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Who should win the Gamer's Choice award? This poll is closed. |
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| Spiritual Seth |
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0 | 0% |
| Take Two Treehouse |
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2 | 2.35% |
| Public Access TV: Superstar |
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6 | 7.06% |
| The Rage of Painting |
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0 | 0% |
| Jeremy's Dance Magic |
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11 | 12.94% |
| You Have To Do Everything |
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5 | 5.88% |
| #YesCallMen |
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33 | 38.82% |
| Kooking With Krugg |
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3 | 3.53% |
| Night Vision TV |
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8 | 9.41% |
| Hypnovision |
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4 | 4.71% |
| Public Access Wars |
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3 | 3.53% |
| Sink |
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5 | 5.88% |
| 2:22 AM |
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3 | 3.53% |
| Public Axes |
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1 | 1.18% |
| Wizard Broadcast Special |
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1 | 1.18% |
| Total: | 85 votes | ||
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Yes, countless devs worked tirelessly to create these games, and this is the last time many of them will see the light of the world... Our fragile egos are in your hands. With only pennies a day (0 pennies to be exact) you can make a difference. Won't you critique a game today? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gspElv1yvc
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Sep 21, 2014 14:31
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GOONS ARE MEAN 
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 19:19 |
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Alright, I was going to proofread this more but I'm tired of looking at it. Spirtual Seth For such a simple game the packaging was pretty charming! The tutorial needs work and I kind of feel like I won it both times by happenstance (which I can see as the joke, but that's not really satisfying gameplay-wise). I thought maybe I was supposed to try for an obviously positive/negative card (which were a bit hard to read), but I seemed to do much better if I just gut-checked whatever popped up after highlighting the crystal ball for awhile. It's pretty simple so I would've liked to see some experimental gameplay or narrative to push it further, including more dialogue options (I only caught one prank call!). You get bonus points for the inclusion of codes and other "metagame" ideas; a fine game to have a slice of cherry pie and a cup of coffee with. I also liked the mode where I kept accidentally hitting the spacebar which causes real life confusion for moments at a time. Hint: that's the only mode. I really doubt I'll be able to see a sweaty psychic again and not think of ol' Seth. Take Two Treehouse Wednesdays  . (Please note I wrote this before the last update or two). Fairly nice! I think I did okay, actually, although I got murdered in that last week despite playing safe on the script and trying to stock patrons before that (you know that guy you were going to film the last three days with? WELP). I was kind of expecting a resolution or wrap-up screen rather than Week 6 (which was past Final Week) and then a black screen, but I'm going to guess I stopped the aliens in the final climactic moments and then everybody applauded. I think the (seemingly?) randomness of the various parts of the game (scripts, actors, negative events) really killed me as I'd always have like one stat that far outweighed everything else, even as I played better. Although the mini-games didn't do anything for me (I didn't fail the word one, and the lawnmower one was too repetitive, and double a bummer if I got grounded soon after anyway), the mechanics of it worked well enough that I made sure to see it to the end! Oh, I should mention that I didn't get to try the Scene Shooting Minigame as I only hit that option once and it would've been a particularly bad choice at the time. The real key is I should knock off this film school stuff and get a real job mowing lawns 6 days a week  . More characterization (the film showing/filming, the actors, the events, etc.) would've done wonders, as well as tightening up the tactical part of it, but I liked what I saw. I really think the idea there (of "genre" plus "makeshift", "scrappy", whatever you want to call it) is strongly appealing, too.Public Access TV: Superstar Cute graphics, really nice presentation out from the gate. Really fun that you get to see what you're making, and I like to see more of things like that (in this game and others). Unfortunately I found it got samey pretty fast, and I felt that there wasn't much strategy involved (especially hiring when you finish a few genres; maybe some more bonuses [in lieu of the actor specialization which almost felt more like a penalty] for experimentation?). While I felt all the clicking and guessing eventually got to me, it was a cute game! In case anyone wants to see what happens when you get them (after you try the game), the best pairings the manual mentions are: western musical (afternoon), fantasy horror (night), sci-fi war (night), kids adventure (afternoon), military action (evening), spy high art (late night), historical objective (night/late night), gamer gameshow (night), romance comedy (afternoon), religion how-to (late