OROW 2008 - Results!

[evenwolf]

I just played Seed, yeah I saw what you meant.   But I thought it was really creative and loved the animations.    I also played Unfinished Business and thought the tag team aspect was super.   I want to see a longer game using that system, where like each guy has his own strengths and weaknesses.    And there are even penalties for assigning the wrong guy to the task.

[MashPotato]

Always the bridesmaid and never the bride--oh alas!   Thanks for the mention Scotch!  I'm glad people enjoyed playing the game, I had fun making it

A hearty congrats to all the winners (I can't completely remember, but I think that's the way my voting went too ) and it was great to see so many entries.  My personal faves were How Many (which made me laugh), Cheerful Science (very cute), and Chatroom (which actually overcame my usual aversion to text parsers ), but I think all the entries merit a huzzah, so...

HUZZAH!

[AJA]

What, again? A great big thanks to everyone who voted! I'm glad you enjoyed "How Many..." And I won best writing too, what's up with that? Usually I only get comments like: "Who wrote this crap?"


And now, some comments on the games:

Baltazar the Familiar: I didn't finish this one. Seemed nice. There were a lot of interactions missing which left a very unfinished kind of feel to it. And you couldn't skip the intro; that was my biggest problem with the game. The graphics looked good and the puzzles (the ones I was able to figure out, anyway) were interesting.

Beauties And Beasts: My favourite. Loved the art and concept and the music fitted nicely too. I was a bit disappointed when we didn't get to see what the player character looked like in the end.

Chatroom: A clever idea. Once you got through the beginning, the story really pulled you in and I was really determined to find out how it ended, even though it took some time to figure out what I should type to get a response.

Cheerful Science: A nice game. A bit generic but fun to play.

Man Boy vs Doctor Sock: Very nice graphics and music, and a nice idea too. However, I didn't really enjoy the gameplay much because it was only about running to the next object and pressing space and then the game tells you to run to the next object, etc.

One Week, One Room: Well, this was clearly made in a hurry. Lots of bugs, and the story wasn't very interesting.

ONNA: Uh... whuh?

Seed: Great graphics and the concept was very interesting. Obviously the biggest problem was that the game ended before it really even started.

Think Outside the Boxland: Didn't finish this one either. Not much to say about it since there was very little content.

Unfinished Business: A really great idea! It's a shame the game was too short to really benefit from the gameplay mechanics. Hopefully we'll see more of this in a longer game.

Wisp: I loved the concept and puzzles. Nice game!



Also, I'd like to mention that I'm currently working with MadReizka (we won OROW4 with The Heist) to bring you a game that combines 3D background graphics (they look just amazing, MadReizka has really exceeded all my expectations) with green screened characters (as seen in my first OROW entry, Alone in the Night). The demo will be out during this summer, keep checking the GiP board!
[/shameless plug]

Thanks again for voting for How many! And thanks to everyone who entered for the great games! I had so much fun playing them.
Hopefully the next OROW will be before 2010


-edit-
Added to database:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=1045

[LimpingFish]

Oh, wow. Thanks everybody for voting Seed Best Visuals.

I'd like to apologise for not including any substantial  gameplay, seeing as my game weighed in at a hefty 22mb download, but I seriously ran out of time and was still working on the game minutes before I had to upload it. As to it comparing it to Hentai, well, people obviously need to play more Hentai games if they think a little PG-13 nudity constitutes Hentai.

My favourite was AJA's How Many...with's it's crisp graphics, and great writing. Cheerful Science's opening screen had me laughing before I'd even started to play, and Akatosh's characters are always funny.

Man Boy vs Doctor Sock was also visually very appealling, but I was disappointed the gameplay didn't match. Chatroom was an excellent example of the power of good player immersion, although I have to admit to giving up before the end. Beauties and Beasts had a wonderful quirky style, and was funny to boot.

