Topic: OROW: 1st of August. RESULTS.

[ddq]

Just throw in an evil twin and submit it for MAGS!

[Vince Twelve]

Looking forward to playing these guys!  OROW always produces some of the most interesting games.

[Dualnames]

ENTRANTS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER:
AJA
BICILOTTI
CAT
DDQ
DUALNAMES
FSI
PMARTIN
PONCH
RADIANT
SHIVERMESIDEWAYS
TZACHS
WYZ
ENTRIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER:
AETERNA DUEL
APPLE FARM
BARRIER
DE_HAUNT
ENTRAPPED
OFFICE SHENANIGANS
ONE ROOM ONE CHEESE
ODR3
PROCRASTINATOR
RAPSQLUD V0.3
REQUIEM
THE DEVIL GOT MY WOMAN
THIS OROW AND MY ENTRY THAT SHALL BE REVEALED LATER, IS DEDICATED TO CHICKY. He may not have any good games, but he's awesome beyond comparison. He's so awesome, that we call women and a certain animal by his name, to honor him.

GET THE GAMES
VOTE

[pmartin]

Well, I thought I could wait and play, but I need to get some sleep.
Best of luck for all of you guys.

[Ghost]

Stupid Chicky.

Ambitious Chicky, you mean.

Yay, downloading, at least I can leave with a bag full of games!

[straydogstrut]

Suffice to say I didn't make the deadline (surprise surprise!), but this wasn't another of my now infamous ideas that never left my head. I did start something, despite not being able to start until friday, and I actually got a lot further than I expected. But it's unfinished and I can only keep up my day job whilst sleep-deprived for so long..

The real victory for me though has been finally making my first proper attempt at using AGS. I knew it already, but I have say, wow what an awesome piece of software *gushes* There was virtually no learning curve with the scripting and every time I had a question I found the answer in the manual, in densming's videos, or on the boards. It's been a joy to work with and I will definitely fire it up again this week. I'm not 100% happy with the game i've started - it's chock full of plot holes - so i'll either rework it or see if I can't come up with something else, either for MAGS, or just to satisfy my creative urges.

Kudos to everyone who got an entry in - and I'm looking forward to Chicky's game when it's finished!! - what a bumper bundle of gamey goodness!=D

[cat]

I started the Hints and Tips thread here: http://www.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=44167.0

[Radiant]

Wow, I'm surprised by the sheer variety between all the contest entries. Well done, everyone!

[Wonkyth]

Yay, and I've even got a free evening!

[qptain Nemo]

Well, wow. What a variety. The competition is fierce, it's really hard to choose even for yourself what is more best than the other (i haven't made my vote at the time of writing yet) and no doubt our feelings about all the different wonderful things in these game may get a little lost in all that voting process where only winners matter.

So I'd like to express my personal impressions of some of submitted entries so their creators may get their bonus moment of glee even if the golden trophy doesn't end up in their hands.

I mean I didn't spot anything saying that the voting is supposed to be all that anonymous as well. But if I did miss that then

Oops.

Anyway, here are my votes:

Best brilliant hilarity
Barrier
This game is simply ingenius. Just bloody brilliant. Amazing.   out of   Beautiful. Etc etc. I can't wait for the voting to end just to discover who the author is and officially worship him/her/it. Dear author, you have my deepest respect.

Best dopey WTFness
Dehaunt
This game seems to be taking a piss at everything from the common sense to the competition's one room-oriented theme. I love that. I really do.

Best game that doesn't work
Entrapped
Well, at the time of writing this is the only one game from the entire collection that doesn't work. So obviously it wins in that category be default. If later some other games will stop working too, I will of course reconsider my vote on this.
EDIT: Oh. Laugh as much as you will, but suddenly it started working. Disqualified from this category then! Let's reaward it properly.

Best 65536 hotspots adventure game
Entrapped
That's what we're after, after all, isn't it? Interactivity. One sweet overly interactive room flooded with loads of hotspots. What more can an adventure gamer wish for?

Best keeping the old formula fresh
Office Shenanigans
Obviously, the fact that from the whole competition only two three games are typical inventory puzzle-based adventure games supports the opinion that everyone wants only adventure games made only with ags.
Anyway, office shenanigans takes the classic adventure game gameplay and presents it in a new, lovely, clever-written narrative. Why, I love when that happens.

Best THIS GAME IS AAAASS!! game
One Room One Cheese
Well, it's a lovely game with a lovely design and lot of playful references, but. The controls and the utterly challenging level design gave me a strong temptation to record my own playthrough of it in Angry Video Game Nerd style in order to make my own playful reference and also express my frustration.
Because I didn't even finish it. Because I kept dying and dying and-
ASS!
FUCK!!
WHAT WERE THEY THIIINKING?!?!?!

Best sexy fun
Outrage Dreamer Roads 3
Well, this game is sexy and fun. Beautifully vulgar. Ironically overly ironical. I charmed the hell out of me even before the gameplay has begun. Pure win, if you will.