night), sports academic (afternoon), modern mystery (afternoon), medical thriller (afternoon), legal drama (late night), reality parody (afternoon) The Rage of Painting Oh man, I've always wanted an Art Academy for the PC! Apply some more art theory, add stronger ambiguously threatening narrative (and some way to better draw attention to it), a stronger critique system (I noticed the debug messages, lol)... it'd be difficult to get right, but awesome. Really fitting music, too, it's hard to get upset painting the happy, uh, trees and stuff. I was pretty captivated, although maybe not the most gamey or wide-appealing of the bunch. I liked it a lot, though  Btw, who says you get better with practice? It's an apple. Jeremy's Dance Magic I really liked that there was some strategy involved, it almost played like a weird FPS/tower defense hybrid. I think it made me appreciate it more than if it was just a wacky junk-throwing game (Please note I played Sink awhile after this: what a phrase to choose! I'll leave it though as it applies really differently), although I wouldn't have minded a few more "toys" or weird puzzles. Oh, the game could perhaps use a bit more feedback and wind-up animations (and some better UI stuff maybe?), and the mouse did seem rather oversensitive. You Have To Do Everything Congrats on your first game! I wasn't exactly into it, but TOMORROW SHAKES BELIEFS WIDELY HELD. I did really like the use of sound effects as it gave it a more hectic feel; it was a nice touch that helped sell that you do, in fact, have to do everything. Btw, I tried it on Waterfox (Win7 x64) and also couldn't get the credits to load. #YesCallMen Oh man, that was really good, should be played just for Everdraed's voice alone. I don't even really go out of my way to play card games or anything and I put a lot of time into it! Another game with a good example of a nice little touch, in this case revealing new phrases and stuff even up to the time I ended it. I liked chaining Circumcisions  ... but did action points do anything? I'm not very familiar with Dominion and Thunderstone so technically some points off if it's too similar I guess? Definite recommendation. Kooking With Krugg I messed with this way too long, neat little Surgeon Simulator-like game. Had fun making pixie sticks and critter fritters! Couldn't figure out anything to do with the unicorn horn, eyes (well, you can kind of scoop them into the pan or stew), or rat, though, couldn't seem to pick them up or use any tools including the plate. Oh, the drinks seemed way too touchy (though I got good enough with air hockey-ing to try "mixing", though it didn't seem to work) and a lot of the flatter objects, which unfortunately included the burger, not only were too hard to pick up (even palm-down), but tended to get glitched inside the arm or clip through each other. Shadows probably would've helped with 3D effect, too, as well as a "successful grab" sound. I didn't feel it was a problem, but a free mode, "try again" screen with recipes, or a collectible guide might have improved the replayability side of it. As a whole, though, it was quite a blast. That's a lot of words and specific critique that points to one thing: seriously, I spent longer with this than most acclaimed games of a similar genre. Night Vision TV Wow, an audience participation game through Twitter that's actually entertaining. I'm pretty surprised nobody's done it successfully before, really, and I could see how you could develop it. For instance you could make it episodic (every day is assigned to a specific game), or by making it a one-time, programmed/advertised event. Maybe average out the votes to popularity or whatever if you wanted to make it more linear instead of wandering around. Or, hell, license it out if you can because that was impressive. What really helps this game is the chemistry and little "idle" things the characters do; it felt alive and the urban exploration/streaming show thing was really sold for the most part (particularly in the beginning where it counts). It's a shame the little bugs stopped me from completing it! Maybe you could attach it to IRC/HitBoxes's chatroom or some other proprietary option if Twitter just doesn't cooperate. Hypnovision Good job on the art and sound design! I like that idea, though I think if it was a bit more directed (randomness seemed to hit too hard my first time through, though it did seem better the second time where I also caught more messages) or had a stronger endgame/goal it'd shine even more. While I don't think I understood the music game and some of them like connect-the-dots seemed slow or roadblock-y at times, I quite liked the "characters" in the space and cooking games. Kudos on essentially designing more than one game, too, that's gutsy. Public Access Wars A neat online-only game where 3 or more teams try to set up 30-second episodes of a show for others hopefully containing items/themes they are assigned and then a "watch" portion where you channel surf opponent's shows to try and find one which contain item/themes randomly assigned to you each round (over however many rounds). It's not like Apples to Apples where you vote on the most well-made show or anything (remember, it's point-based and likes/dislikes are assigned at least somewhat randomly and sequentially), but it's still pretty fun to try to figure out what themes are causing other people to view your channel. I didn't get to play that long, unfortunately, and it was a mess on our side setting up (not on my side though, haha!), so it's a bit of a bummer I can't really go in-depth about it. I had hit a bug during a prop phase where it wouldn't move on, regrettably, just said "Waiting for Player One" who was the host after selecting a dialogue box I think, and