One Room, One Week Competition 2 - WINNERS ANNOUNCED

[Ghormak]

I am glad to see that Anna was one of the games with the highest score, but I'm equally sad that the game it tied with (Alone in the Night) was the most generic and self-referential of the bunch (no offense, I see that effort went into this game, and the character animation is awesome, but it's also exactly the kind of point and click game I'm getting so tired of).

I see the OROW competitions not only as an opportunity to make games, but as an opportunity to turn wild and crazy ideas into games, ideas you might not be able to fully work into a complete, ambitious big game. Games that have a little something in them gameplay-wise you might not see in other AGS games. The "One Room" criterion makes OROW an ideal testing ground for new features, because nobody is going to complain if your game is too short! "Generic AGS Game - Lite Version" is the last thing I want to see.

If you think I'm asking for too much, then you're probably right. After all, I don't really like adventure games as we know them.

[Vince Twelve]

Wow, thanks for the kind words and the votes everybody.  I wasn't sure how well Anna would go over since it's not the standard game that every one is used to.  Congratulations also to AJA for the tie.

A few responses:

Only complaint would be that, as smart the puzzles were, it was very apparent that they were 'puzzles' puzzles, which sorta killed the suspension of disbelief.

Haha, I totally agree.  If I were playing this game, not having made it, I would think 'What kind of idiot engineer designed a computer using a tower of Hanoi puzzle and a lights-out-style virus remover?' I blame that on the lack of time spent on design and planning.  I had the idea for the pseudo-3D and the basic story, but my puzzle design consisted of "...and there will be puzzles."     They were fun to program though!

Great scripting and a fantastic visual style. I thought the philosophical dialog was rather weak, and forcing the pacing (no text skip) very cruel. I liked the twist at the end.

You can skip text when Hero is shown in the room.  It's only the text that is laid over a GUI that can't be skipped.  This is due to the way I implemented it in combination with a lack of planning and time.  This will be fixed for the official release.

Speaking of which, I'm polishing the game up for a full release.  Any comments and suggestions welcome via PM.

I did want to do a full runthrough of comments for all the games, but I've just returned from a long trip and I've got to sleep for 16 hours now.  I'll get to them eventually.

Thanks again!

[hedgefield]

It was fun participating in this contest, and I may enter future contests aswell, yet the circumstances were especially favorable here. There were some great entries. Thanks for those who voted for me, even though I can't even bring myself to call it an actual game.

It originally had another character, an afro-american brush, but due to the time limit I had to cut him, and thus the puzzle element was kinda reduced to nothing. I liked working on it, so I might pick it up again after I finish TMC, and make it a full-featured game with multiple rooms and such.

Congrats to the winners and looking forward to the next OROW.

[Vince Twelve]

My probably useless and definitely late thoughts:

Alone in the Night:
Excellent graphics.  The story was a bit silly, but the production values were excellent.  Nothing exciting and new (except the excellent - if slow moving - main character) but it covered all the bases of your standard adventure game, and covered them all well.  It was a well made and polished adventure game and it is clear why this game won.  I loved the "slow camera man" comment after the vertical pan.

Another:
Very short and very easy, but sharp graphics.  I would have loved to see more and for it to have a bit of a story.

Baghdad:
I loved Baghdad and was laughing out loud at several points during the game.  There wasn't a whole lot there, but it was altogether an enjoyable little joke game.

Balloon Face:
Terribly funny.  "MY CLARITY OF MIND IS UNMATCHED!!!"  Even though the dialog was hilarious through out, I did get a little bit bored wading through so much of it.  (Though that is a terribly hypocritical thing to say having delivered a 15 minute cutscene in my game...  )  I'm not sure that this game deserved the puzzle award, but the writing award was an easy pick here.

Dance Til You Drop:
A hilarious tribute to a great man.  Graphics were awesome.  I guessed the author correctly because only ProgZmax could have sprited that much in a week and still had time to make an entertaining game.  My gripes were with the waaay too difficult to navigate inventory and the questionable cursor hotspots.

