Contest has ended! Entries:

Marjock - Attraption - http://www.geocities.com/kiwimarksoftwar...aption.zip
backslash - Mmingles - http://www.gerbilmedia.co.uk/mmingles.zip
LaRue - Globegoons - http://www.tc.umn.edu/~stav0042/Globegoons.zip
ThemsAllTook - Gamut - http://www.sacredsoftware.net/software/g.../Gamut.tgz
iridescent ion - Pipe Nightmares - http://www.fireyesoftware.com/iridescent...tmares.zip








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Contest start time: 2006-04-21 11:59 PM GMT (Friday evening)

Contest end time: 2006-04-30 11:59 PM GMT (Sunday evening)

Contest theme: Puzzle games with well-defined rules (read below for specifics)

Prizes: None. This is just for the fun and challenge of racing to develop a game.

Rules:

• Entries must be native double-clickable Mac OS X applications. Universal binaries are encouraged, but not required.
• Entries must not have been started before the contest start time. Feel free to start designing and researching now; just don't start coding the game itself until the contest has started.
• Entries may be posted at any time between the start time and the end time. The most recent submission at the contest end time is taken as the final entry.
• Entries must not exceed 5 MB in compressed file size.
• Entries must be substantially your own creation, and must not use assets or code which you do not have the legal rights to use.
• Team entries are permitted.
• Multiple entries per person/team are permitted.

How to enter: Post a link to a downloadable game binary in the contest thread. Entries will be organized in a central contest entry thread once posted.

Theme details:

The idea with this theme is to make a puzzle game in which the player places or arranges objects on a playfield to achieve a predefined goal. Each object should have clearly defined behavior and interaction with other objects, so that the challenge for the player lies in using the tools given to them in the appropriate way, as opposed to figuring out how each element of the puzzle behaves. Gameplay can be real-time, or can have separate setup/run steps. The player should not have a single avatar which they control directly, although one (or more) may be used as a puzzle element; gameplay is in overall orchestration rather than micromanagement. Games should not incorporate an element of randomness as part of the gameplay.

Example games which would fit this theme:

• Pawns (perfect example)
• The Incredible Machine (perfect example)
• Enigmo (good enough)
• Lemmings (borderline, but acceptable)

Example games which would not fit this theme:

• Hapland (unclear behavior)
• Crimson Room (unclear behavior)
• Snowball (single avatar, micromanagement)
• Kiki the Nanobot (single avatar, micromanagement)

Chat with other contest participants: Come to the #idevgames-mini-contest IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

I love the idea of this contest and I believe the rules are perfect, although I don't think we should shy away from real-time puzzles. As for prizes, I think it might encourage people to enter but for a mini-contest, I don't believe it's absolutely necessary.

I hope to enter prizes or not, I just hope some good games get made

unknown Wrote:I hope to enter prizes or not, I just hope some good games get made

Well, you are the prize. If you don't win, you'll be somebody's personal slave!

ThemsAllTook Wrote:Prizes: Unknown.

Justin Brimm Wrote:I don't think we should shy away from real-time puzzles.

Fair enough. First post edited to reflect this change.

akb825 Wrote:Well, you are the prize.

I wondered if anyone would make that joke.

Like the rules, and I'm in, as a puzzle game is about all I can hope to achieve in a week with my workload at uni at the moment

Heh, I don't need a prize, I just want the experience of finishing a contest entry (since I've entered two uDGs, a 21DL, and an OMG, yet never had a playable at the end of any of those contests )

The "avatar" thing rules out puzzle games like "Blobbo", which would seem to fit the "spirit" of the competition to a T, but I'm not quite sure what it was intended to eliminate...

Everything looks perfect except that the contest needs a name. :-)

-Mark

OneSadCookie Wrote:The "avatar" thing rules out puzzle games like "Blobbo", which would seem to fit the "spirit" of the competition to a T, but I'm not quite sure what it was intended to eliminate...

Making an RPG-esque game with puzzles I think,ie, resident evil, adventure assorted stuff like that. I think ThemsAllTook made a game like those in previous contests right? WaterTower or the little robot pushing blocks, I get my devs and their games crossed all the time, excuse me.

sealfin Wrote:Like the rules, and I'm in, as a puzzle game is about all I can hope to achieve in a week with my workload at uni at the moment

Heh, I don't need a prize, I just want the experience of finishing a contest entry (since I've entered two uDGs, a 21DL, and an OMG, yet never had a playable at the end of any of those contests )

No kidding? Man thats some track record. Teaming up with other people would really change that whole situation, its very easy to lose passion if you go it alone, and of course real life eats up time, so split the responsibility and you should have no problem kicking one of these deadlines someday.

If you take the "place or arrange" thing seriously, then that clearly rules out Blobbo, Water Tower, etc., but it also makes Lemmings (listed as an example) seriously dubious...

Hm, as we can read in page 348 of the Magic: the Gathering complete ruleset, Lemmings is admittable under that definition

OneSadCookie Wrote:If you take the "place or arrange" thing seriously, then that clearly rules out Blobbo, Water Tower, etc., but it also makes Lemmings (listed as an example) seriously dubious...

Yes, Lemmings is a bit borderline. The differentiation between Lemmings and Blobbo is that in Lemmings, you don't really control any Lemming directly. You just assign them jobs. In that sense, they're free-floating tools until you give them something specific to do.

The idea is for the player to make a clever and well-planned setup, rather than for them to blunder their way through an environment. I'll see if I can somehow word that unambiguously in the first post.

Oh, and yes, Water Tower was mine, Bill.

I'm up for this. I've just (finally) got round to learning SDL so a 2D puzzle game was the sort of thing I was going to do for practice anyway. It's been a while since I finished a project so it's about time I did something smaller than the usual epics. (That is something shorter than my attention span)

I am up for this (I think.)

Ooo... well, at first, I wasn't going to enter since I got a bucket load of stuff to get ready for E3 but then, I was playing one of the games from Dexterity software (one of the Aargon games) which got me thinking of Deflecktor for the C64 and how it would be great to make a version of that.

Anyway, maybe I'll enter. It depends on my workload.