Game Pitch Competition - Round 4: "Son of a Pitch" (RESULTS)

[Snarky]

Sure, we can, but if people want to reveal their identity at this point I won't stop them. It also makes the guessing game a little more manageable.

I have no particular idea whose ideas are whose.

[CaptainD]

Guys, I don't think we are supposed to be saying yet which was whose... Or are we not doing the guessing round this time?

Sorry assumed it was irrelevant with mine once voting over and I didn't get any votes anyway, hope I didn't spoil anyone's fun!

I'll sidle off quietly now...

[Blondbraid]

My pitch was the one with

Spoiler

Pirates. I got inspired from reading about Princess Cecilia of Sweden. When her brother, King John the third couldn't give her the money she was entitled to for her dowry, he gave her a fleet of ships instead, which she used for piracy to such an extent that he eventually had to arrest Cecilia for not being satisfied with merely robbing ships from enemy nations, but the ships of allies to Sweden as well.
And with that said, Cecilia was still one of the less violent members of her family!

[close]

[Cassiebsg]

Guess it's time for some feedback before I run out of time again.

1. Lockdown
I enjoyed the pitch and seemed to be interesting, how ever the "And also you need to work out exactly what is really going on." was off put for me. I guess sometimes I like things to be simple, and that "twist" sounds more to me as "oh, I need more, I need a twist..." Sometimes less is more, and I would have probably voted for this one if not for that.

2. Small Pockets
Stealth, P&C and Real Time don't really sell it for me. I like traditional P&C...

3. Rodric Downes and the Pirate-Princess
Interesting story, but I couldn't see that much of a possibility of puzzling and the ship makes it "limited" space. Since it's from you, I guess the problem is solved since yours games tend to be more story driven than puzzle solving. And I would play it just for that!

4. What A Feeling!
Interesting idea, but again there was no story behind this pitch (waves at CaptainD). Also the way it read it made me think this was more an interactive novel rather than an adventure game.

5. Major Arcana
Got my vote. I liked the idea of a card with magic powers and going on a "quest" to find the remaining cards of the deck. Looking forward to play this in the near future... start working!

6. Cliffhung
To be honest I didn't like this one bit. For the first, as already pointed, it would require the player to know the movies. But the biggest problem I see is that "cliff-hangers" in movies is often what make awesome cause it makes you think about the endless possibilities... nicely neat wrapped endings... probably a cozy feeling and then you soon forget about the movie.
7. Mulled
This ended up being my runners up! Took me a very long while to decide which I liked best. Like before, start working! I don't think the games needs to play exactly as 24 days... cause 1 "quest" here can very well be a "day". So I don't see why that would be a problem.

8. Two Strings Attached
This ended up being on 3rd favourite... I haven't played the mentioned game(s) but the plot seemed a bit on the predictable, which is probably why it ended 3rd. I liked the idea and would be interesting to see how you'd pull that one out.

9. The Professor
I definitely doomed these poor souls. Entry didn't really caught my interest one bit and I "jumped out" at the third sentence.

10. [Untitled]
Story wise seems okay... I think you got penalized for not bothering with a title. I loved Discworld, even though it was rather insane on some of the puzzles, and I do like sierra games... though I've come to really dislike the interface.

11. A Hard Nut to Crack
Nothing really catchy. But could turn out good as a game for children. So if that was your intention, go for it. I'm sure the kids will love those furry cute characters.

[Riaise]

Congratulations to Author Number 5! That was the one I voted for, as it seemed to be one of the most complete ideas and the mystical elements appealed to me. I also really liked number 1, Lockdown, and I'm a bit surprised it didn't get more votes. It sounds like it would be very tense and the mystery of working out what was going on while playing as different characters could work really well. Like Snarky said, it sounds a bit like Resonance, which is a good thing!

[Bulbapuck]

Congraulations to Major Arcana! Thank you Snarky for hosting

9. The Professor
I definitely doomed these poor souls. Entry didn't really caught my interest one bit and I "jumped out" at the third sentence.

