It took me several days of non-stop playing and rating, but it is finally done:

220 games (25%) have been judged in a critical but honest manner. The milestone i was aiming for.
While doing so i experienced fun and frustration, astonishment and annoyance, excitement and ennui, ingenuity and inability, sympathy and sadness, love and loneliness, quality and quantity and many more things… the games vary a lot in all of those aspects. But only a few managed to get me thinking: “Wow, i’d actually pay to have a more complete/polished version of that!”

I’ll use this occasion to highlight some of those titles that appeared exceptional to me. Keep in mind that this list is not meant to be a complete list of the top games. I only played a quarter of all games anyway. Its just a list of games that i think deserve some attention.

Final Trip Soccer by Benjamin

I won’t talk about this one… just play it! No, don’t ask, just DO IT! I reserved an overall rating of 5 Stars for extremely exceptional games and in the end this one was the only one of those 220 games that recieved such a vote from me.

The Last Geek by Robotic

It’s basically Super Meat Boy with better graphics and a gameplay twist. Easily the most complete game in this competition. The controls need some tweaks (movement ist too fast in my opinion), but apart from that there isn’t really much to complain about. Also the Kittendare challenge was completed in such a blunt and yet hilarious way that it deserves an award.

Ennui by Zutty

The basic idea of this game is incredibly creative and the gameplay is deeper than you would expect at first. The game itself is a bit short, but it has a lot of potential.

Terra Dua by lectvs

An adventure-platformer, which is a surprisingly rare concept. Surely not among the most adrenaline pumping games, but intriguing and driven by the desire to see what happens next.

Loneliness by Vit

A game that doesn’t involve fighting or the threat of dying, which is a nice change. It comes with an amazing mood, a lovely main character and the by far most annoying message beep sound in the world. The amount of gameplay is quite limited at the moment, but i’d love to see what other friends she might gather in this desolate world in future adventures.

Are We Alone? by Fiona

The search for extraterrestrial life… always worth a game. The logistics and dangers of deep space exploration without it involving battles, invasions and other overly fancy sci-fi stories is quite a rare theme. Add more gameplay possibilities (like building outposts, permanent mines, etc.), many more things to discover and a way to recover from failures without restarting the game and you’ll have a game with a very unique feeling of exploration and discovery.

Thanks to those mentioned for these exceptional games, and equally to those unmentioned for their contributions in this event.

I’ve created an annotated playthrough video of my 48hour compo entry “Alone with… things!”, especially for those who can’t play the Windows-only game.

Figuring out what to do is part of the fun of the game. Watching the video will spoil it for you, so do not watch it if you still intent to play it yourself.

You can rate or download “Alone with… things” here!

Hello there!
I’d love to get some honest feedback on my game. Ratings, comments and constructive criticism are very much appreciated!

Download, rate and comment it here!

Thanks a lot!

Alone with… things!

Submission Page

Alone with... things!

What went badly:

• I didn’t have any basecode and started from scratch. Thus a considerable amount of time was “wasted” on animation, landscape tiling and collision detection coding.
• Any form of storytelling or player guidance fell victim to the time limit
• The LD started at 3am here in Germany. I only got 4 hours sleep prior to the start and got unconcentrated and tired rather quickly.

What went well:

• Coding went smooth like butter. I never really used XNA previously, but working with it is easy as long as you know the coding language well enough.
• I’m not much of an artist, but i’m happy with the art. Nothing fancy, but it works.
• Using bitmaps with 256 indexed colors for levels. You won’t need a level editor this way and adjustments can easily be made. XNA doesn’t support those, but the BMP format for color-indexed bitmaps is VERY easy to load directly from data.
• The game idea turned out to be interesting and fun. Combining a traditional gametype with some unconventional twist in gameplay seems like a good way to go.

Tips and learned lessons:

• Sleep and eat well before and during the competion. You won’t be very creative or focussed when tired.
• Use a coding language and tools you are very familiar with.
• Use base code for animations and stuff. If you don’t have any participate in the warmup to create some base code for such things.
• Priorize planned features and keep the unessential untouched until you are done with the essential ones.
• Look at the themes during theme voting and try to come up with ideas for as many as possible. It helps to bring your creativity up to pace, even if a theme gets voted for which you haven’t got an idea yet.
• A drawing tablet (even a cheap one) helps A LOT with making art, even if you aren’t much of an artist and not good at drawing on paper. Take time to configure it and its buttons well for a smooth workflow prior to the contest.

Timelapse:

The submission is finally through and i am incredibly tired now, after a slow first day and a hectic second one. The theme didn’t appeal to me, which resulted in lack of motivation and ideas at first, but i am quite pleased with the end result nevertheless. The only thing that bugs me is that i didn’t have time to do a proper title screen and better storytelling, but oh well.

The game is about a boy who wakes up all alone. After initial fear he discovers that he has the ability to bring inanimate things like furniture to life. Supported by his wooden companions he ventures into the dangerous world to find out whats going on.

Screenshot:

Alone with... things!

Links:
- Submission Page
- Game Download (Windows)
- Sourcecode
- XNA 4 Runtime (required)
- Timelapse

First time LD for me! I’m intrigued to see if i’m able to pull anything playable and fun off within those 48 hours. But i’m confident and motivated.

I’m usually suffering from the typical indie game developers curse to come up with too large ideas and then getting entangled in long term development. LD might be a cure for that. A chance to get over my perfectionism and create something short, simple and fun.

My tools and libraries of choice will be XNA, C#, Photoshop, Audacity, SFXR, maybe Paul’s Extreme Sound Stretch and Farseer Physics if physics are involved.