Think Outside the Boxland and Onna were both experimental, and as such, deserve credit for trying something new. Unfinished Business was too damn short, but with more content could be a fine game. Wisp had great graphics, and a cute story. As had Baltazar the Familiar, which also had a few annoying niggles that I think hurt it overall. And One Week, One Room was literally that; the very essence of OROW!

All in all, a great turn out with lots of fine work done in an incredible short time frame.

Hooray!

[bicilotti]

Nice work Limpin', I was impressed by the graphical results of your game! I wonder how you made such a fine 3d enviroment. Good job again!

[Dualnames]

Experimental.. it was just a bowl falling from the sky. I wanted to add more like comments and difficult but i wrapped the thing in one day since exams where on the way. I shouldn't have bothered making it anonymous. Who didn't thought I made it..?

[ThreeOhFour]

The "DN" logo at the very beginning kind of made me realise very quickly that you'd made it. Plus the fact that it was a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

[Ishmael]

Hello, I'm back from being not here. A nice lot of games.

Congrats to the winners from my part aswell. Everything I'd have said has already been said, so...

Thanks everyone for your comments on Unfinished Business. I do have an excuse for it being, once again, very short, and that is some problems with my artist, which forced me to do the art aswell myself. I had quite a bit more planned out. And for a sequel I think I could say it's already in the works. Judging by the way of things so far you'll be hearing of it in the esteemed 2010. I'm nearing the point with the prequel for Tomb of the Moon where the actual production of the game could maybe start.

[Vince Twelve]

Finally got back from my vacation and am having a chance to look at these!  I wish I had been able to vote!  I'm going to leave comments as I play them.  If the game has its own thread in Completed Games, I'll post there.

Baltazar:

I really liked the cute art and the funny dialog, though there was too much talking.  The colors were really nice all around.  The puzzles seemed interesting, with some that were not quite your standard adventure fare, so way to go there.  However, a lot of things were toooo frustrating.  One mistake you made that many people make is to have no clear hotspot on your cursors.  I have no idea what I'm pointing at with almost all of the cursors.  Cursors and inventory objects all need to have a clear point or arrow that shows what I'm pointing at.  Also, the charging of items was really frustrating since I had to click the second time in a tiny little window of time to send a charge.  It took me around ten tries per charge to get it right, and to add to this annoyance, I was only given like two seconds with the floating robot.  I would have never figured out that I needed to use him via the inventory in that amount of time if I hadn't read it in hints and tips.  I never finished the game because of the mentioned frustrations, but I liked your concept and clever writing.  I just wish you had been able to spend more time on ironing out the kinks.  Great job for a week, though!


Beauties and Beasts:

commented in Completed Games thread

Chatroom:

I've already talked to JBurger about this, but for the record, I really like how he took what is essentially a chat bot and framed a working story around it.  There's no way that he'd be able to cover all the responses for all the things someone might try to type (but I know he's been tweaking it and adding more before adding it to the DB) but he still did an admirable job.  Nice, unique, and atmospheric, despite being just a computer screen!  Well done!

Cheerful Science

Haha, I loved the ridiculous writing and story.  I LQTMRTOLBIWAW'ed (laughed quietly to myself rather than out loud because i was at work) at the superfluous narration machine.  The gameplay and graphics were not very interesting.  Your graphic style is cute and definitely lends itself well to your writing style.  The gameplay was just simple one inventory item nets you the next inventory item, repeat, repeat, finished.  Nothing to call home about.  But at least it wasn't completely illogical and convoluted.  If I may put on my usability designer cap again, I think this game would have lent itself better to a simple two button play style.  There was really no need for talk/use/walk/look/inv and right clicking through all those always annoys me when there are no items in which two different verbs produce two different, useful actions.  But it was a nice, funny, short game.  Well done.

How Many?

Very clever!  I feel dumb that the meaning of the title never struck me until it was spelled out for me upon completion.  The first time I played it seemed just like a simple domestic-setting game and I couldn't understand what made it so great until I accidentally walked into the bear trap.  Walking around with just one leg without my character caring was so funny.  I replayed several times just to see how many ways I could kill myself.  I wish I could have continued walking around with my stumps.   I got electrocuted, de-legged, set on fire, and burned the house down.  Did I miss any?  Another nice one room by the king of the OROW!  Congrats, AJA!

