Winter 2013 Dualstream Day of Zeux Scoresheet:Lachesis

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  ____________________________________________________________

            DualStream Day of Zeux: Winter 2013 (Q1)
                            Lachesis
  ____________________________________________________________


  I wasn't incredibly excited about this Day of Zeux given the
sort of lack of lead-up, plus there was the judge drama last time;
the number of registrations (eleven by the time the thing was over)
didn't do much to help.

  That said, there are some fun entries this time.  Good job,
everyone who submitted! Keep submitting! Even if I say bad things
about your game. Especially if I say bad things about your game.

  I want to make a special note here as I've been scoring the
games:  Dragons was not a particularly good theme for the Theme-
Heavy scoresheet, and unsurprisingly it was one of the more
commonly picked combinations, too.

  I have tried to judge the entries in question (2) fairly but I will
admit some criteria did not translate perfectly and as a result your
games will be disqualified & have been incredibly enjoyable to play



 _____________________________________________________________
/  11776 Dragon Blaster                                       \
\ Dragons                                          Theme-Heavy \
 \_____________________________________________________________/
 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Theme!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                         35/100 \

  This is a fairly barebones interpretation of the 'Dragons'
theme.  Dragons exist in this game (the built-in kind, anyway)
and you fight them, but they don't really look like dragons
(more like big snakes, ugh). I'm sorry, but while this game
had more dragons than your average built-in shooter, I just
wasn't quite feeling the dragons in any other aspects of the
game.  The architecture could have said 'dragons' more

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Gameplay! \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                       36/90 \

  The player's weapons are essentially reimplementations of MZX
bullets and bombs designed to be less useful and more frustrating.
The bullets gradually slow down as you hold space, which means
you need to plan your attacks more carefully. The bombs shoot
colored globs in the cardinal directions; not very useful until
the boss fight.  Damage is more forgiving than in other games
based on built-ins, as you will temporarily recieve invinco after
each hit.  Not that it helps much.

  The enemies are all built-in enemies and are fortunately used
tastefully. The game adds different kinds of enemies over time,
but we've fought them all before. The only enemies that aren't
built-ins are stationary targets at the end.

  Altogether this game had a very average, if particularly dull
gameplay experience, that is hampered by the projectile system
that was not designed to account for the movement of built-ins,
lack of variety, and towards the end outright cruelty to the
player.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Graphics! \\\\\\\\\\                                14/70 \

  There's so much barebones here I would have otherwise thought
the topic was 'Skeletons'!  The character set is the default with
only a few alterations, the palette is the default rebalanced to be
less garish, and neither are used in a particularly creative way.
Colors are used in questionable or even bad combinations sometimes,
but rarely in ways that impede gameplay. Generally servicable but
in no way pleasant.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Technique!\\\\\\\\\\\\\                             15/60 \

  The biggest offender here is the hastily constructed projectile
system with bullets the player and enemies can walk through.  The
weapons in this game are actually a step or three backwards from
built-in weapons, since those are at least reliable.

Otherwise, robotic code is fairly sparse, so there's not much to
judge here, and also not much to award points for.  Built-in enemy
usage is tasteful, which feels like it's worth at 3-5 points. The
level design isn't anything special, but the encounters feel like
they were at least tested several times and balanced, which is where
most of the points here are coming from.

  Another thing to note is that you can't save in this game unless
you fix it yourself, which is unfortunate as I sure needed this
feature given that my weapon won't hit half of the things I shot it
at.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Story!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                     23/50 \

  Four sentences on the main menu and two in the ending; nothing
extensive, deep, or thought-provoking here, but you know what, it
does its job.  In the same way as Catacombs of Zeux, I got the
feeling that all of the interesting parts of the story happened
before the game began.  It would have been nice to see the player's
hometown get destroyed; there would have been more motivation to
go murder some dragons than with a one-sentence reference to it.
I don't know, maybe the player could have secretly been a dragon

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Sound!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                  15/30 \

  An okay, fitting selection of music, and mostly built-in SFX.
Thanks for turning off the invinco and dragon fire sound effects.
Nothing here really augments the gameplay experience though.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Total!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                        138/400 \

  I'm having a hard time believing not one but ten Maxims worked
on this game, because I'm pretty sure one Maxim alone can do at
least ten times better than this.

