Reviews

Review by entheh all reviews by entheh

This game has such wonderful graphics, I just had to review it!

Overall: 3. It has pluses and minuses.
Artistic: 4. It doesn\'t have insulting dialogue, but it does have a nice take on world domination, and the graphics are bright, colourful and professional.
Technical: 2. Sorry, there\'s no atan2(), my bee got stuck (bad collision response), and you can\'t see far enough! But I know you don\'t program very often, so don\'t lose heart - it\'s pretty darn good considering. The bees even go inside the flowers really cleanly and perfectly!
Genre: 1. Let\'s be honest - there\'s no destruction, is there?

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 4 Technical 2 Genre 1

Review by entheh all reviews by entheh

\'Avery\'s World Destruction\' looks like a fair attempt at a game. Frustratingly, and sadly, every step in investigating it was difficult, and the game didn\'t even work when I finally managed to get it to start.

My first observation was a distinct lack of level files, so I went into the editor available from the main menu.

The editor interface makes it hard to place individual tiles - I found myself either using the menu or dragging a rectangle around the tile I wanted to change - but it did enable me to put some pieces together in the hope of then trying the level and seeing what would happen.

In order to play the level, I had to select \"Use Wildcard Specification\" from the main menu, which was hardly obvious. I almost gave up before trying it, and when I finally did, the game locked up.

I did get to see all the enemy ships facing towards the player - obviously the atan2() usage - and some music started playing.

Some other frustrations got in the way. Each time I returned from a sub-interface to the main menu, there was a slow fadeout I had to wait for. Periodically the game would appear to lock up, and would only resume working when I obscured part of it with another window. Before I created an allegro.cfg file to let me run it windowed, I didn\'t even have this option. Finally, the game logo disappeared for about 1/4 of the time, which looked a bit shoddy.

Unfortunately I am unable to give this game good scores since it just didn\'t work for me, which is a shame as an attempt was clearly made.

Overall: 1. Sorry, it was too frustrating.
Artistic: 1. There was a world map but no other evidence of world domination, and I found no dialogue.
Technical: 2. I did find the atan2().
Genre: 1. I didn\'t find any evidence of destruction.

There are two things I would recommend for future competitions.

1. Keep the user\'s experience in mind. Whatever else you do during these competitions, make sure your users will see the fruits of your labour without much effort. For example, include some pre-made level files, and make the route into the game is clear and short. This is difficult, but the more times you participate, the better you\'ll get at it.

2. Failing that, write some end-user documentation. The readme file should explain any extra steps needed and draw my attention to the good work you\'ve done, compensating for any shortcoming on the first point.

As the developer notes, an existing game was taken and tweaked. This is certainly a valid skill for rapid development, and I\'d like to encourage it. (I got criticised for doing it myself in a previous TINS.) However, do make sure that you add a reasonable amount of new content, and make it clear what parts are new, so that the voters can judge how much work you did. The enclosed readme didn\'t make this particularly clear.

Kudos for the name \'DownloadMyHeart\'. It\'s heartful :)

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 1 Technical 2 Genre 1

Review by entheh all reviews by entheh

\'Zerog\' is an entertaining little timekiller. It pits you, an odd purple blob creature with teeth resembling the cutter on a clingfilm dispenser, as a trainee hopeful hoping to join a mysterious clan who appear to be planning underworld domination - a nice twist on the rules.

You are presented with three courses, each differently themed and of very different layouts, all of which test your ability to reach a target teleporter without falling through any unsafe platforms. At the start of each course, a blue member of your species hovers into view, tells you a little more about who you are and what you\'re doing, insults you, and then glides away and leaves you to it.

I found a few small issues with the game. The Instructions and Story pages stated that I could press any key to return to the main menu, but some keys (e.g. Space) didn\'t work, and the arrow keys operated the main menu as if I was already there. In-game, there was no clear indication of how picky the collision detection was, making me a little too nervous to try moving between two diagonally connected squares when the opportunity came up. When I completed the final course, the game displayed a final screen of text and then exited as I continued pressing arrow keys, so I didn\'t get a chance to read it.

However, the game has a lot going for it too. The very existence of the short, concise Instructions and Story pages adds a lot of approachability. The changing themes and layouts expertly get the most enjoyment out of the engine. The first course shows you which tiles will disappear, and warns you (concisely again) that it won\'t last - a good mechanism to ease a new player into the game. The death sound effects are a nice touch (if a little lonely without any other sound or music), and are exactly the right place to put the comedy, since that\'s when players most need it.