I won't really have the capability to try it with the same people again until next week, but it was still rather captivating. I'd have to figure out how it assigns dislikes and how the score works, but I have a feeling that an early lead would tend to "lock" an audience member in (which I also kind of noticed in the stream), particularly because at worst the second round is somewhat of a stalemate while potentially giving no real (or misleading) viewer data to the other channel (I guess you could sabotage your own viewing but I can't see that working out). Also if you're really adapt at figuring out the theme you could stack it so that negative is even less, but that's likely a problem which would come if you've played it over and over again (plus, that's why there's a shop system, and there is a chance you'll draw a dislike that really restricts your theme anyway). I'd have to figure all that assigning and scoring out (honestly, a "blue shell" or something might not be so bad), but I couldn't spend that much time with it so I'm just guessing! Besides that it's a really neat little party game, and would shine with a little bit more personalization (maybe awards under different categories, or different modes?) and perhaps a way to make shows a bit more dynamic/active or structured so they can be more readily entertaining. Nice job, and I hope to see more people setting up games for it. Sink Ahahaha, I get why this got so high. Fantastic packaging! The game for me was really buggy (determining hits and replays not loading right), and it's very deterministic and a tad slow especially when going through multiple times, and I'm not even saying it necessarily tops the list, but every goon should try this one once. There's nothing more to say! 2:22 AM Procedurally generated dream emulator? An art game that I think does a really fine job of developing atmosphere. Because certain motifs and scenarios always come up, it would probably be most appealing to the sort of person that tends to find satisfaction in or who defaults to an analytical mindframe especially if you are intrigued enough to play it more than once. I'd recommend it, quite highly in fact, but as it's definitely closer to an art game: no humbugs allowed. I found it's really a different experience after the first playthrough, and grew to appreciate more the "white noise" aspects of it, ignoring of course that the tension scenes also used sound effects very well (footsteps, lid closing, etc.). At night/headphones/etc. Public Axes Nice to see a little platformer in here! I liked the quaint story and a couple of the chiptunes, the platforming while a tad archaic felt pretty readable and logically designed, and while I wish some of the added mechanics were fleshed out (wall sliding didn't have much use although it did impose character, bouncing didn't do much for me I think, sprinting needed either to have weight or go?), it was a very fine first game. Trust me, I've seen Lowtax's videos. Oh, some bugs: the framerate was a problem for me where almost all the other games ran fine (I did play Sink on another computer), a lot of the end-level goalpoints could be jumped over, and it's even possible to bypass killing La Forge, not that it ends up mattering. If I was forced to describe the game in one word, that word would be: bewittling.  ^ me irl Wizard Broadcast Special Kind of like an early somewhat multiplayer N64/PSX tech demo on acid, I think  . I've already mentioned the bugs (which outright stopped my second playthrough), but I think there were a lot of problems that kept me from enjoying myself. And I think that's on purpose ('q' for camera? Come on, nothing that painful is by accident), but I didn't find anything mechanically fun enough to play or readily intriguing enough to try to comprehend the themes behind it (particularly on a clock or after other areas where text was drawn out by purpose) or where I felt it was worth it to approach whole-heartedly. I think if it hit the narrative stronger from the gate, or had a gradual progression (like Bubsy 3D: Bubsy visits the James Turrell Retrospective tried to do), it would've worked better. The gem system undercuts anything like that, as well, because it installs a certain mindset even before you get to your first real impression of the game (anything that should be worthwhile that is), as does the time gimmick (which I thought was an interesting idea in itself, even if in actuality there's enough 30-minute gaps to not really have it synchronize much). Too much stick, not enough carrot, I think, which is a shame because the world seems rather interesting with distance, and it's definitely ambitious. I could be wrong and this is just a case of biting off too much to chew (because it is impressive just how much stuff is in there: a time system, at least 2 weird types of multiplayer, 4 games), but that's my take on it! I'd like to hear others'. I did enjoy how the knowledge maze goes from Macbeth to Legend of Zelda, hahaha.Conclusion or something, idk it looks weird without this line here: I was seriously impressed with what came out this year (this was the first one I did whole-heartedly, every Gamer's Choice and write-ups and not just  waiting for others' recommendations), and there's some real gems here that I really hope develop into something special. Oh, and sorry if my little thoughts here were too nitpicky, it's definitely an experience I'm not used to  Even the games I was harder on I don't regret really throwing myself into, not a bit. I still don't even know which one I'm going to vote for!Finally, I'll probably try Grublands sometime this week, and if anybody would like to petition any other favorites not on the Gamer's Choice I'd like to hear them. Thanks a ton SA Developers!
