somehow manage to be dark and gloomy enough to offset the fact that we’re really only seeing the same old smiley with sunglasses. First-person scenes are raycasted, with a screen resolution low enough that I found it difficult to discern anything outside of my pistol and any wall closer than two cubes away. But somehow, it still looks mostly alright. Not “over 70 points” alright, but mostly alright. I think this game would have earned some more points if the raycaster had used halfchars, and perhaps a bit more uniformity in art styles.
TECHNIQUE: (61/80)
I think the major draw of the game is its raycaster, of course, but I was honestly more impressed with the shotgun and flashlight effects in the overhead scenes than I was with the raycaster. Again, the 3D engine could really have used a higher resolution, even at the risk of frame rate loss. And perhaps something other than the default MZX keys and locks…I suppose this still gets a pretty good score though, chiefly because it’s a solid engine that I didn’t encounter any major bugs with.
STORY: (14/50)
I assume the game’s story is more along the lines of “hey there’s zombies, let’s nuke this factory” with some author self-insertions for no good reason. It’s never adequately explained why there are zombies, nor why the authors are bombing the building, and the game ends with Logicow running in, saying something cliffhanger-like, and then the building explodes with everyone inside of it. Even an Arnold movie has more story than this. =P
SOUND (32/40)
Major, major points go toward the sound category here. Through sound effects, it’s actually plausible how DJ can keep firing his shotgun without a reload pause (because you actually hear him popping fresh shells into the gun after every single shot). The firing sounds for both weapons are pretty good, in addition to the blood splat noises made when zombies are blown into meaty chunks. I suppose the music at least kept things feeling nice and moody (or in the case of the 3D scenes, quick and panicky), but as with the graphics, the two styles don’t mesh together as well as I hoped they would.
OVERALL (278/400)
Thank God this team got around to telling me what theme they were using, because it’d be a shame to let this stuff get disqualified.
#62239: ???
Theme: Alien Invaders Scoresheet: Theme-Light
An untitled fantasy action game with an interesting mouse gesture-based spellcasting system.
THEME: (5/20)
The text file admits that the game wasn’t really finished enough to really get into either theme, and while it initially states that it’s themed on Isolation, Wervyn stated on the forums that the game really fits better as an Alien Invaders game. Much as it pains me to admit, this game really doesn’t go very well with either theme, but I’ll agree that Alien Invaders probably earns it more Theme points than Isolation, because the rooms in this game are rather wide open and I didn’t sense very much isolation elsewhere. Therefore, I’m going to take pity on this one and give it just enough theme points to avoid a disqualification.
GAMEPLAY: (38/120)
Your intrepid mage (I am assuming he’s a mage) is in a randomly generated dungeon fighting leeches and nasty things with spells. Controlling yourself is pretty easy, with the WASD keys used for movement and the mouse used to cast spells in any direction. The gesture-based spellcasting is actually pretty well done, allowing you to cast spells by click-dragging in one of four directions to cast an elemental spell. There are only a couple things I would have changed here: enemies take too many spells to kill, resulting in a lot of mouse flinging to cast the spells repeatedly; and the spells are organized a little strangely, with Fire being the North spell, Air being East, etc. Now, not to be an academic snob or anything, but if we’re following classical Medieval alchemy, Air would be North, Fire would be East, Earth would be South, and Water would be West. But then, Alchemy also calls for “Aether” to be at the center of that, plus a few other things like Mercury and Salt, so maybe I’m just going a bit beyond my bounds here.
Basically, though, this game generates a random dungeon, has you fight through it, and makes you attempt to reach the next floor. Thing is, though, no matter how many times I tried, I could not get the down stairs to work, basically meaning that the game is only really capable of making one floor in which you are doomed to die. It’s pretty hard to avoid damage, and well, I don’t think there’s even a health system implemented here. The game simply lets you take all the spells and attacks you wish and then prints “You are dead” on the message row, yet still allows you to wander around and blast leeches with Earth. So the final Gameplay score will be just shy of a third, for at least showing that a mouse gesture system is plausible in a Megazeux game. Oh, how I wish this could have been fleshed out some more. Wervyn and company should really expand upon this game.
GRAPHICS: (78/90)
Here’s another one of those games that really shows how much mileage you can get out of two colors per character. The game appears to make liberal use of sprites, so the player and monsters are all 2x1 and animated pretty nicely. It’s abundantly clear that characters are supposed to be, and even appropriately creepy in some places. (I’m sure I’d really hate to run into that shadowy dinosaur-like thing on the title screen.)