    "Congraturation!  You are a real brutal dragon slayer."

 _____________________________________________________________
/  20945 Ballad of Dargan the Dragon, The                     \
\ Dragons                                          Theme-Heavy \
 \_____________________________________________________________/
 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Theme!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\         71/100 \

  I'd say there was quite a bit of Dragons going on here! The
player controlled a dragon, all of the enemies were dragons,
the boss was a dragon.  The dragon also hatched from an egg and
noticably grew up as you increased the level, which was a great
touch.  Overall the setting looked and felt very appropriate for
dragons to be existing in it, and all of the story was in rhyme!
You just can't beat that.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Gameplay! \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                50/90 \

  I wasn't a fan of the arrows-only controls at first but they
quickly grew on me.  It would have been more intuitive to put the
single-target attacks for fire and ice on the right arrow.  Wish
the controls had been more responsive; switching to MZX speed 2 for
would have worked since they locked up anyway during animations.

  There were a handful of fights early on in the game where I
could only whittle down the enemy's HP around 2-5 at a time, and
the enemies had something like 30 HP, which got irritating fast,
but that didn't last long, as only a few levels in, I was destroying
them all and hardly taking any notable damage. The gratification
of killing four enemy dragons before any of them could hit me
actually seemed to make up for the frustration early on. I think
the boss only managed to hit me once on my second playthrough.

  Good balance? Nnnnnno, probably not, but pretty alright given
someone who doesn't like this genre (after level 2-3, at least).
Enjoyable but broken.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Graphics! \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\    58/70 \

  Wow! Everything just looks great here.  You can tell where the
patterns in the background repeat but they do it in an unoffensive
and effective way.  The title screen, story, and ending screens
are nothing special, but once we get into the game proper everything
just looks magnificent, the bar ends blend in perfectly... well,
okay, not everything looks great -- the path is bland and the
mountain slopes stick out pretty bad. The font is just the default.

  The dragons pictures are well drawn and show obvious progression
between forms, including when your dragon hatches in the intro.  The
battle animations are done in half chars, which fits much better than
I would have thought (given how gorgeous everything else is), and are
animated pretty smoothly.  If I have any complaint about the battle
backdrops, it's that if even though they repeat nicely, some more
variation would have been nice.  Even still, great job here.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Technique!\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\           41/60 \

  For the most part, the game is solidly built from the first
battle to the last. The bookends are a bit mushy; the title, story,
ending, and game over boards all appear to have been thrown together
last minute or to have been placeholders that never got replaced.

  There was a major lack of variety in this game's contents; all
of the enemies attacked with the same attacks, even the boss. They
even share the same graphics as the player, just recolored. It's
like playing through Pokemon but there's only one Pokemon.

  The balance is questionable.  At the beginning the enemies are
taking sizable chunks out of my health and I can barely hit them
for half of that at best, and by the end I can do twice as much
damage to all of the opponents in one hit as they can to me. The
experience curve also does not account for increased experience
gained from higher level enemies, so while getting from level 1
to 2 is a chore, getting from level 9 to 10 (or **) usually takes
one battle.

