Note: This is not an official announcement! Any sign-ups and theme voting will take place once an official announcement has been made. This is for discussing your ideas for the competition.Please take this poll to voice your opinion on how themes should be handled.
Competition Starts: Saturday, September 27, 2014 00:00 GMT
Competition Ends: Sunday, November 02, 2014 23:59 GMT
This timeline - while essentially a month - gives developers 37 days and 37 nights to make their games, which also means developers get a total of 12 weekend days (or 17 if Fridays are included).
Instability
Abandoned
Illusion
Emptiness
Grotesque
Imperfect
Madness
Deprived Senses
Omniscient
Alone
Macabre
Possession
Forbidden
Ruthless
Taboo
Shadows
Underground
Reanimate
Disaster
Black Magic
Haunting
Detention
Brokenness
Machines
Invasion
Hunted
Decay
Halloween
It's been a couple of months since the last competition here (I think Kilin did something with completition after the spring competition, but I don't think anything became of that), so I'm wondering how you guys feel about having another one?
You know the drill: one month, prizes, lots of entrants, not as many entries, etc…
We all know how competitions go: 100 people can enter, but only 15 or so actually submit entries. I want to try to combat this, but I realize that some people just can't get motivated to make something or just don't have the time.
Anyway, I'm planning on a late September start and an early November finish since Halloween falls on a Friday this year, which gives people two more weekend days to apply any finishing touches to their entries or to do as much work as they possibly can to finish them knowing some of you guys. The current schedule would give entrants a total of 37 days and 37 nights to create something magnificent and spooky.
There would, of course, be a theme to follow. With themes, I'm all for something completely interpretive, but not something that could potentially be restrictive; the spring competition's theme was limited color palette, which was completely interpretive, but I felt it would most likely be interpreted into the restrictive theme it sounded like to me.
I know open themes can sometimes be counterintuitive as developers have a hard time coming up with something to make when there are so many possibilities, and sometimes it's fun to see what everyone can do within a specific set of development rules; if you know Johnny's going to be making a game based on the same idea as yours, it can sometimes trigger that competitive spirit and motivate you to make the best you can.
In the end, though, it all comes down to this question:
are you interested in a Halloween competition this year?Thoughts, opinions, etc… are welcome.
okay my two cents: if you're gonna have a theme, make it something that will inspire an interesting variety of games. i liked "Deprived Senses", for instance.
just using Ludum Dare as an example. simple themes like Escape, Exploration, Chain reaction, Light and Darkness etc don't sound inspiring at all compared to "Build the level you play", "Advancing wall of doom" or "You are the villain". it's not that people can't be more creative with the former, it's just far more likely for people to copy existing formulas.between F4D's "Lost" theme, and Spring Comp's "limited palette" theme, i think we could be a lot more creative. again, i like "Deprived Senses". anything that might inspire unique ideas.Thinking outside the box!? I can't think inside the box. I don't even see a box. The "too much freedom"-problem is what I suffer from when themes are too loose. You must crush my dreams and nail my mind to the floor, or it will fly away and I'll never finish.
I find it interesting how many people are complaining about the theme being too broad. And for what reason? Learning to train yourself to avoid feature creep is part of what being a game designer is all about. Personally, I don't think these themes should be reduced in scope because I'd like to see a slew of games that are actually different, rather than being the same experience over and over again. To place this restriction on a mechanic in particular (such as the "play the level you build" suggestion) basically takes all the fun and first-time-experience out of it, when you realize that every other entry basically did the same thing.
Strict themes may be a relief to the developer, but they aren't fun for the player in a competition setting. Every time I see a limited color palette theme, someone shoots a kitten in the head.As I told colseed the other night, having a theme does not restrict you from doing anything else you want as long you also use the theme.
If you find inspiration from a theme that doesn't win, who's to say you can't use elements in your game that you would've used for that theme in conjunction with the winning theme? You could find inspiration from a can of soda and put cans in your game as long as you also use the winning theme, or make a game involving squirrels with deprived senses being hunted by mutant soccer moms on Halloween night.In the end, it's all about your creativity and will to make something.It would be interesting to me, if the theme wasn't just a word or a line, but an objective. Like something you can put in your game. Instead of scoping in, you make the participants think of how to include stuff in their game. There could be a list of objectives, where you could choose to use a few of them.
[ ] Pumpkins[ ] Death [ ] Evil LaughterWell, it's an idea I just thought of. I get how just not taking things literally would have a similar effect.I wan't to say that the current list of themes is good, I could roll with almost any of them. The theme is of course only a tiny part of the problem. Maybe there are others steps we could take that would help. Maybe an podcast reporting about the games in their making. Or maybe I just want a weekly 64D-podcast. ^^64 FM.
RC, you got this! Post up the logo and info and junk, man! :D
I know everything isn't official yet, but let us drown in imagehype.