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Halloween Contest Voting!

Your vote is...?

  • Halloween Board Game - Dad3353

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Missing - Ike

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    22
  • Poll closed .
Status
Not open for further replies.

TheUnproPro

Boondoggle
Staff member
Resource Team
Partner
UPDATE: Minakill was disqualified, please don't vote for Clown Ghetto.

Welcome, everybody! The voting starts now, and will last 1 week from 10/19/2016 to. 10/26/2016. The list of games to vote on are:
  1. Halloween Board Game by Dad3353
  2. Skelee's Halloween Adventure by MinisterJay
  3. Hallo by JoePie
  4. Missing by Ike
  5. Ouija by Nite Umbrium
  6. Geode by Orange Jones
Download Links:
Halloween Board Game by Dad3353
Skelee's Halloween Adventure (Win/Mac) by MinisterJay
Hallo by JoePie (Windows)
Missing by Ike
Ouija by Nite Umbrium
Geode by Orange Jones

Let's get to voting!

The winner will receive a $20 steam gift card
The second place holder will receive a copy of Plague Inc: Evolved thanks to Lore (XD Sorry lore!)

Note: Please play every game before voting
 
Last edited:

JoePie

Towns Guard
While I think it's quite unnecessary, For whom stuck in Hallo: Hallo's Guide (spoiler)
Happy Halloween & Gaming everyone XD

For judging purpose, I alter these in 0.12 Update.
1) Added splash screen.
2) Use red colour font for key's clue. Original white.
3) Add a line in battle's 1st turn "I gotta stop it! Maybe throw some item at it?"
4) Remove "part?" in 1st loop
5) Close door at 3rd loop

Please take these into consideration when voting. Cheers.
 
Last edited:

Xilefian

Adventurer
Xy$
0.00
Thanks Dad3353 for making your entry playable in the web browser - it's much easier to play and review MV games that are deployed to a webpage.

Thanks MinisterJay for deploying a Mac version of their MV project - if you've not deployed to a website then you should always deploy MV as both a Mac and Windows version as there's zero reason not to.



Halloween Board Game by Dad3353

Pretty much a random number generator demo. Despite the numbers being random, I had all players roll 7 twice in a row and they all gained 6 candies in the same round. Some additional logic to make the numbers feel more random would have been great.

Skelee's Halloween Adventure by MinisterJay

I laughed for a good 2 minutes at "Stempleton". Apologies to anyone who has that name in reality. I think the narration could have been better without the windowskin, displayed in the middle of the screen, to set it apart from the spoken dialogue.

Game is pretty much run around mashing the interaction button. I suggest everyone turns on auto-dash. Skelee is a wimp, only managed to take down 2 enemies. There's no reason not to use the attack option.

The human characters gathered up at the lower left and lower right of the map for me, so I beat the game by accident it felt like.

Clown Ghetto by Minakill

The grammar is its own horror story.
There was strange, jerkiness to the character following at the very start. Gameplay is basically run away from the nemisis. I loved the clown stabbing animation and the lighting is okay. Not being able to go into the doors was frustrating.

"Why would I want to go in there?" - I don't know, maybe because there's a killer clown chasing you?

I don't think I ever found the lighter.

Hallo by JoePie

I loved the artwork and the animation. Really good job. The writing isn't so great

I think I broke the game as my character disappeared after some events looped a few times. The traffic-cone pyramid head guy killed me every time, I couldn't guard in any direction.

I thought the event loops were intentional, I find horror stories that loop very scary, but this looks like a bug rather than intentional.

Couldn't reach any kind of ending, sorry.

Missing by Ike

Grammar mistakes. Custom artwork is appreciated, but it looked incredibly flat.

A long time ago I made a horror/puzzle RPG Maker game set in an abandoned hotel, the biggest complaint I got was the slow movement of the character, I think this character feels slow-moving too. If you want to have slow-paced horror, you can achieve it with additional animation. So rather than have the main character walk slowly, have them turn around or make a movement like turning their head.

Was sort of a creepy-pasta style story. I'd say the police officer's questions were unrealistic, but I literally had a police officer ask me questions about a missing person in real life and they were just as useless as this game's police officer. More details in the story were needed, but I think you were being thoughtful about how much reading is involved for the player which is why the interaction was rather bare.