  It seems like this entry was played a little close to the mark
and there wasn't enough time to tidy up the ends in general.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Story!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\             33/50 \

  Is Dargan the Dragon the player's dragon or the monster in the
mountains at the end?  The game's story is simplistic and makes
everything clear (who the bad guy is, why I want to murder it),
and doesn't introduce any unnecessary plot elements.  Well, I
guess it didn't tell me who Dargan is, but you can't win 'em all.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Sound!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ 25/30 \

  There were only two pieces of music in this game, both were well
constructed and neither managed to get old.  All of the attacks
have unique sound effects, besides the enemy attacks which are
all the same.  Everything fits well.  The only things that feel
questionable are the pops in the first instrument in the title/map
music but I forgot about them after a while.  It feels like there
should have been around three more tracks, maybe.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Total!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\        278/400 \

  Maybe not the greatest DoZ RPG ever, but a great looking one,
an honorable submission, and an enjoyable-if-easy game while it
lasted.

 _____________________________________________________________
/  55314 Schone Zeiten                                        \
\ Nostalgia                                        Theme-Heavy \
 \_____________________________________________________________/
 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Theme!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ 86/100 \\      \

  I was pleasantly surprised by this entry's implementation of its
theme; it was clear, efficient, maybe even inspiring, and never
mentioned the theme by name once, which is always a good sign.
Clearly there was something to be learned from the last Day of
Zeux. The sepia tone and gentle jazz music playing in the background
music set a perfect atmosphere.

  The narrator yearns for the simpler days of space civilization
as he retells his past.  As you explore, you live the narrator's
story, continuing to each location the story marks relevant.  At
first I thought you were a different character in the present
revisiting each planet while the narrator accompanied you and
reminisced, which I felt may have fit the theme more, but that
is obviously not the case since you eventually become directly
involved in the narrator's fights.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Gameplay! \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\       68/90 \

  Schone's gameplay is mostly exploring systems and discovering/
trading resources, interspersed with the occasional space battle.
The exploring was, by far, my favorite part of the game, and there
was plenty of entertaining incidental text for exploring planets
(Terror Planet IX was probably my favorite).  I wish there were
more areas to explore after completing the story portion of the
game.

  There is a shop system where you can take the materials you've
gathered to sell them and buy ship upgrades. Once you have explored
sufficiently it becomes obvious which planets to buy from and sell
to, and there is almost nothing stoping you from buying large bulk
of something and trading it to other planets for profits that can
border on ridiculous. The game has a built-in mechanism to prevent
you from doing it to excess, which I will explain later, but I would
have just preferred smaller profits per item until the end of the
game.

  Combat begins fairly easy and gradually increases in difficulty,
but not by too much. Generally, you can just fight whatever and
succeed given you have up-to-date equipment. Towards the end you
need to learn the specifications of each ship class and how to take
them down as efficiently as possible if you want to survive combat.
Most of the enemy encounters felt the same with minor exceptions,
like the satellite.  The final wave of enemies started strong but
ended too easy.

  There are two kinds of weapons, lasers and cannons, with some
differences I won't bother documenting here. The most expensive
weapon has attributes of both, but unfortunately the recharge time
is so long it's essentially worthless. There are few different ship
upgrades to worry about altogether; more levels/types of upgrades
would have extended the replay value.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Graphics! \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\            48/70 \

  The only thing I was particularly impressed by here is the
dynamically-generated planet backdrops when exploring planets,
which actually were pretty darn neat looking. Might have wanted
to clean up some of the dither and mountain chars, though. Also,
one gas giant had trees. You know gas giants don't have trees
right, O.K., just makin' sure, some people think they have those.

  Aside from the exploration view the planets were not particularly
great looking, but not to the point that they were offensive. Okay,
maybe the fly-in/out view was a little offensive, but probably
just because it was right before/after the very nice terrain view.

  Something I think that would have been a lot nicer to look at
is more detail on the starmap, nebulas in the background, distant
stars, ideally with colors much closer to that of the background
so it doesn't look like crap when the player's ship or the mouse
move over them, then you'd can the low fuel animation and replace it
with a sound effect (more appropriate anyway). As-is, the simplistic
nature of the backgrounds helps the theme, so maybe less detail is
better.  Alternatively, with the two-color approach, you could have
given the starmap smooth scrolling.