TECHNIQUE: (47/80)
As the game is unfinished, there are really only three major components on display here: the movement engine (WASD, eight-directional movement, works as expected), the random dungeon system (which could stand to have been a bit more in the background), and the mouse gesture system, which actually works pretty well aside from the elemental directions (but that’s not something I feel I should be taking points away for). What’s actually here seems to work correctly, outside of the stairs which are either broken or unimplemented. Either way, I can’t really continue playing because of them, so yeah.
STORY: (5/50)
No story on display here, so five pity points because at least it’s not utter nonsensical trash that gets in the way of the rest of the game.
SOUND (5/40)
No sound on display here either, so once again five pity points for not being a hundred copies of “Scorching Savannah” from Katamari Damacy played over top of each other.
OVERALL (178/400)
This one’s kept alive through sheer programming technique and good graphics. Now if only the actual game had been implemented.
#66482: “THOSE ALIEN INVADER!”
Theme: Alien Invaders Scoresheet: Theme-Light
Seems like we get one of these every year or so – a danmaku shooter in MZX!
THEME: (10/20)
I don’t know about most people, but when I think of alien invaders, I think of stuff like…well, Space Invaders! Shoot ‘em ups! A single fighter against the evil empire! Naturally this game appeals to that retro instinct with something that feels very Atari-ish. Maybe even Intellivision-ish. It does the 80’s in a more pleasing fashion than Aliens In An Elevator. As for the theme score? Eh…middle of the road, because it really just goes in the expected direction, not so much in the “unexplored concepts” direction.
GAMEPLAY: (98/120)
I’ve never been very good at danmaku games. All those bullets flying everywhere, making it difficult to tell not only where I’m at, but where my hitbox is, where the bullets’ hitboxes are, and whether or not my laser is even hitting the boss. But I assure you this is chiefly a problem with me, not with the game, as this is actually a pretty spirited attempt at bringing an abstract shooter a la Kenta Cho into Megazeux. You are a tiny yellow ship with a constant beam laser and five bombs. These bombs don’t damage the boss; they are chiefly for erasing bullets. This is pretty much the same formula as Normal Mode in Kenta Cho’s rRootage, preserved pretty well here. Even though I dislike most danmaku games (because I suck at them), I still had fun playing this one.
GRAPHICS: (44/90)
I understand it being a little difficult to make anything pixel-perfect in Megazeux, particularly if you’re doing so with a pixel-doubled screen, but there’s an awful lot of color bleeding going on. It’s rare for me to say this, but I think this would have looked better if all the sprites were white over the blue background, because the color bleeding was starting to get a little distracting.
TECHNIQUE: (55/80)
The engine here is by no means a new thing to Megazeux (as danmaku has been done at least once before, and so has pixel-perfection), but this one came through with no show-stopping bugs, with only some issues with the character colors going on, which as stated above was getting a bit distracting.
STORY: (9/50)
The story is a simple (deliberate?) Engrishy little blurb. If you lose the battle, you get a different blurb and the option to try again. That’s about all there is to it here. I didn’t manage to beat the thing, so I don’t know if there’s an equivalent blurb for winning. It doesn’t get in the way, so a few extra points for that, but it’s certainly not Roger Zelazny.
SOUND (30/40)
No sound effects, but well chosen music propels this at least to a 30 point score.
OVERALL (246/400)
What would ordinarily be a cheesy little curiosity is actually pretty well executed here. A few changes to the way the game does graphics (mainly color) would have sent this a little higher.
#70273: Antares
Theme: Alien Invaders Scoresheet: Theme-Light
THEME: (10/20)
It’s a game about how a space ship was taken over by some aliens, and how you’re the sole survivor that needs to destroy the vessel to prevent it from being used by the enemy. Pretty standard fare as far as alien invasions go, and I suppose it’s a good enough setup for a beat-em-up.