This was my entry, and I feel that this was a bit cruel. I know I didn't have the best idea, just a goofy concept floating in my head, but I figured I would give it a shot. It's always nice to learn new things and get feedback, but it sucks to get shut down for something were you really tried. I know that can easily happen when giving feedback to a lot of entries, but I would have personally prefered you just skip my entry here...

I do appreciate the feedback overall though, hope to find the time to write up my thoughts on the other entries. This is not something I'm good at so I'm thrilled I got a vote.

[Snarky]

I know it can be rough, Bulbapuck. It sucked when my entry got no votes in one of the earlier rounds. Just keep in mind that the feedback is only one person's opinion, and when you look at how widely dispersed people's votes for their favorite are, it's clear that people have very different individual reactions.

I'm curious to find out who's behind the winner (I don't think anyone has claimed the credit yet?). I'll keep my entry to myself a bit longer in case someone still wants to guess.

[Cassiebsg]

Bulbapuck, when I give feedback I tend to be honest. It's not meant to put you down or hack on you or anyone else. Personally I value honest feedback, no matter how cruel it may be, cause only then I know that someone cared enough to try and help me get better. And "jumped out" doesn't mean I didn't read the entire pitch. It just rubbed me the wrong way. And you also got some positive feedback from tzachs.
I can't say if the game would awesome or not, but the pitch just didn't sold. Kind of felt you were selling the game to 4-5 year olds, not pitching a game to other adults.

That better feedback?

[Durinde]

I'm not super active in the forums, so I guess I should probably out myself as the winner so people aren't trying to guess one of the regulars. Thanks to everyone that voted for Major Arcana, it's an idea that I've had for a while but haven't gotten around to developing yet.


I was actually suprised on how the voting turned out. From the comments prior to voting, I wasn't sure I'd get any votes, so it was a pleasant surprise.

I think all of the enteries were good ideas and my vote was completely on personal taste and interest.

1. Lockdown: Great solid idea and I can picture it working. Normal people caught up in extradonary circumstances always make for a great narrative and having multiple people with different skills allows for variation in puzzles. If we had mutliple votes, I would have definately used one on this idea.

2. Small Pockets: I can see this working best as a 1st person adventure game where you are sneaking around, building your inventory, and trying not to get caught.

3. Rodic Downes: This is what I actually voted on. I'm a sucker for anything historical and Swedish pirates seems like such a left-field idea that it grabbed my attention the most.

4. What a feeling: Interesting concept, I just had trouble visualizing how things would work. I think with a longer pitch to flesh out the mechanics it is a completely workable idea.

5. Major Arcana: My entry. I had't considered the similarities to Loom as another poster mentioned. I also think the game needs antagonists. I've been thinking about adding a rival element of a shady character trying to grab the cards before you do.

6. Cliffhung: Seems like it might be a fun project. Just didn't catch my attention. Might be a little too meta.

7. Mulled:  This one may have just been about timing. I'm kind of burnt out on hard-boiled detectives at the moment and thinking about Christmas while it's still summer just didn't feel right. Solid concept and completely workable. Lots of potential for comedy

8. Two strings: Good concept and I'd like to see it in action, but as mentioned in Mulled, I'm a bit burned out on detectives.

9. Professor: I like the idea with playing with the adventure genre world by having the player be more of a guide than an active player. Again I'd like to see the longer pitch where the mechanics were explained.


10. Untitled: A lot of potentional. I like the idea of a serious "RPG" character ending up in an "adventure" world. Loveable sidekick that gives a very Sam & Max feel to it.

11. Hard nut to crack: 3rd game to fall victim to my current disinterest in anything involving a detective. Again solid concept and completely workable. Might be a little too "cutesy" for my personal taste.

Again I think all of the base concepts were good. I just voted on the one that caught my attention the most.

[Snarky]

Congratulations, Durinde! I hope you do make this game.

So, in case anyone wants to try to guess, we have:

1. Lockdown -
2. Small Pockets -
3. Rodric Downes and the Pirate-Princess - Blondbraid
4. What A Feeling! - CaptainD
5. Major Arcana - Durinde
6. Cliffhung -
7. Mulled -
8. Two Strings Attached - tzachs
9. The Professor - Bulbapuck
10. [Untitled] -
11. A Hard Nut to Crack -

Other confirmed participants are Stupot, JudasFm, Mandle, Snarky. (As always, I might have overlooked some things.)

