Yay, I got a 'best of the rest' for the game I entered into the YoYo Competition 03, The Lovers. It also sits here, but got no substantial comments. It is strange, but I keep thinking that if this is a good game (which I think it is, and the YoYo lot seem to agree) there might be some other reason why it doesn't seem to get a response. Doesn't even get a negative response, really. The clanging silence that is more or less the internet version of 'meh', perhaps.
So either it is because it just doesn't seem to entertain the core demographic at either 64D or YoYo (which might be a content issue), or that the act of entering it into a competition means that it is treated very differently by the audience. On YoYo at the minute it has been played 54 times, rated 14, and has a rating of 2.4. Here it didn't even get enough attention to have its rating published. I am left wondering if it would have been so ignored (and I do think it was quite original in its flipping between dimensions in which blocks are owned by one character or another) if I hadn't entered it into competition 03.
Which leaves me pondering about whether I will enter any competitions again -- not whingeing about the downrating that gets everyone so upset, but that it seems counterproductive if your intent is to get a game played.
Ah, what the hell, I just got a LBP Beta key off IGN, so maybe I can divert my game making energies somewhere else for a while. :)
Daedalus & Son
I was pretty pleased with this in the end, and hope to make a sequel. I only hope it generates enough plays and subsequent comments that it allows me to make improvements.
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Here’s the blurb:
Daedalus & Son is a platform game where soaring flight replaces stilted jumping, and keyboard bashing is replaced with graceful mouse movement. Control Icarus as he enters the Labyrinth of the Minotaur and try to keep his feathers from frying and his wax from melting as he is assaulted by unique enemies and caught in the traps and puzzles devised by his genius father.
- A new look at a familiar genre, where the platform is your enemy and not your friend.
- Enemies and hazards unique to the game, including the Medusa and the Roc.
- Unlock all levels for later exploration.
- Hero or Mortal Difficulty, and ranking on completion.
- Novel and satisfying mouse flight control.
- 25+ Levels.
- Lean design -- no padding, no filler.
I have a fair on the green just below my back garden today, which I hope will help get my brain thinking about possible additions – I can recognise that Daedalus & Son is essentially a digital version of an old electrical wire loop game, and am hoping for inspiration among the candy floss and wurlitzers.
I went back to Hail Caesar, the game I entered in the YoYo Ancient Civilisation Competition over the weekend and discovered a terrible bug -- hit the spacebar and the whole distraction apparatus (the spinning eye, the alpha plane etc.) vanished. No one who had played seems to have noticed, for which I will thank the fact that it is entirely mouse control throughout, so players are unlikely to strike the keyboard. And it is sitting firmly at 61 out of the 120 odd games, which makes it firmly average. I think it is a better game than that, but hey, the way people approach competition games is odd. Or maybe it is a decidedly average game, and the voters at YoYo are wise.
I wish I was an animator, however, as I think there are real possibilities in the expose/distract/reveal mechanic that sits here that could make it a much more interesting visual experience. I see a sci-fi version in my minds eye, with scrolling computer text and malfunctioning OS as the distractions. Maybe too tempting to do a Matrix, but there are real possibilities. And aliens in place of the Roman citizens. Which won't make sense to anyone who hasn't played the game.
And I finished the game that Stack5 was a part of, but I don't think I have the nerve to post it here. It is an experiement that I think works when it shouldn't according to conventional design wisdom -- 3 separate games that intrude on each other and are played simultaneously. There is Stack5 on the left, a lane swapping driving game on the right, and a Pong variant played across the two playfields.
OK, so I am new to 64Digits (as a poster of games at least) and thought I should mark my arrival with a post. I make little experimental prototype games more as an attempt to understand how games work than huge masterpieces that rival commercial AAA games, and I have started to migrate the better ones over here from where they have been up on YoYo.
So far the experience has been really positive -- useful and constructive feedback, so I am one happy new guy.