GAMEPLAY: (101/120)
This game is pretty much pure Maxim here: classic arcade action, this time presented as a Double Dragon style beat-em-up game, with punching, kicking, and the occasional LAZOR GUN to enable you to attack at distance for a little while. Similar to Double Dragon and other such brawling games, the enemies show up in large waves of as many as ten, some occasionally armed with guns themselves. Punching and kicking really aren’t that different from each other in terms of damage, but the main difference is really that you’re attacking low and high, as opposed to weaker and stronger attacks. This will end up being crucial if you’re swarmed by enemies and unable to align yourself perfectly with them – you may need to kick enemies that are positioned lower than you, or punch enemies that are up higher. Of course, the enemy waves tend to swarm you pretty quickly, meaning you’re going to lose a lot of health over them unless you’re very clever at managing the hordes. (Side note: this game marks the triumphant return of KICKING GUARDS IN THE NADS, something I’ve not seen in Megazeux since Agent Jeff Kenny from several DoZ’s ago!) Also, great notice should be made to the fact that this game has selectable difficulty settings.
GRAPHICS: (68/90)
Maxim’s distinctive neon-colors style works quite well here, as the selection of bright colors (especially purples and greens) emphasizes the alien…ness…of the game. I’m running out of words to describe it. But the lasers actually feel pretty powerful on account of them being all flashy neon colored and stuff, and the animations are done pretty well.
TECHNIQUE: (63/80)
I didn’t encounter any major glitches, and the engine seems pretty tight. I like how MZX’s speed is set at twice normal just to make the projectiles fly smoothly without speeding up all the other characters. Basically, points all around for running a tight ship.
STORY: (23/50)
The story is presented on the title screen, if you care enough to sit and wait for it. It describes you as the last survivor aboard a ship full of aliens, and your main objective is to self-destruct said ship to prevent the aliens from learning anything. It does go on for quite a bit about the current situation, and the introduction text is pretty well written. That’s really all a game like this needs…but it’s not exactly an epic.
SOUND (21/40)
Sound effects are decidedly abstract, similar in feel to the old 70’s Hong Kong martial arts films. Music seems a bit too Smooth Jazzy to go with a beat-em-up, though. I think this would have gone well with some fast-paced electronic music.
OVERALL (286/400)
I think where this one could have used some polish was to have a bit more in-game motivation to keep going, story-wise. Even so much as a Gyruss-style “4 CORRIDORS TO GO!” prompt.
#72165: ???
Theme: Alien Invaders Scoresheet: Theme-light
This is evidently supposed to be a Puzzle Quest type game.
THEME: (2/20)
I have no idea what this is supposed to do with alien invasion. Presumably there was a story in the works at some point, but nothing seems to have come of it.
GAMEPLAY: (44/120)
As a Puzzle Quest clone, the game revolves around you and your opponent taking turns putting down tiles. If the tiles end up matching three, four, or five in a row, then they have special effects. Evidently swords and guns are there to deal damage to the enemy, while skulls remove your own health, hearts restore it, the weird blue faces remove your “sanity” (not sure what this affects), and there are various grey tiles that increase what I assume is this game’s equivalent of mana stocks if they match. If you get enough mana (which you probably might if you’re lucky), you can use a special skill, of which there is apparently only one. If you ask me, this is one of those games that really is too ambitious to be pulled off in only one day, because the core game mechanics are not even finished and the game is almost not playable as a result. The instructions are also decidedly unclear. Basically, this game confused me, even though I was able to defeat the (one) opponent.
GRAPHICS: (29/90)
The aesthetics of this game are absolutely simple, with a predominantly green color scheme. The tiles you’re putting down are basic 1x2 symbols, the meaning of which is not really that clear unless you really study the help file (which cannot be invoked after it has been dismissed), and the two “portraits” in the corners are just squiggle lines. The default font has not been changed at all. Basically, it seems like the author has only altered the graphics to be functional, and I suppose that it does work to an extent, but they’re really quite plain and overly simplistic. I would think that the character set probably has space for these tiles to be even larger, perhaps 2x3 for example, which would really help the clarity of what these things are supposed to represent (like Strength, which really looks more like an eagle or an orb on a pedestal). Maybe some animations could be used here, too, to kind of slow things down when the AI is playing. There’s also no title screen.
TECHNIQUE: (24/80)
The game’s engine apparently is only in place enough to make the bar graphs work, tiles that are capable of being placed, and an extremely simple AI that just randomly plops tiles down on the grid when it’s their turn. It’s…well, a little underwhelming. There’s nothing particularly stand-out in this code. The game doesn’t even bother with mouse support. But I’ll give it this: it works. To an extent.
STORY: (5/50)
There is no story here at all. Five pity points for not being a recreation of Full-Life Consequences with guest stars Alvin and the Chipmunks, with a special guest commentary by the Angry Video Game Nerd.