Ouija by Nite Umbrium

The title screen reminds me of genitals. The characters didn't really have a very smooth introduction, which made their names feel rather generic. Found an impassable blank tile error.

The Ouija made a spelling mistake, which actually helps it feel authentic, however I think some animation would have improved the Ouija sequences. The sound effect of the sliding cup was good, but felt lengthy. I think some fading in-out letters of the alphabet would have been good and simple enough to implement.

Also, Rowan is traditionally a boys name - so it was a little weird having a girl character be called Rowan.

Not sure the maze towards the finale was neccessary. I could change my player character's direction during the finale too.

The use of audio was good.

Geode by Orange Jones

Ringing sound, yet the text says <bzzt>? Probably didn't need that text there. Appreciate the custom artwork.

The atmosphere is actually pretty tense, but the dialogue had me bursting out with laughter a little too much.

The dialogue directed the player very well, and having them walk past the labelled rooms to let them see where they are before the player needed to find them helped a lot. Felt like some good thought was put into helping the player navigate - hopefully this was intentional and not an accident. The character portraits were great too.

Alien sounds nearly broke my speakers. Also, their heads look rather phallic.

I actually really liked the setting.

Felt like some good effort was put into the areas that the developer felt they could do best within the time limit.

Servers operate on a need-to-code basis? Those must be some very unreliable servers...
 
Last edited by a moderator:

TheUnproPro

Boondoggle
Staff member
Resource Team
Partner
Thanks Dad3353 for making your entry playable in the web browser - it's much easier to play and review MV games that are deployed to a webpage.

Thanks MinisterJay for deploying a Mac version of their MV project - if you've not deployed to a website then you should always deploy MV as both a Mac and Windows version as there's zero reason not to.



Halloween Board Game by Dad3353

Pretty much a random number generator demo. Despite the numbers being random, I had all players roll 7 twice in a row and they all gained 6 candies in the same round. Some additional logic to make the numbers feel more random would have been great.

Skelee's Halloween Adventure by MinisterJay

I laughed for a good 2 minutes at "Stempleton". Apologies to anyone who has that name in reality. I think the narration could have been better without the windowskin, displayed in the middle of the screen, to set it apart from the spoken dialogue.

Game is pretty much run around mashing the interaction button. I suggest everyone turns on auto-dash. Skelee is a wimp, only managed to take down 2 enemies. There's no reason not to use the attack option.

The human characters gathered up at the lower left and lower right of the map for me, so I beat the game by accident it felt like.

Clown Ghetto by Minakill

The grammar is its own horror story.
There was strange, jerkiness to the character following at the very start. Gameplay is basically run away from the nemisis. I loved the clown stabbing animation and the lighting is okay. Not being able to go into the doors was frustrating.

"Why would I want to go in there?" - I don't know, maybe because there's a killer clown chasing you?

I don't think I ever found the lighter.

Hallo by JoePie

I loved the artwork and the animation. Really good job. The writing isn't so great

I think I broke the game as my character disappeared after some events looped a few times. The traffic-cone pyramid head guy killed me every time, I couldn't guard in any direction.

I thought the event loops were intentional, I find horror stories that loop very scary, but this looks like a bug rather than intentional.

Couldn't reach any kind of ending, sorry.

Missing by Ike

Grammar mistakes. Custom artwork is appreciated, but it looked incredibly flat.

A long time ago I made a horror/puzzle RPG Maker game set in an abandoned hotel, the biggest complaint I got was the slow movement of the character, I think this character feels slow-moving too. If you want to have slow-paced horror, you can achieve it with additional animation. So rather than have the main character walk slowly, have them turn around or make a movement like turning their head.

Was sort of a creepy-pasta style story. I'd say the police officer's questions were unrealistic, but I literally had a police officer ask me questions about a missing person in real life and they were just as useless as this game's police officer. More details in the story were needed, but I think you were being thoughtful about how much reading is involved for the player which is why the interaction was rather bare.

Ouija by Nite Umbrium

The title screen reminds me of genitals. The characters didn't really have a very smooth introduction, which made their names feel rather generic. Found an impassable blank tile error.