[CaptainD]

I think Cliffhung might be Mandle, Lockdown by Snarky and Small Pockets by Stupot+?

[Bulbapuck]

That better feedback?

Absolutely, thank you. I didn't have a problem with it being negative, honest criticism is very helpful. It just gets to me when feedback is just "this was bad" without a reason. I know you didn't mean it that way but I didn't know how else to read it.

[Mandle]

I think Cliffhung might be Mandle

You are correct!

It was just an idea I was making up as I wrote it in the form so I'm quite pleased it got 3 votes.

Snarky probably said it best though that this could ruin the ending of certain movies. Then again, some people hate movies that end without a clear resolution. I don't mind it now and then but I can kind of see these people's point sometimes: If I wanted to spend time getting invested in a story and the characters only to be left hanging with no real conclusion then I have real life to do that for me.

[Snarky]

Lockdown by Snarky?

Nope, but it was my vote!

[dactylopus]

I voted for Major Arcana, so I'm glad it won!  Congrats to Durinde, and thank you to everyone for participating.  It was great fun to read and consider them as games.

My least favorite was the Christmas game.  Those always turn me off.

[JudasFm]

I've no idea which pitch belongs to who, but I can narrow the odds a little by saying that mine was 10

[tzachs]

Snarky probably said it best though that this could ruin the ending of certain movies.

When the game begins, you can ask "which movies have you already seen?" and let the player check all of the movies from a list, and then only put those in the game.

[Mandle]

Snarky probably said it best though that this could ruin the ending of certain movies.

When the game begins, you can ask "which movies have you already seen?" and let the player check all of the movies from a list, and then only put those in the game.

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean "ruin" as in "spoil the ending for the player". I meant it more like Snarky meant when he said that going beyond the ambiguous ending of the movie destroys the reason for that style of ending.

I can see this being true in many cases. Often a movie ends ambiguously to show that life goes on and the character(s) choices beyond that point don't matter as much as their own growth during the time of the story does. Castaway comes to mind as fitting into this category for me.

But sometimes movies seem to use this kind of ending as an excuse to be more mysterious than they really are and/or the writers didn't know how to end the story and/or they ran out of time/money.

These are the ones I would want to see in Movie Limbo.

Oh, and by the way, I voted for Mulled. The advent calendar idea just sounded like a ton of fun to me.

[Snarky]

My least favorite was the Christmas game.  Those always turn me off.

Well, each to their own.

Yes, that one was mine. Thanks for the votes and kind comments, everybody. It's something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I once mentioned the digitally enhanced Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book I made for Secret Santa one year; that was a variation on the same basic idea.

My only concern would be that 24 days could become a bit boring with time. This could probably be mitigated by having Tommy pass out for a few days etc.

I don't think the games needs to play exactly as 24 days... cause 1 "quest" here can very well be a "day". So I don't see why that would be a problem.

I was a bit perplexed by these suggestions, since it seems so clear to me that having one episode per day is essential to the format, but then I realized that even though other countries have (physical) advent calendars, "Yule Calendar" serials (Christmas-themed TV shows with one episode per day from 1. to 24. December) is a uniquely Scandinavian tradition. (These often come with a traditional advent calendar as a licensed tie-in, where each window reveals something related to today's episode.) That's the kind of thing I want to recreate in adventure form.

So in case it wasn't clear, I meant that the game would literally be released on a day-by-day basis in December, with a new chapter becoming available every day (most likely as a browser-based game).

[Stupot]

Seems like most people are just announcing their own work rather than guessing, which is fine by me. Mine was Lockdown. Thanks to Snarky for the vote.

I hadn't intended to rip off Resonance, but I guess I did a little bit. I wanted to convey that it would be quite twisty and that you might not necessarily be able to trust even the player characters. In that sense it is probably even more like Resonance.

It's quite a challenge with such a low word count to convey an original idea, with a hint about gameplay, storyline, genre etc, while also trying to hype it up and make it sound appealing. I don't envy the people whose job it is to do this for a living...

Actually wait, I do envy them. That would be a great job.