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Does anyone have The Strange Day?

Next year make those games a little worse, though, so I have a chance of winning an award.

Next year, you just have to beat If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers to get one.  Or perhaps make a short, voiced game and name it Demo. 

"On September 29, 1913, Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the engine that bears his name, disappears from the steamship Dresden while travelling from Antwerp, Belgium to Harwich, England. On October 10, a Belgian sailor aboard a North Sea steamer spotted a body floating in the water; upon further investigation, it turned out that the body was Diesel’s. There was, and remains, a great deal of mystery surrounding his death: It was officially judged a suicide, but many people believed (and still believe) that Diesel was murdered."

You got it

I smell a good plot for a sci-fi game involving a time machine and a desperate environmentalist...

Very impressive glance behind the wizard's curtains. It's fun and interesting both to see how it's done and how the testers' input fits into it.

I fail to comprehend what do they even mean by "male words associated with competent, skillfull, etc". In gendered languages adjectives are gendered too, and each of these traits would come in both male and female form. So they are talking about some nouns then?

Yes. In Norwegian, the nouns may have any of three genders (or two, if you have a specific dialect). An expert, an artist, a professional would all be male nouns, while a genius would be non-gendered ( which is the third gender). There are many positive nouns that are female, too, but I'd guess most are male.

On the other hand, words like fool or idiot are male in Norwegian, too. 

Tesla?

I'm gonna say it:

It grinds my gears immensely that so many people still think Dimetrodon was a dinosaur.

*Bows head in shame, having made my kids play a certain Dimetrodon game when they had a dinosaur project in school*

Indeed, Jethro Tull is correct! 

I reckon the name is foremost associated with the band bearing the same name, but they are named after this historical figure.

He invented a sort of sowing machine that was pulled by horse. The point was even distribution of the seeds (and being drilled into the furrows), giving better crops. He was also heavily involved in debate about agriculture, where his opponents relied mostly on works by Vergil(!).

Other contraptions like this have been invented and used earlier many places, but Mr. Tull gets his share of the credit for modernizing British/European agriculture, at least.

Over to you, Ian! 

Is music involved ?

Yes, Ian. 

Okay, my turn, then.

I want the name of this person of agriculture who made a sort of contraption for sowing seeds without throwing them around.

Curiously, this person is more famous today because of someone else who is known by the same name. 

Perhaps they were ice skating on the canals?

fun. Allowing to drag tiles even when it doesn't delete anything makes it too easy though.

Agreed. Took me a while before I discovered this (by accident). Or perhaps this is just meant to be a feature in the endless mode?

I wasn't distracted by the animation in the background, by the way. Also liked the switch in backgrounds to another level. This makes the player feel progress. I guess that will be more important in other modes. (I'm too much of a "beat the game"-guy to really be in the market for meditative endless play.)

Very clear colours and easy interface. I'm intrigued by the title - will the blocks represent something in story mode?

That's a really interesting peep into the author's mind. 

I liked that

Spoiler

I got the feeling all along that I had to make the wrong choices to advance the story. Sed has to betray everyone he could have had a happy life with in order to pursue the dream that turns out to be false. I reckoned that he was kind of reborn when he entered the parallel universe that turned out to be just like where he came from.

It's an interesting setup for a game, as most games take the opposite approach, where the player has to go for their dreams/risk their life to achive something against all odds.

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[Rock 'n' Roll Will Never Die!]

The first teaser trailer for Rock 'n' Roll Will Never Die! is out now!

Consider me teased! 

Nice story idea. Will you be able to choose which npc to invite to hide and seek, triggering different circumstances/puzzles?

Why are we discussing letting this competition die? All Mandle said is that he'll not be around as much as before. 

*Trying to unconfuse* I assume that BarbWire just assumed that Mandle was the regular host for the competition, like the system is in MAGS and many other competitions.

I played the demo a couple of couples of times.  This was a fun coffee break-sized game. It took me several goes to beat the boss, but I realize now that I only used the weakest weapon.

Everything is a bit small on my laptop, so it's a bit hard to see the numbers of hitpoints or to get an impression of the enemy type. I had too much going on to even think about what distinguished the different kinds of monster. The monster sounds and music added some intensity and worked really well. I constantly found myself dodging enemies and making a run for the princesses, only standing my ground to fight when strictly necessary and at the end of the level.

I'd like a presentation of the obstacles next to the game screen. Now you have to try walking into them to find out what they do. This could very well be done with the enemies as well, like on the arcade machines from back in the day.

The random setup gives the game some replay value and makes some games easy and others hard.

This game is worth playing for the lock puzzle alone! Great stuff! 

My thoughts after finishing the entries:

Huggles Goes on a Trip:

Spoiler

Atmospheric Easter game. I liked the design in levels, where I had to solve the problems in one location before progressing. And the reason it worked, is that the puzzles are designed really well. I especially liked the lock minigame. And the bridge guard had me in stitches. Great dialogue there!

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I Rented a Boat:

Spoiler

How to make a maze that's not a maze? Run around in an open landscape, trying to get a phone signal! This is an experiment with voxelspace rendering, reminding me of time spent playing Super Huey many years ago. I guess the looks won't appeal to everyone, but it's impressive nonetheless. I found this game very hard, but managed to reach the good ending eventually. It was interesting to play something so totally different. I betatested on this one, so I can't vote for it, as I understand the unwritten rules.

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Return Journey:

Spoiler

The timed game mechanics makes a lot of sense in this instance. I had to play twice to save everyone - killed the pilot the first time. I tried to kill everyone after that, just to see if I got to parachute out.  The game teaches a lot of war history in five minutes - you're learning while having fun. One error - the bomb aimer has the tail gunner's description.

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Food Wars:

Spoiler

Slasher is great with talking animals, and this game is no exception. The map is very cool and functional, and the personalities of the animals makes this like another children's book come to life. Also fun with the easy arcade sequences.

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So, who to vote for?

Spoiler

I liked all the games, but I think I had the most fun with the puzzles in Huggles Goes on a Trip, so I will vote for that one.

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I got the good ending!

+1