SET UP!
By
Acebloke
Theme: Noir
Result: Complete
Returning Participant
SET UP is, like most GiaD games, single player. The player controls Sharp Simon, an investigator who has crossed the mob. But why sit around and listen to my rehash of the story, when Acebloke has provided a lively interactive version? Helpfile present, no bugs or oddities found, and the interface is easy to use. The first map is always the same, and gameplay is deterministic, so once you've won it once you know how to win it every time. However, a random map is generated after the first win, so there is always a new challenge (though I suspect some of those randomly generated levels may be unwinable). My only complaints are with the rebooting at the end of the game, and that the entry was somewhat limited in scope.
Maize Maze
By
ATP Development
Theme: Noir
Result: Complete
Returning Participant, Third Event
Maize Maze is a standard maze game where the player must find his way to the exit while avioding various enemies. Some of these enemies may be bypassed if the player has collected the appropriate weapon. The game is complete, with starting and ending handled well, and no runtimes were encountered while testing. There is a bug with map generation, however, which can leave a player stranded in a tiny corridor with no means to advance to the next level, and no way to advance the game; this was encountered rarely. Help file present. The game is well presented and easy to play. Bonus points for the Zombies Ate My Neighbors reference. As someone who grew up playing in corn fields, I have to wonder if any member of ATP has ever been in a corn maze. The maze doesn't loop around on itself at any point, and the game fails to capture any of the feel of a corn maze (though perhaps I'm being to critical). The monsters are frustraiting, and you'll find yourself bounced between the levels an aweful lot, with not much that you can do about it. A strong well made entry, but without the magic I've come to expect from Airjoe, Tommq, and Pmac.
Battle For the Sandwhich
By
Jeff8500
Theme: Sandwhich
Result: Complete
You are a sentient mold creature, and you've snatched up a prime piece of real-estate: an entire sandwhich. In order to ensure the survival of your offspring, you must now use your spore cannon (fully rotatable) to blast hostile spores from landing and taking over. Good use of world.tick_lag, trigonometry, and a custom interface makes this battle a very smooth gameplay experience. The game is presented well, except in how the end is handled; you are simply booted out of the game after receiving your final score. I would have loved to have seen more diversity in the play field, such as health and weapon powerups, and smart enemy spores. Perhaps different colored spores would react differently, with red spores moving toward you in arcs, and blue spores actively avoiding hostile fire. Perhaps enemy spore cannons could move forward and fire at a slow rate, forcing you to pay attention to them (instead of just spinning and hitting space as quickly as possible). A great entry, and a prime candidate for polishing.
Arcane Thief
By
Sync Jolt
Result: Complete
Arcane Thief is a side-scrolling stealth game which reminds me of Tenchu. Players must sneak up to the guards, unnoticed, and dispatch them in order to progress through each level. Eventually, the player will find the book of Arcane Magic and learn a spell strong enough to dispatch the Archmage in a (anti)climatic battle. This game is fun, with a lot of reply value, but was almost unplayable in the form Sync Jolt originally sent it to me. Several very nice features were later added, and these were present before the deadline... however, I have lost those .zip files, and only have the very first one. Though the first .zip file is present for those who want to see the source code, I'd suggest downloading the game from it's hub entry. The varied spells and skills are nice, and those guys with the yellow swords are cool (though I have no clue what's special about them). I really liked the graphics and effects in this entry. Unfortunatly, there are some runtime errors associated with getting caught by the guards. Quote : "At first this was going to be about A black guy killing Sandwhich monsters" This actually sounds fun.
Media Tycoon
By
JP
Theme: Communication
Result: Playable
Returning Participant, Third Event
Media Tycoon is JP's third entry into a GiaD event, and shows his usual attention to detail and ability to provide great depth of gameplay with a minimal set of features. In this entry, players are placed in charge of a start-up newspaper company with distribution in one town. Your goal is to increase readership and profits in each town so that you can buy out your competition or expand to other cities until only one news company remains. From my experience playing the game, this entry seems to meet most of the requirements for a complete playable game, when you can play it. The proceedurally generated content takes about a half hour to load on my computer (though most of the time it locks up and will never complete loading); this is partially the fault of my low end computer. The two times I've been able to load up and play a game I was given a town with such a small population that I could only make about $0.10 dollars every turn, meaning that after about 50 turns I would get bought out by a company from out of town. Harsh. From everything that I can see, this looks to be a great game. Please polish this up so I can play it properly.
Noir
By
Mechana2412
Theme: Noir
Result: Impressively Unplayable
This game should have been something great. The opening sequence is more than what we normally get on BYOND, and works very well. The entire project is highely stylized, and from the instructions I've read I'm guessing the RTS aspects of it would have been fun... had they been present in any form. Perhaps I'm just missing something, perhaps the game is buried somewhere in there, or present in some .dm file that went missing from the final .zip. Or, Mechana2412 ran out of time. Please polish this up.
Joe Schwarzer
By
IainPeregrine
Theme: Noir
Result: Unplayable
Half the day was spent programming the typewriter journal effect which would have introduced each level. The other half of the time went toward writing a custom movement system... until I realized (with about 1 hour left to go) that I had already written IainPeregrine.IP_px. Once I plugged that library into the game work progressed rapidly, but not rapidly enough. Running, jumping, and firing does not constitute a playable game. The typewriter sound was produced with SFXR.