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Sep 21, 2014 15:55
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Let me be the first to say that I really appreciate you writing out so much great feedback. I'm surprised to hear about the frame-rate issues for Public Axes, but then again I didn't really test it on any computer other than my mother's near the end of the competition. I also had no idea I made it possible to bypass that one key event. With like 3 days left I realized that I had put off every aspect of the story except the intro. I spent the rest of the time putting together a middle and an end, leaving behind more trivial things like animating the character while climbing a ladder, or taking advantage of mechanics I put in like the wall-slide. The biggest thing I was concerned about was that the "typos" in the host's speech are supposed imply his frustration/anger and not my inability to know what words are and/or how they're spelled. This whole thing was really great, even reading the IRC channel was pretty alright.
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Sep 21, 2014 20:32
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Doom Goon posted:Public Access Wars Thank you very much for the feedback. The original plan was to have something apples-to-apples like but we couldn't really make it feel like a game so ended up tacking on the scoring mechanism, which I don't think is as good as it could be. We were trying to make the "strategy" be that you're tinkering with your formula to try to get more people to tune in - but I think it might be a bit too frantic for that to come through. That's a shame that you hit a bug - I thought we had dealt with that race condition (because it should just keep polling the players to see if they're ready). I agree that there can be a bit of a problem with people just watching a channel they already know is "good" - which can mean that some channels go almost unwatched sometimes. I rarely came across that in play testing though - when we were playing people were mostly just shouting at each other about the bits they liked then flicking to the next one. If you get to the end there are awards - but they're a lot more basic than I was hoping for. We give things like "Most romantic programming" for the person who scored the most points from "love", etc. We're going to tidy up these issues at some point in the next few months, and add some features which we had to cut due to time (animations, etc.) - hopefully it'll be enough to make it fun to play multiple times. I'll post in whatever appropriate gamedev thread is going when that's done. Thanks again 
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Sep 21, 2014 20:44
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Thank you for the feedback, Doom Goon. I realize a lot of Take Two Treehouse is RNG. I try to bias it towards the lower numbers, but sometimes even randomness fucks you over! We are definitely trying to go towards a more characterized version of the game. Eventually, each "script" will influence what selections you can make when you shoot a scene. But I'll try to improve what's here so far based on your feedback!
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Sep 21, 2014 20:57
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Doom Goon posted:#YesCallMen Thank you so much for taking the time to go through and give feedback on all these games! You are awesome. There is quite a lot of text content that continues to open up for a while. As for action points, those are used by the yellow Action cards (they say Action underneath the name), so if you mostly went for Circumcision chains throwing out free Argument cards, you probably didn't use many action cards. Essentially there are 2 currencies: Spite is used to play Argument cards, dependent upon the Argument's Spite cost, and Actions are used to play Action cards, 1 Action per card. Argument cards primarily do damage; Action cards do no damage but have a wider variety of (generally) stronger effects. Some of the cards are similar in function to Dominion cards, and the Action/Card economy is used by many deckbuilding games, but the Spite economy and damage/battle system was my own. Thanks again for taking the time to play and critique! sighnoceros fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Sep 22, 2014 |
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Sep 22, 2014 04:36
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sighnoceros posted:[…] so if you mostly went for Circumcision chains[…] This is a big part of why I love these challenges and why I wanted to participate. This is an amazing sentence.
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Sep 22, 2014 04:53
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You should have heard people talking strategy in IRC during development. "Yeah, the Friendzone is great by itself, but what's really crazy is Friendzoning your Lying About Rape so you can Circumcision it for free!"
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Sep 22, 2014 05:19
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Doom Goon posted:Wizard Broadcast Special Thanks for the feedback! I originally scoped the game out with the assumption of having 2 programmers, only to have the other guy leave early. I didn't cut scope nearly enough, so a large majority of development was me implementing each feature I wanted as quickly as possible with little regard for usability or how the systems actually worked together. This was made worse by being my first 3D free camera game. I think this is the most significant instance where I've gotten burned from not having nearly enough polish, but given how much I learned and how many different systems were implemented I don't regret managing it the way it did. I threw a bunch of poo poo at a canvas and ended up with a terrible mess, which seems pretty public access to me. If I had the foresight I probably would have added a system to notify me when people were playing so I could harass em. Maybe next time... Edit: I also wrote some words about theming if you're interested in what the world was supposed to come off as. Gunzil fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Sep 22, 2014 |
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Sep 22, 2014 20:55
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sighnoceros posted:You should have heard people talking strategy in IRC during development. "Yeah, the Friendzone is great by itself, but what's really crazy is Friendzoning your Lying About Rape so you can Circumcision it for free!" For me it was all about using Paternity Fraud to build up a critical mass of cards and actions, then using action cards (such as Women Are Slutty or Friendzone) so you can draw and play everything. Giant piles of actions and spite means never having any anger between matches, while giant hands means Not All Men! levels up huge swaths of cards, sometimes more than once if you can chain them. The sound of ~150 cards being tossed into the discard pile usually turns off the background music in the game for the remainder of the match- it comes back when you cut to the studio, though I've also had it go back out when you start the next match. Also, I appreciate that spamming the Child Support card expands your deck to the point where you need to use Wallet Rape to cut off excess cards so you're not starting a hand with nothing but five spite cards and then promptly ending your turn.