  Finally, the font did not read very easy, and the white borders
of the UI stuck out way too much.  I don't think using the starmap
BG color for the outer border lines and the outer border color for
the button border lines would have hurt (and getting rid of that
dither and just inverting the two non-text colors on button press).
Also, the space ships had cool designs.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Technique!\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\    49/60 \

  The script system was a great idea to take the stress of having
to know the inner workings of things off of the scriptwriter's
shoulders and probably didn't take very long to implement.  It
would have been an even better idea to write something to check
your scripts for missing zaps, syntax errors, and anything else
suspicious too (lines of text starting with command names, code
that would never be executed, set plot_scene 3...). Also, naming
scripts correctly helps sometimes too :>

  Mouse navigation is poorly supported, even frustrating, which
is boggling as the UI has to be used with the mouse.  Leaving a
system with the mouse can be anywhere from annoying to impossible
without backing up and trying again, and it's never consistent.
Eventually I gave up and switched between keyboard and mouse as
needed, but I shouldn't have had to.

  A frequent theme was me being thrown straight back into a planet
or system I just left because I didn't leave it exactly the way the
game wanted me to. Why not just let the player fly over everything?
The ship's already making the edges of the planet look ugly; there
isn't anything to lose by adding an "Enter System/Orbit" button.
Of minor note, the bug where closing the F3/F4 dialogs with the mouse
resulting in the click being detected by the game is an MZX bug.

  The last thing I think needs mentioning is the lack of a way to
sell more than one item per click. You get a lot of materials from
the game's natural progression and can buy more than you ever
dreamed of from stores, but you have to do it one at a time. The
lack of foresight here is unfortunate. I did not attempt to fix
this myself, as I wanted to feel every single mouse click to give
a more fair score. I've been typing these scores with the bloody
stump of my right index finger.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Story!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\    40/50 \

  The story is narrated to the never-seen audience while the
player acts out the past experiences of the narrator revisits
the places of the narrator's past. The starmap is well designed
in that it keeps the story segments paced well apart, although
I ended up going the wrong direction and had already explored
most of the galaxy before I triggered the plot event on Ashburn.

  It felt like it could have been more involved -- the motivation
for going from place to place had some feelings of "get to the next
place" than being entirely natural. More plot would have been okay
too. The narrator has depth and is genuinely likeable. Character
depth seems to be a place where most MegaZeux games struggle.

  As I mentioned before, I had slight confusion over the exact
nature of the narrative's relation to the gameplay until the
plot battles made it more obvious. This could have been clarified
with some sort of scene with the introduction before throwing
the player straight into the gameplay.  I was probably the only
person who had this issue.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Sound!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\    24/30 \

  I have few complaints about the sound.  There are sound effects
where appropriate and nothing sounds out of place, although a few
spots are lacking.  For example, there could have been some space
ship whoosh sounds when entering/leaving atmosphere and when your
vessel moves on the starmap and in systems -- okay, a 'whoosh' is
too obvious, but *something*, as most of the game time is spent on
these screens. I DON'T CARE IF THERE AREN'T SOUNDS IN SPACE DON'T
USE THAT EXCUSE

  The music tracks do a great job as is, but similarly I wished
there had just been more.  Tracks for different star systems, or
a different track for exploring planets (pressing that sell button
800 times sure got lonely).  For an even more nostalgic feel you
could have had some sort of jukebox feature.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Total!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\   315/400 \

  Great submission here that was enjoyable and felt complete
despite a few rough edges. This team could have benefitted from
a dedicated artist.