Best intense artsy platformer
Requiem
It's good that Braid wasn't competing in this OROW otherwise it'd make a tough competitor for this game... no, wait a second. I think Braid is boring bollocks actually. So Requiem would take this award anyway. Yes.
So, it's a little bit cheesy stylish-y game, but it's more than enjoyable and playable and even finishable. It has my full sympathy and support.

Best stylish moody immersive drama
The Devil Got My Woman
It was incredibly plesant to stumble upon something like that in the collection. Something dialogue-based, story-centered, feelings-centered, characters-centered, situation-based, you get the idea. The way story went was barely suprising (except maybe the very ending that I can't claim I got 100% right) but at least it was very sincere and didn't fail in any major way and it was very captivating to explore the story's microworld while it lasted. So, er, yay!

In conclusion, as you can see by the size of this post I really miss trying to convince Snarky that King's Quest is boring shit. So yeah, play these OROW games if you haven't! They're fun!

[TomatoesInTheHead]

So I'd like to express my personal impressions of some of submitted entries so their creators may get their bonus moment of glee even if the golden trophy doesn't end up in their hands.

Good idea, I voted and felt that there were too few categories to give every good game here its deserved vote, they're pretty much all somewhere on a scale from "really nice" to "awesome", so no participant should feel like he's losing when he's not winning.

Best game that doesn't work
Entrapped
Well, at the time of writing this is the only one game from the entire collection that doesn't work. So obviously it wins in that category be default. If later some other games will stop working too, I will of course reconsider my vote on this.

Worked for me! It took some time and the solution is

quite a pixel hunt, but amazingly, I didn't find it annoying like I do normally with pixel hunts, and found the needed things - except one - relatively fast because of the choosen graphics style.

I liked the vast amount of interactable clutter and inventory items, so I'd rather like to vote for it in the category
Best use of red herrings

Best intense artsy platformer
Requiem
[...] and even finishable.

This is finishable? Aw, I'm the worst platform gamer ever I kept dying pretty soon and often, even in the OROCheese game I got further. But I really liked the atmosphere, graphics/music/sound effects really fit together.

Best stylish moody immersive drama
The Devil Got My Woman
It was incredibly plesant to stumble upon something like that in the collection. Something dialogue-based, story-centered, feelings-centered, characters-centered, situation-based, you get the idea. The way story went was barely suprising (except maybe the very ending that I can't claim I got 100% right) but at least it was very sincere and didn't fail in any major way and it was very captivating to explore the story's microworld while it lasted. So, er, yay!

Yes, definitely the most serious story-loaden entry in the collection, a bit irritating when you play the games all in a row and happen to come from e.g. ODR3 to this
At first, I found the story a bit creepy, but not so much anymore as it evolved.
There were some bugs like a moving sitting player when it was supposed to walk and a character in the room when they stated in the dialog "Is he still here?" - "No, he's gone now!" - "Let me tell you something about him..." which killed the sincere mood a bit, but won't be hard to fix before it's officially (under the author's name) released.

Edit: Oh and I forgot to mention: All the platformer/non-adventure games did a pretty good job in introducing controls and concepts at each stage/level, I liked that a lot though I'm generally not a big fan of platformers and such because I suck at it.

Really enjoyed playing through the collection, nice variation of different genres, concepts, stories and designs

[Wonkyth]

Wow, Barrier was indeed amazing.
Also, it looks like the winners in each category are already apparent. 

[pmartin]

So I'd like to express my personal impressions of some of submitted entries so their creators may get their bonus moment of glee even if the golden trophy doesn't end up in their hands.

I can't express how much I support this attitude.

[Ponch]

I'm still stuck on a few of them. The platformers in particular. 

But for what it's worth, my sweetie Kim really liked Apple Farm. She thought that with a little polishing, it might make a nice app as a game for kids. Make the later levels timed or some other sort of challenges. I think a big part of it is that she thinks hedge hogs are really cute. 

[ddq]

Played most of them. I couldn't finish quite a few, either due to bugs or the rapid draining of my patience. Still, they were better than my entry on average, which I am also trying to bugfix/polish/resuscitate.

[Wonkyth]

I confess, the platformers posed no trouble to me, rather the adventures without standard puzzles.

[Chicky]

Great entries everyone! Each had it's own unique strengths, the cheese one drove me mad, i went all angry gamer on that last part, also really liked the Cannabalt style platformer, a lot less frustrating! The devil got my woman seemed to come to a complete halt when i glassed the bf, couldn't find anything else to do so i debugged to your test room. All entries had great dialogue and a lovely variety of styles.

Thanks to Dualnames for the dedication, although i'm really not that special!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Gee Ponch, I wonder which game is yours...

[Wyz]

Yes, I don't want to spoil it but I'd never have expected that he'd make a platform game.

[Ponch]

Gee Ponch, I wonder which game is yours...

What?! None of those games are a Barn Runner game. So there's simply no way to tell which one has the special "Ponch Seal of Quality." 

Yes, I don't want to spoil it but I'd never have expected that he'd make a platform game.

That's right! Any of those games could be mine! Maybe I made the apple game. Because I love big, round, juicy... apples.