I have prepared some general comments around the participants, please dont feel offended with some of what I wrote- think of it as a honest and personal comment on the actual game.
My feeling is that a competition like this deserves more critism booth positive and negative - and for once I wrote more than a usual "I finished yet another game thread" reply here at FK per game.
All in all I must say that even though perhaps unexpierenced yet well executed pseudobot did a very good job - and like just like squize suggested at first it was a wise choise putting him up for the task. Pseudobot is already THE competition guy in my adressbook - good work mate
Squize:
uses big images (title, end game, intro) I am not that sure but from a filesize and display ratio perhaps a bit to big sometimes. The brain image in the background is blurred and compressed to that extend that I would assume it was found on the internet with that resolution or less. The added sound and music is nice it gives it a more complete feeling.
Gameplay wise pretty simple and propably endless- controls are easy to get into: all in all simple and fun game.
TOdorus
No html embedding makes it look cheap, its farily oversized thus in my browser. He seems to have given the tutorial or introduction more credit as most others did but it has to much text - so most will skip it anyway (oh and some of the graphics look like boobs with nipples).
I tried the game for a while and almost had enough cells produced but then suddenly alot died and in the end I would say it took to long and was to difficult.
As for the graphics- like I said if you scale the flash movie things dont look that nice because you can easier see the quick doodle quality. There is not much of a color palette and white background is another indicator of a quick created game. All in all I think that some sounds and more balanced colors would as well as a more fast paced gameplay would do good to the game.
Mentuat
Very big fonts for my taste- half it would do just fine imo. The background stripes look like a room wallpaper- overal the screen area is mostly empty and I think that it could be reduced because it doesn't use much of the screenspace. The game seems to be fairly simple though I dont get satisfaction of the less impressive shoothing even more as I have to shoot each enemy twice with different weapons. Some more explosions, particles or other instant visual feedback would help here (perhaps some score pointometer or alike).
When the brain said 0% nothing happend - not sure if intended but that's of course also a way or intepretation of the term "death".
PhobiK
Quite a long preload, till the main menu appeared - I assume big and lots of images. The font on the main menu is default (arial?) and boring - a few of these would do way better:
http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=303
the colors remind me of alien. All in all I like the colors though I think that the text shouldn't be necessarily as it doesnt blend at all with the rest of the colors - so some tinted pink, red or other color imo would do better.
The points: textfield has aliasing and most likely is a input textfield - things like that should always be avoided if possible because people like me always instantly recognize such things
I played it a few times and I noticed that if I dodge in the corner nothing happens- maybe the distribution function should incorporate that more instead of just plain random().
The music gets annoying but it was nice at first. I didn't succeeded further as the first level but if my impression is right you created more levels (parts of the brain) - and that's a plus imo. as well.
All in all: nice colors, nice presentation (except the fonts) but very simple game
Rachil0
To bad he wasn't able to put it online the propper way- it took me almost 1/2 a minute to download, extract, find the root swf and then play the game. So presentation way minus points here- a online swf embedded in a html would be the best way so no xtra user interaction or installation is required.
The game is farily impressive for something that has been written from scratch in a pure code enviuronment- I at least have respect for that because it usually requires that someone is rather organized and has a somewhat strict plan in his head.
I did not saw yet a goal in the game other than surviving - but controls and the overal feels thanks to the the simple but good enough graphics and sounds was nice.
Some sounds were a bit loud for my taste - but all in all very nice code only game development.
Renderhjs
I am going to write about mine as well but only critic points I see myself. All in all the game has not yet a real game - goal- there are some elements that would fit in a complete game but the core mechanics are missing.
At some point it also feels a bit random because it is not clear why things are the way they are in the game- perhaps some less abstract graphics would make roles and goals more easy to read.
Like how a enemy should look like, the good one, a wrong hit and many more aspects could have been better designed. Missing sounds make it also look less complete.
691175002 / number guy (btw. is that you pin number? )
Nice splash screen- those scripted motions in the background are also a nice addition. In the first level moving zig zag seems to work fairly well without shoothing at all. The 2nd level is already to difficult for me + the levels feels a bit oversized.
I also dont get much satisfaction of the shooting- it feels lame and under-powered. A single shot with feedback like explosions or alike would be nicer.
The colors are simple, blue and white which is perfectly ok but just as a suggestion: some fine color gradients could do some nice effects. The environments in the game are very boring (a traced image - with sloppy vector curves)- more details procederal or manually placed would be nice. The enemies on the other hand look detailed and nice - some more impact effects on them would be nice but its ok as its now.
All in all: nice presentation and interesting idea.
0
Captain_404
I like the scanline effects - the gradient in the brain gives it also this microscopic look. The font at the bottom is not propper embedded (ugly aliased times new roman here) - controls and gameplay are a bit hard to grasp due the lack of visual feedback other than moving.
Some feedback for selecting, hitting and or getting hurt would be essential to give it a better direction. But if I am not mistaken Captain_404 mentioned that his submission was not really done.
But what I can say so far is that I like the visual direction he has taken so far.