Gladiator Quest:
I loved the readme and found it a necessary read in order to play the game.  The fighting was great.  The best part of this game, in my opinion, was that each Champion fighter had his own distinct fighting style, and learning this fighting style from the trainer was important for forming your battle strategies.  Amazing scripting there.  Well done!  And thank god for the wuss patch!

Hiyah:
Great art, but some fairly illogical puzzles.  I didn't like that I had to stand in a specific place in order to use a certain object.  It seemed that a bit of time could have made this into a much better game.

In Limbo:
The game crashed for me when I was to go to heaven.  Good GUI and fairly good graphics, but not a lot here.  Seems like a good starting point for a very good game though.

I Think:
I guessed the author correctly here as well thanks to the adeptly crafted horror atmosphere.  The ripped graphics left something to be desired though and quite often made me laugh and lose my sense of immersion, which in turn took away from the atmosphere.  Good voice effects.

Sammy Sperm:
Fantastic voice acting, but not much of a game around it.  Funny concept and a satisfying climax.  (Bah dum ching)

Sheet:
I think this could really be fleshed out into a great game rather than a simple dialog puzzle.  Allowing the doodle to get inked, which gives him some more freedom and possible actions...  Then he can get colored, which gives him even more actions... then get a walking animation...  Then he could get... rendered in 3D?  Whatever, it could turn into a fun and novel game with some fun and innovative puzzles.

The Find:
I loved the Dig, and so loved the direction that this game was moving.  Good graphics.  But the puzzles were a bit weak.  I would have liked to see more.  It was fun.

I really enjoyed taking part in the One Room One Week contest.  It allowed me to explore a fun and different idea that I had floating around in my head without it dominating more than a week of my time.  I hope we have more of these contests, because I think they are an excellent way to practice scripting or explore fun new gameplay innovation and test out your ideas on the community.

Thanks again!  Expect a polished release of Anna in the next couple of weeks!

[hedgefield]

Sheet:
I think this could really be fleshed out into a great game rather than a simple dialog puzzle.  Allowing the doodle to get inked, which gives him some more freedom and possible actions...  Then he can get colored, which gives him even more actions... get a walking animation...Whatever, it could turn into a fun and novel game with some fun and innovative puzzles.

That was the exact plan as it had formed in my mind that fateful evening when I had the idea for it.

[AJA]

Thanks to everybody who voted for Alone in the Dark. It was a huge load of work but I think it works quite nicely visually. I'm suprised that the main character worked that well (it's me, omg!). At first I just thought of taking photos of myself and drawing over them but thanks to Mad Reizka I decided to try this. Well, I'm glad you liked it. As I'm not very good at coming up with interesting and original ideas, I tried to use the idea of a ghost house and focus on the graphics. I just tried to make a game that I would like to play myself (meaning that there won't be too much dialog and it won't be too hard to finish).

And congrats, Vince Twelve, that game of yours was an incredible piece of coding. I loved the puzzles though I didn't really know what to do at first because I kinda skipped the intro...

Balloon Face:
Like I said before, I'm not a big fan of long dialog sequences, so I just skipped pretty much everything the first time I played it, and when I had finished I thought: "Wtf?" So, then I read here on the forums comments about people saying it's a hilarious game, so I decided to replay it without skipping anything. And it was very funny, though I still thought there was too much dialog, but I liked it a lot more after the second try. "I win" ...what a way to end a game (I still smile every time I think of that game.)

Dance Til You Drop:
I liked this game the most. It just seemed to have a lot more content than any of the other entries. And I loved the idea ...though I hate puzzles like the safe puzzle. I had figured out the correct date (no googling) but I thought the numbers would be between 0-9 So, that's where I screwed it up.

Gladiator Quest:
First of all, the readme was a bit annoying since I'd just like to read the necessary part (how to play, what should I do, etc.) and in this case it was quite hard to find. Also, as I have a TFT display, the AGI plugin forced me to play it using 320x200 which is very blurry in full screen and tiny in windowed mode so that was a bit annoying. I also, like many it seems, didn't finish it because you couldn't save. But otherwise it looked beautiful and the fighting was well done but I didn't really know what I was supposed to do. Maybe I should've read the readme entirely.


Thanks again for voting!
Maybe I'll try again next time with something... more original