The Ouija made a spelling mistake, which actually helps it feel authentic, however I think some animation would have improved the Ouija sequences. The sound effect of the sliding cup was good, but felt lengthy. I think some fading in-out letters of the alphabet would have been good and simple enough to implement.

Also, Rowan is traditionally a boys name - so it was a little weird having a girl character be called Rowan.

Not sure the maze towards the finale was neccessary. I could change my player character's direction during the finale too.

The use of audio was good.

Geode by Orange Jones

Ringing sound, yet the text says <bzzt>? Probably didn't need that text there. Appreciate the custom artwork.

The atmosphere is actually pretty tense, but the dialogue had me bursting out with laughter a little too much.

The dialogue directed the player very well, and having them walk past the labelled rooms to let them see where they are before the player needed to find them helped a lot. Felt like some good thought was put into helping the player navigate - hopefully this was intentional and not an accident. The character portraits were great too.

Alien sounds nearly broke my speakers. Also, their heads look rather phallic.

I actually really liked the setting.

Felt like some good effort was put into the areas that the developer felt they could do best within the time limit.

Servers operate on a need-to-code basis? Those must be some very unreliable servers...
Normally I'd prefer criticism to be said through a PM directly to the person you're giving critic advise to, but this was literally the most informative criticism I've ever read. It's amazing that you went through the time to properly review each and every game, I admire that dedication.
 

JoePie

Towns Guard
@Xilefian No need to sorry at all! My mate did said the clue was too rough to be noted! Uploading latest update with more clue (Not too much though), and some minor changes/fix! Other than that a guide was include in game-zip, just in case someone miss it. Come back in a hour and it should be updated!

As for writing, English was not my native language and I'm always looking one for proofreading! Any idea where I can find one?

P.S: Kindly noted! Mac version incoming, after Win version updated! No HTML5 though as I have nowhere to host it. Cheers!

[Edited: Mac & Win ver. uploaded.]
 
Last edited:

Lore

Resident Dragon
@Xilefian No need to sorry at all! My mate did said the clue was too rough to be noted! Uploading latest update with more clue (Not too much though), and some minor changes/fix! Other than that a guide was include in game-zip, just in case someone miss it. Come back in a hour and it should be updated!

As for writing, English was not my native language and I'm always looking one for proofreading! Any idea where I can find one?

P.S: Kindly noted! Mac version incoming, after Win version updated! No HTML5 though as I have nowhere to host it. Cheers!

[Edited: Mac & Win ver. uploaded.]
Regarding Proofreading, feel free to check out the Classifieds or Services threads here on the forums. There should be a few people there who will be able to help. :)
 

Xilefian

Adventurer
Xy$
0.00
As for writing, English was not my native language and I'm always looking one for proofreading! Any idea where I can find one?
Proof reading isn't actually too difficult, I think if you were to post your dialogue script to classifieds someone can help explain what the correct grammar should be.

I'd say 99% of RPG Maker games have grammatical errors, so don't feel like you're the only one, even native English speakers have bad grammar. After all, most RPG Maker users are not professional writers.
 

MinisterJay

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Proof reading isn't actually too difficult, I think if you were to post your dialogue script to classifieds someone can help explain what the correct grammar should be.

I'd say 99% of RPG Maker games have grammatical errors, so don't feel like you're the only one, even native English speakers have bad grammar. After all, most RPG Maker users are not professional writers.
I noticed already one typo in the dialogue of mine, and I am a writing tutor for undergraduate and graduate students. I have even taught high school English. It unfortunately happens. I am even a dialogue proofer for others' games. It just shows how lazy I was.
 

Xilefian

Adventurer
Xy$
0.00
I noticed already one typo in the dialogue of mine, and I am a writing tutor for undergraduate and graduate students. I have even taught high school English. It unfortunately happens. I am even a dialogue proofer for others' games. It just shows how lazy I was.
In professional games the writing for everything, including user-interface, is separate from the editor, which goes against how MV works. I find that having it separate helps with grammatical mistakes massively.

As an example, my game's account creation system has all its guides and message text in a separate file and closer to release date I will be going over every single line of text just to make sure it's perfect and conveys exactly the right emotion that I want the text to feel.