Man Boy vs Doctor Sock

The graphics in this game were fantastic!  Very adorable.  The writing was also quite good.  I think that a game like this with some light platforming elements (see any of Bernie's platformers) would be fantastic.  As it stands, the gameplay is a bit of a letdown when it's set in such a gorgeous game.  As has been mentioned it's just following orders and requires little to no thinking.  Part of that is the small number of things you can interact with, and part is the extreme linearity of "I don't know, go ask X" "Here you go, take this to Y".  Again, with some light platforming elements and a bit more puzzle variety, this could be a real winner.  I would love to see you expand it a little bit.  Perhaps more islands beyond the one you start on.  More of a quest to find the book/molly.  Anything to see this little gem get the polish it deserves!  Great job Ben!

One Room One Week

Not really sure what I'm supposed to say...  Yay?

ONNA

Nice Hitchhiker reference.  The falling/scaling effect worked well.  But I'm not really sure what to do.  You just click on the whale at the appropriate altitude?  I managed to land on the whale and I managed to not land on the whale.  Neither resulted in anything interesting happening, I just got kicked back to the title screen.  Was that all there was?

Seed

Excellent presentation as always from Limping Fish!  Not a whole lot to say here.  Obviously there's not much gameplay.  I was interested enough in the story to want to continue.  Pity that's all there was.  I would have liked to see a puzzle or some kind of meaningful interaction.  Anyways, it looks purdy!

Think Outside the Boxland

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do.  Don't know the magic word or how to get behind the big red thing.  Interesting presentation and concept though.

Unfinished Business

I really liked the idea of ordering around the guys.  It was a little annoying, though, that sending one guy into the cabin results in nothing, but sending the dumb guy in gets you the crowbar.  So, essentially, you have to try everything twice.  The game might be better with just the main character and one side character, and making them cooperate is important for the puzzles.  Nice concept.  Pity it was so short, but obviously you were just held back by the time limit, and it came out really well.  Good job!  I'd like to see this idea expanded upon.

Wisp

Still playing... little stuck... asking in the hints and tips forum...

[AJA]

I got electrocuted, de-legged, set on fire, and burned the house down.  Did I miss any?  Another nice one room by the king of the OROW!  Congrats, AJA!

Thanks! Well... you can cut off your arm if you try to pick up the bear trap.

The point of the whole game was to make the first injury a complete surprise, and it seems to have worked pretty well.

[Dualnames]

Well, I wanted to put more but I had many exams, so yeah unfortunately just nothing cool to see. I would put something from later books but it would end up a huge spoiler to those that haven't read, and I'd hate to steal all the fun from them...

[cat]

@Dualnames:

when I told my boyfriend about your game without mentioning its name, he said "yeah, and the flower thinks 'Not again!'" So obviously you have to have read the book to get it 

[Akatosh]

The point of the whole game was to make the first injury a complete surprise, and it seems to have worked pretty well.

It did. What happened after interacting with the bear trap threw me completly off track... in a good way.

[Dualnames]

@Dualnames:

when I told my boyfriend about your game without mentioning its name, he said "yeah, and the flower thinks 'Not again!'" So obviously you have to have read the book to get it 

Well, apparently but I was referring to book four

Spoiler

agrejagg, if i haven't mistaken the name, that gets killed so many times by Dent, one of them being the bowl.

[close]

[Ishmael]

It was a little annoying, though, that sending one guy into the cabin results in nothing, but sending the dumb guy in gets you the crowbar.  So, essentially, you have to try everything twice.  The game might be better with just the main character and one side character, and making them cooperate is important for the puzzles.

The point here actually is, although it really wasn't that well conveyed through, that both of the guys do their own thinking, and think up what they might need and what they don't. But the time limit and my little extra problems had their part on this aspect falling a bit short, aswell.