Casual gaming site Jay Is Games recently completed its sixth game development competition, around the theme of “Explore”. I thought there were some really good entries this year, and here are my thoughts:
- Small Worlds won both the judging and the audience award, and with good reason. Although not much of a “game” in the traditional sense, it is absolutely astounding how much atmosphere Small Worlds packs into just fifteen minutes of heavily pixellated graphics. The titular worlds are so vibrant and well-realized, and the inclusion of a beautifully-implemented zooming effect truly fills you with a sense of wonder and even horror as you explore.
- Full Moon came in second place. It’s a good, solid, stylish puzzle effort from Bart Bonte, who just seems to crank out great puzzles woven together in a common theme. Outside of a few puzzles which were frustrating (dragging is a pain in the butt even if you have a mouse, and nigh impossible if you’re on a laptop), I enjoyed it a lot. It’s just tricky enough to stretch your brain without breaking it.
- How My Grandfather Won the War has production values that are simply off the charts and a great concept that is fantastically realized. But I found the gameplay way too frustrating to be fun. The collision detection is dodgy, the weapon recharges too slowly, and restarting the level every three lives was not fun. Sorry, I didn’t think this deserved to be third.
- The Fantasy of the Sord [sic] was my sentimental favorite. It takes everything you hate about old console games (endearingly low-quality graphics and sound, tricky jumps, random enemies, bad grammar, nonsensical story), sautes it in a thick marinade of irony, and serves it up in a big, unmapped world of fun. You select a character (white knight, rock man, wood sexer, etc.), choose your trusty sord from an overtly ridiculous list of weapons (including a tree branch, a shovel and a boxing glove), and set off to…um, slay some enemies. And get even more sords. Or something.
- The Fabulous Explorationsland is a cute Zelda-ish game of finding secrets in ruins. Its cheesy sense of humor really endeared itself to me, even though it wasn’t very difficult and kind of short too.
- Hell Tour was really interesting. It’s a wayfinding game with some really neat strategy and RPG elements to it. However, it’s a bit too random and the ending, while a neat concept, basically undid all the work I did during the game. That said, this was my third favorite game.
- Following Footsteps is interesting in that it was designed in DHTML, not Flash (which I, of course, have a special interest in), but the gameplay seemed kind of poor from the little time I played it. I didn’t particularly care for it.
So that’ll do it for the games that I played – now to wait for the next competition!
Tags: indie game review, video games