Judges Comments

  • 2009
    • Chris Rhinehart
      • SlipStream:
        • I played this already as a downloadable flash game, which is very similar to SlipStream.
        • Lots of potential depth here.
        • Needs a bit more polish to clean it up and fix some areas of confusion
        • Need better feedback on which character you are, especially as the screen gets cluttered (there's a red border, but you should be clearer. Or make the clones gray and translucent to push them into the background more.
        • Would be handy to also know which of the triangles was my previous incarnation.
        • Need feedback on my avatar that time is about to run out (flashing or such)
          • - When you go to a new room, you should be on the opposite side of the screen. Confusing now, because you go through a door, and you don't enter where your brain thinks you should be.
        • Why am I clicking the boxes? Is that just for score?
      • Fuzzy Pickle:
        • Impressive that there's a fully 3D game/terrain engine entered in this competition
        • But, why does this game need to be in 3D?
        • What are the advantages/disadvantages to the terrain?
        • Unclear how time is used in this? Do the different time zones interact with each other (changes the past ripple to the future?)
        • Need to get the core gameplay up first to make sure it's fun
      • Chronik:
        • Pretty fun overall. It can be a bit frustrating at times while trying to get the numbers to drop in place just so.
        • Really like the part where all the numbers were gone and you had to rely upon the current time. Clever.
        • Looks like there's some thought going into the depth/progression of the game.
        • Clever name :)
      • TI
        • Didn't really find the need to use time rewind
        • The bullet-time felt like a bug at first. No screen effect to let me know what was happening, instead, everything just chugged down. Just could use some more feedback here.
        • Once I got into using time manipulation, I could see the potential depth the game could have: fast moving enemies that you need to slow down to be able to hit, etc.
        • I like the mechanic of gaining points by being near shots, but there wasn't a lot of feedback that I was doing well by getting near the bullets.
        • Some clear gameplay here overall, though, and some potential for depth.
        • Clean up the graphics, give it depth, and release this online!
    • The ZMan
      • SlipStream
        • Learning progression was nice after a fairly hard initial ‘guessing’ session. Hard to know the point of the click the box puzzles – do I have to get these or not. I’d love to know the sort of other puzzles you can come up with that use this replay technique without it feeling repetitive. Clever how having multiple clones push on the counter switches makes things go down faster. However once I had mastered the techniques it was pretty much game over I finished medium and hard levels on my first go though the hard was getting too repetitive and more a memory game than a skill game. Toward the end I found it hard to know which clone was me. I agree with Chris that fading the old ones to grey would help
        • Nice things to have for a full game:
          • Some sound
          • Quit option in game for when I want to give up a level
          • The ‘in game’ help screen wasn’t of much use as it didn’t explain the controls or what to do more the philosophy behind the gameplay
          • Tutorial levels so I can work out what I’m doing without keep ending or closing the app
      • Chronik the Time Keeper:
        • I have to admit I had more fun with this that I thought. On level 1 it was very frustrating trying to get it in place. The bounces seem far too elastic. Nice variation on levels for what I played. Physics went psycho a couple of times once with superfast balls another time 2 got stuck and rotating didn’t help – thankfully I had a 3rd ball to hit them with.
        • Nice things for a full game:
          • Sound
          • Tweak the physics a little, it just didn’t feel right.
      • Temporal Insurgent:
        • Felt like a game play idea looking for a game. The slow/speed up zones seem like a good idea but I never felt that they were helping or hindering my progress. (it doesn’t help that my instinct is to press L button to shoot all the time). Maybe I just didn’t grasp it. Like the music. Bullet time was useful in the early levels but once there was a lot on screen the constant in and out of bullet time just didn’t work for me any more – the game lost flow. Lots of really good ideas in here that (no surprise given its 24 hours) didn’t quite flow together.
        • Nice things for a full game:
          • Some indication of a hit on the bad guys.
          • Maybe not quite so many bullets up front. Quite a daunting first few levels. I appreciate that they seem to do little damage and you have a lot of health but that’s feels like a workaround to the frantic gameplay.
      • ‘Merica Online:
        • Obvious IP issues throughout ;-)
        • I’m not really sure what I am supposed to be doing. Whenever I bring up GO shopping it has the same 2 things and no indication of how to buy them. Grind a terrorist brings up a different character in each state but again no indication of what I am supposed to do.
        • My HP eventually ended up negative ;-) and I never found out how to increase my patriotism.
        • I tried IE7 and Firefox – there just didn’t seem t be anything to do that did anything.
      • ThymeTraders:
        • Don’t expect judges to compile your app to review it – apparently I don’t have the Applet Viewer or whatever is required to run this. I really don’t want to install an entire SDK that I don’t use to play the game.
      • A time for heroes:
        • Don’t expect judges to compile your app to review it – apparently I don’t have the Applet Viewer or whatever is required to run this. I really don’t want to install an entire SDK that I don’t use to play the game.
      • Xbox kid adventure:
        • I shouldn’t have to build a web page just to play a game – include the HTML or something in the zip so that I can just click and play.
      • Fuzzy Pickles:
        • Unable to install threw an error while trying to install XNA redist (which is odd since I already have that… maybe why)