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Sep 23, 2014 06:16
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I love everything about that post. 
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Sep 23, 2014 14:16
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LightWarden posted:For me it was all about using Paternity Fraud to build up a critical mass of cards and actions, then using action cards (such as Women Are Slutty or Friendzone) so you can draw and play everything. Giant piles of actions and spite means never having any anger between matches, while giant hands means Not All Men! levels up huge swaths of cards, sometimes more than once if you can chain them. The sound of ~150 cards being tossed into the discard pile usually turns off the background music in the game for the remainder of the match- it comes back when you cut to the studio, though I've also had it go back out when you start the next match. I had a similar experience, aggressively level up "Lying about Rape" and trashing everything else that didn't draw a card and keeping high level Spite cards under control. It got to the point that I won every round in one or two hands, just on the virtue of being able to play my entire deck consistently with high damage output cards. All the action card that allowed you to draw more cards allowed me to fill my hand with level-able cards, so I was able to level my entire deck at once. It's a really good game, but I think a "hardcore" boardgame enthusiast could break it pretty hard fairly easily.
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Sep 25, 2014 00:20
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I've gotten a request from the Unity contact that she'd love to connect with anyone directly that really dug the Unity Pro temp license / that wants access to future deals like that, or discounts on Unity pro licenses. If that describes you, DM me your email. If you don't have DMs, uh, email me? megan @ (my studio URL). Please do so in the form of "Your Name <your@email>" so that I can lazily copy-paste them into a list. Please don't make me work. 
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Sep 25, 2014 00:22
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Ulta posted:I had a similar experience, aggressively level up "Lying about Rape" and trashing everything else that didn't draw a card and keeping high level Spite cards under control. It got to the point that I won every round in one or two hands, just on the virtue of being able to play my entire deck consistently with high damage output cards. All the action card that allowed you to draw more cards allowed me to fill my hand with level-able cards, so I was able to level my entire deck at once. It's a really good game, but I think a "hardcore" boardgame enthusiast could break it pretty hard fairly easily. Yeah, the game is definitely meant to be breakable. For a game jam, I didn't want it to be so hard that people unfamiliar with the concepts got frustrated. So my design goal early on became "make it relatively easy/simple for newbies, and people who know what they're doing can smash it wide open and feel awesome while doing so". I think it's really hard to get into thorough and detailed balance during a short timeline, so the idea was as long as it's still fun I wasn't concerned too much with people breaking the game over their knee. Glad you liked it!
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Sep 25, 2014 01:53
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Shalinor posted:I've gotten a request from the Unity contact that she'd love to connect with anyone directly that really dug the Unity Pro temp license / that wants access to future deals like that, or discounts on Unity pro licenses. Sent you a PM. Would love to see anything else Unity offers me. I suppose it would have been worthwhile to mention I am a student, too, so the deals for students are probably better, but you never know!
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Sep 25, 2014 18:57
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Doom Goon posted:Alright, I was going to proofread this more but I'm tired of looking at it. Hey thanks for your feedback! Yeah I ran out of time at the tutorial. the crystal ball and tarot cards have no effect on your predictions although if i had more time they would of had a slight effect I didn't notice the space bar thing! That was a thing I added in for debug in so I could find out the optimal number of beats per second!
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Sep 27, 2014 10:50
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I did a little write-up on the environments i created for Night Vision TV. It totally spoils the big ~twist~ though, so maybe play the game first (if you want to).
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Sep 27, 2014 13:30
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 19:19 |
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 ATTENTION KOOKING WITH KRUGG You are winners of #SAGameDev's Choice Award. Shoot me a PM or email me (poemdexter at gmail) and collect 200 dollars.
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Sep 29, 2014 16:59
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