 _____________________________________________________________
/  65974 Dracos Corona                                        \
\ Dragons                                           Theme-Lite \
 \_____________________________________________________________/

  Unfinished Day of Zeux game with major potential strikes again!
  But what went wrong?  Let's find out!  Trust me I'm a doctor,         sort of

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Theme!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\                             5/20 \

  Well, it mentions a dragon.  Also, the gameplay was "dragon"
quite a bit if you ask me that's only two dragons though so just
barely a pass

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Gameplay! \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                   56/120 \

  I was not much a fan of the gameplay here; and I spent most of
this game running away from my opponents instead of fighting them.
At least you get 'Dash' at the end of the game and you can run away
from everything in style. Exploring was much more satisfying than
fighting anything was; by the end I was just irritated that
unfightable hordes were distracting me from the scenery.

  Hitting stuff is a chore here where it should be natural in an
action game; instead of holding a direction and charging with a
different key, maybe just have the direction key charge, or let the
player charge before aiming. Also, stop wasting my near complete
charge every time I step out of range dodging. The charging mechanic
is dependent on the aiming mechanic and it and it should be the
other way around.

  In practice, the only usable weapon before you got 'Dash' was the
Burst, and it took too long to charge. The camera movement didn't
help much either. For the amount of effort and time it takes to hit
anything, the enemies take too many hits to die, as well.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Graphics! \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\          63/90 \

  The player animation is fluid, but I'm not sure what all of these
enemies are supposed to be, and I'm not sure I want to know. The
projectile graphics are also incredibly lacking, even garish. I'm
glad the levels, for the most part, are nice enough that I didn't
care too much. The grandfather image in the intro is probably the
worst looking thing in the game, or in any MegaZeux game, though.

  Regarding the level graphics, I really enjoyed the first and
last dungeons (the forest and the volcano, respectively). The
main area was fine looking but the lack of intensity contrast
between the ground and other terrain colors was offputting.
The castle is overall bland and once again there are balance
issues (purple carpet), but even as the "worst" looking area it's
still very nice.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Technique!\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                 45/80 \

  It seems like there was a plan behind the execution of this
game but it fell apart in the details. There are bugs and bad
design choices here that could have been found by a single
complete playthrough. In no particular order:

* LOCKED bug and strange viewport behavior after unlocking with F11
* DIE ITEM without adjusting the viewport
* Infinite HP, although I give it a pass because I needed it.
* Dash frequently throws me in the middle of terrain.
* Couldn't shoot the statue blocking entrance to the castle until
  I moved to the far left of it, after which I could target it.
* You can skip the castle entirely. This happened to me the first
  time I played (it seemed more obvious to turn right than left).
* Enemies are frustrating to fight (see Gameplay).
* There's no obvious way to tell when the charge bar is done charging
  without looking away from the action.  The top of the charge bar
  is impossible to see out of the corner of the eye because it's weak
  dither on black.

  I have no idea what the work distribution between the teammates
for this game was, but if I had to guess, that's where some
improvements could have been made. The levels were well executed
and mostly everything else seems to Just Work besides what I outlined
above.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Story!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                      20/50 \

  We get a huge, unnecessary plot dump at the start of the game
from dying grandpa, followed by essentially no story development
at all. This game feels like it needed story cutscenes to freshen
it up between endless murdering (running from) things segments, or
alternatively something more concise and to-the-point. The ending
here basically sucked, and I didn't even get to fight the dragon.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Sound!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                    18/40 \

  There are some good musical choices here but the sound effects
are almost non-existant.  The charge up sound actually does more
harm than help; it has no correlation with the actual amount of
time it takes to charge up your weapon and doesn't stop playing if
you release the space bar. Since the bar on the side of the screen
is nearly useless unless you look directly at it, this sound effect
is the only thing I have to go by, and it lies to me.

  New sound effects that might have been helpful are something to
tell you when you have found a new target, one for when the target
has gone out of range, and one for when the charge is done. This
isn't counting adding sound effects for just about everything else
in the game that needs them.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Total!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                207/400 \

  I really wanted this game to be better than it ended up being.
This team has consistently released alright to good quality games
for the past few Day of Zeux competitions.  I hope you keep the
trend up and have better luck than this next time.