SOUND (7/40)
Neat little sound effects for every tile that gets put on the board, but you can barely hear them over the unnecessarily action-packed and greatly irritating music. Thankfully, said music for some reason does not loop.
OVERALL (111/400)
I think this one’s also a victim of poor time management – specifically, knowing that your own skills are probably not enough to implement a fairly complicated game in less than twenty four hours.
#79530: ???
Theme: Isolation Scoresheet: Theme-heavy
This game is apparently intended as a survival-themed adventure game, but I’m not really sure if it’s completed, because while I can interact with a few things, I can’t get out of the one room, and looking in the editor, that’s about all there is.
THEME: (44/100)
Isolation as imprisonment, this time with stasis vats or something, and the one room that you can’t get out of. I kind of liked there this one was going, but it takes a pretty severe hit due to not being finished, and thus, not having much to expand upon what was being done here.
GAMEPLAY: (28/90)
Again, there’s really not much here – once your character somehow escapes from his vat, there’s all of four things to do – you can look at the other rat in the vat next to yours, try to use the computer that controls the vats, try opening the door (which you can never do, I think) and fiddle with medicines, only two of which won’t kill you upon ingesting them. The thing about killing the player with them is, even with the warnings given, there’s no indication that the analgesic will kill you (Chrome even remarks that it makes him feel better before the game goes into the death scene). Then again, maybe I’m looking at this entirely the wrong way – maybe death is truly the only way out. The end game text does seem to indicate that there’s another way, though…I’d be damned if I could find it, though, despite restarting the game about three times (and by the way, the intro cannot be skipped, so if you forget to save before screwing around with the potassium chloride, you get to watch that stuff all over again). There’s also apparently a blood loss system in place, which I assume means you’re going to die if your character bleeds too much. Except somehow, I ended up with “-9%” blood loss (from an initial stat of 48%), so I’m guessing that never actually happened.
GRAPHICS: (48/70)
This author is obviously talented, giving the game a dark and gritty feel without resorting to brown everywhere (there are still some primary colors here), but the thing is, there just aren’t enough graphics here. There’s the title screen, one picture in the introduction, one playable board and a couple of zoom-in screens on the terminal and medicine cabinet. That’s basically all – the graphics look good, but there’s not enough of them! Must admit, though, the flickering old monitor effect on the terminal is pretty good (and doesn’t hurt the eyes that much).
TECHNIQUE: (20/60)
On display here: a bleeding system (that doesn’t actually kill you), some menus that don’t have any obvious bugs in them, and probably the most advanced thing being the DOS terminal. The terminal is a little glitchy; in order to get any commands to work, you have to hold down the Enter key after typing them, or else the terminal just creates a new line and beeps at you. It’s very difficult to type things on here, which I’m assuming is a limitation of the engine, though it could easily be argued that it’s Chrome being an inept typist. Either way, though, I had to drastically slow down my own typing to get the keys to respond. Thank goodness the backspace key works, at least. I also noticed that while you can “take” the medicine from the cabinet, this doesn’t seem to affect anything other than displaying a message that you’ve taken it, as there is no obvious inventory function.
STORY: (33/50)
The game’s introduction comes from a log entry of some personnel aboard what I assume is a starship or something, describing some rat people, one of which was captured alive and put under stasis for further research. The feeling of desperation really adds to this game’s presentation, but the realization that not only is there nothing important you can do in the game, but also that the bleeding doesn’t actually seem to kill you, rather ruins things. Another victim of unfinished work. I will say, though, that I would have loved to see this continue.
SOUND (24/30)
A neat little electronic song plays as the intro types on screen, then the rest of the game is ambience and sound effects. These are actually pretty good. There’s even sound effects for Chrome typing on the terminal keyboard. The title screen song really doesn’t establish the mood properly, though…it’s a little too upbeat.
OVERALL (197/400)
Just shy of a 50% score. Which if we’re going by the American education grading scale, is still an F, but an A for effort, I say.
SCORE SUMMARY
- #30641: 310 points
- #70273: 286 points
- #60441: 278 points
- #36306: 247 points
- #66482: 246 points
- #18030: 243 points
- #13210: 236 points
- #47527: 222 points
- #34477: 213 points
- #79530: 197 points
- #62239: 178 points
- #49781: 165 points
- #72165: 111 points
- #11617: 76 points