All in all, a good entry, although I question the name \'Zerog\' if you can fall in!

Overall: 4. While not perfect, it\'s pretty good and certainly above average.
Artistic: 4. The dialogue is well integrated, and the art creates good atmosphere and variety. The world domination is a little tacked on, but does have the \'underworld\' twist.
Technical: 4. The atan2() is used in a rather original way, to create the game logo on the title screen. I would never have guessed without checking the code.
Genre: 4. The map undergoes destruction as you proceed through it, which is subtle and well integrated.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 4 Technical 4 Genre 4

Review by entheh all reviews by entheh

Sorry, I can\'t run this entry. Is it C#? I bought a new Vista laptop this week (specifically on 22 September 2008), and the executable included in Amarillion\'s binary pack doesn\'t work. I immediately get a message stating that \'vshost\' has stopped running.

Scored 2 in everything - low but not too low.

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 2 Technical 2 Genre 2

Review by entheh all reviews by entheh

I was unable to run this entry initially, but the author kindly directed me to:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9b2da534-3e03-4391-8a4d-074b9f2bc1bf&displaylang=en

Overall: 4. As always, the whole thing is tied together and made into a polished game, complete with a main menu and a map to link the levels together. Sadly I found the \'jumping off walls\' action to be just too unreliable. Did I have to press the keys at exactly the same time (which is impossible to do reliably)? Was I doing something else wrong? This stopped me proceeding beyond the second level, so I had to give up. It\'s unfair to mark a game down simply for one playability issue, and given the overall polish and the number of levels that seem to exist, I feel this game deserves a 4.

Artistic: 3. The graphics aren\'t bad, although they do seem a little loud somehow. What I saw of the dialogue was interesting, until it played on every attempt at each level and didn\'t seem to be skippable.

Technical: 3. There was an attempt at an interesting control mechanism, although as described above it proved to have a flaw. The GUI engine hasn\'t quite been used to perfection: for example, the Credits screen can only be exited with \'Esc\', and the words in the dialogue can start to form on one line and then move to the next when they get too long. Finally, I couldn\'t find any reference to atan2() in the source code, so I can only really award 3 points here.

Genre: 5. The imminent world destruction is a creative choice (not the obvious \"player has to destroy everything\" that I went for) and is implemented to great effect, complete with camera shake which increases over time. I immediately knew I had a time limit, even if the timer readout itself wasn\'t massively obvious.

I have a feeling there is a version floating around with the playability bug fixed, but sadly I have a busy weekend coming up and am out of time - but I\'ll play it and enjoy it at some point after the voting is over!

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 3 Technical 3 Genre 5

Review by entheh all reviews by entheh

This game doesn\'t seem to work properly. I get to fire a slingshot a few times. The balls have a mind of their own, and I can\'t work out what effect I can have on them. After a while, the screen floods with boxes, and the game locks up.

Overall: 2. Looks as if it could be a nice idea, but it just doesn\'t work.
Artistic: 1. I saw no dialogue or world domination. The slingshot does look fairly nice, but the rest is very basic vector code and doesn\'t look polished at all.
Technical: 2. I haven\'t checked if atan2 was used and where, but I did like the way the slingshot adjusts to the mouse position. That said, since nothing works properly, I can\'t give more than 2.
Genre: 1. I couldn\'t see any destruction.

In the future, I would recommend packaging the game up with a readme explaining what it\'s supposed to do and what any known issues are. Given such documentation, we can award points on merit if we think it was darn ambitious and deserves points anyway, and we\'ll have a better idea of whether it\'s broken everywhere or whether it might be some portability issue or cosmic ray influence that\'s stopping it working.

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 1 Technical 2 Genre 1

Review by entheh all reviews by entheh

I don\'t have to review this to qualify, but I want to because amz is my friend and Codnik is a girl! Go girl coders!

Overall: 4. A good, fun game. It is a little too hard on the first attempt, and it lacks a main menu framework to encourage you to keep trying, but it has great music which helps to compensate for that!
Artistic: 5. The dialogue is included and fits perfectly. World domination is portrayed in a topical, entertaining way. The vector art style works very well and the colours are cool.
Technical: 4. It\'s smooth and it has beautiful particle explosions. The atan2() implementation is a little obvious but does fit well into the game. I do just have to withhold a point here because I couldn\'t work out what \"Torrents\" means and because the game is just a bit too hard.
Genre: 3. The destruction is obvious; I can\'t really give it more than average points.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 5 Technical 4 Genre 3