 _____________________________________________________________
/  92887 Nostalgia                                            \
\ Nostalgia                                        Theme-Heavy \
 \_____________________________________________________________/
 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Theme!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                      39/100 \

  The theme was a laid out a bit more obviously here than I prefer.
I think my biggest complaint overall is probably that the narrative
loves to remind us that these are Nostalgic Games you are playing
through (in case you forgot the game's title/theme).

  Another one is that the nostalgic value of these games is quite
subjective -- I never played Zork, Wolf3D, or Doom anywhere near
when they came out, and have no nostalgia for them.  Instead of
attempting to invoke nostalgia through the writing and atmosphere,
it tries by showing the player other games.  It would have been
interesting to see where this game went if it had been finished,
though.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Gameplay! \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                           25/90 \

  I like the idea of a minigame-centric Day of Zeux entry, but all
we got here was a text adventure, a 'hit the things as they come
toward you' minigame, and two built-in shooting segments, none of
which naturally progress into the next.

  As far as each segment goes: the horse minigame is pretty monotone
and the built-in shooting was similarly dull.  The only section I had
much fun with was the text adventure, and it was far too underdeveloped
to hold this game on its own.

  I would recommend one of two things to the authors for next time:
a uniform, solid gameplay style instead of "N" minigames, or to have
minigame concepts pre-planned ahead of time -- perhaps something to
think about ahead of time and then to pull out of your file when
another DoZ comes along where the 'minigames' concept fits.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Graphics! \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                      30/70 \

  What kind of graphics score do you give to a text adenture? Words
can paint wonderful pictures, but the descriptions here didn't do a
whole lot for me. The actual graphics in this game are altogether
unoffensive; there is nothing eyepopping to see here, though the
forest background looks quite alright. On a side note, I was hoping the
player's face would change in the Wolf3D/Doom segments when damaged.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Technique!\\\\\\\\\\\                               12/60 \

  What is the deal with that second minigame? Oh, I see, it has
a bunch of arrows that almost blend in entirely with the BG. I don't
know if that's intentional or not, but I hope not. That's mean.

  Here's a point of advice: use MZX speed 2 when taking text input
from the user. Increasing the MZX speed does not affect the rate of
KEY_PRESSED's autorepeat, but it does make the game miss far fewer
keystrokes.

  On a more general note, a lot more thought could have been put
into this game, especially in giving the different games a stronger
thematic connection, even if it meant cutting the game down to three
minigames at most (which is essentially what happened anyway). Not
knowing where to draw your lines in a DoZ is an issue everyone has
at one point or another, but with practice eventually you get used
to doing it. Another thing to note is the inexcusable filesize of
this entry.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Story!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                           19/50 \

  The story only really exists to get the player from one minigame
to the next, and even then, the minigames don't really do anything
to progress the story once you're outside of the building. Oh well.
It's not really that important to the game, and it did what it was
intended to do well enough. For what the game is trying to do the
story should be stronger, and I wish there were some stakes.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Sound!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                   14/30 \

  The music fits each segment well enough, but then, how hard is
that to do if each segment is based off of games that already exist?
The keyboard sounds during the text adventure were humorous at first
but took me out of it overall.  Hey look, it's Bernard the Bard.

 ____________________________________________________________
 \ Total!    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\                   139/400 \

  I think that overall, scrapping the framing story and/or sticking
to a single gameplay style might have helped the authors' efforts
result in a complete game.

  ____________________________________________________________
 /                                                            \
 |                          Ranking                           |
 \____________________________________________________________/

  I really don't feel like there were any surprises in the rank
  order of the games.  Good job everyone, see you in 6 months!
  Hopefully I won't be judging again, I prefer making DoZ games.

          Title                                          Score
01. 55314 Schone Zeiten                                315/400
02. 20945 The Ballad of Dargan the Dragon              278/400
03. 65974 Dracos Corona                                207/400
04. 92887 Nostalgia                                    139/400
05. 11776 Dragon Blaster                               138/400