It went from something like "You'll need to sign up with Google, Twitter or Facebook" to what it is currently "To get started, we need to sign you in\n [Google Logo] [Facebook Logo] [Twitter Logo]\n(We support these services!)" and will likely change a few more times before release.

Writing is very important in games, and I'm not talking about story writing, I'm talking about everything the player reads (and hears with spoken dialogue). You can make a game seem very condescending to the player's intelligence or make it seem like the game itself is not very intelligent if the writing isn't perfect.


Someone should probably make a tool for extracting all the text in an MV project to make translation and text reviews easier.
 

Dad3353

Praised Adventurer
@Xilefian ...

Firstly, congratulations on the excellent and detailed run-down of all the Games presented. Much appreciated, and entirely appropriate. Thanks for that. Here's hoping that it creates a precedent for others to follow. For my part, I'm all for open, positive criticism, especially when it's been specifically called for; that way, progress lies.
As for my own offering, I'm not sure how, technically, I could alter any random generation, which, by its very nature is, well... random..! I'll have a look through my revues and snippets of code, to see if there's any reason why 'doubles' should be more frequent than 'reality'; I may have missed something. I've played the Game myself, during concept and testing, and had whole periods without a 'double' at all, so you may have just been lucky..?
Thanks in any case, for taking the time to play the Game.
Web-hosting is, I found, quite easy enough, and free for the modest use I have for it, using 'Firebase' as a platform. Quick and easy to set up, and very easy to update evolutions when required. I couldn't get a few files recognised (those having a leading '$' sign...) but found a way around that; otherwise I would recommend it as a pretty simple way of making RPG's available, at least on a modest scale. I'm glad you found it to be useful.
Cheers
Douglas
 

MinisterJay

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
As TheUnproPro talked about, PLEASE send the critiquing of games in PM's. By putting them here, it could adversely effect people playing the games without having the critiqued information in their heads, giving them a biased opinion.
 

Xilefian

Adventurer
Xy$
0.00
I absolutely love Firebase. I've always wanted to see an MV project that uses it, and yours does, very awesome.

Are you going to investigate integrating Firebase into MV itself? I've always dreamed about an online MV project that uses Firebase authentication, database and file hosting.

You may be interested in the iTunes shuffle-problem; way back in the late 90s when iTunes first came out (on Mac OS 8!) they had reports that the shuffle system was picking two tracks in the same album or two tracks in the same genre too frequently (and even doing successive tracks). The reports claimed that the random shuffle isn't random enough, so iTunes now has code to make it feel "more" random by every-now-and-then avoiding tracks that are in the same genre or album or artist or even same year.

I thought of that problem when I had my lucky dice-rolls. Personally, I try to remove as much randomness in my games as much as possible, so I'd write an algorithm that rolls the dice based on a fixed seed from the start and messes with the result to avoid too many repeat patterns and vary the numbers between high and low. Could probably do cool things like check if the player consistently gets low numbers then reward them with two double-sixes in a row.
 

Dad3353

Praised Adventurer
...Could probably do cool things like check if the player consistently gets low numbers then reward them with two double-sixes in a row.
... But... But ... But... What of the Space-Time matrix..? Chance encounters..? Serendipity..? Oh, no..! You've just killed off serendipity..! Wow, scary..!

Yes, I take your point (and I do remember hearing about iTunes random...). I'll see what I can come up with, and still avoid changing the orbits of the (major...) planets.
As for Firebase, I'm a very modest (and satisfied...) User, a spill-over from the demise of Google Drive hosting, so am very much in the 'grasshopper' camp, rather than ninja level. There's much progress to be had yet in all of this; it gets betterer and betterer.
Now then, where's my Napierian log tables..? Random..? Hmm...
 

MinisterJay

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
I have played all of the games, and will late be voting, keeping with guidelines set in the opening post of the contest thread. ;)
 

Dad3353

Praised Adventurer
Played 'em all; it's a tough call, so I'll have to play 'em all again..! No worries there, they're all good, but different, oh, so very different, each. Some really fine, original thinking going on, and a far higher quality, in all respects, despite the very tight delay for coming up with stuff. Well done, all; it's going to be a hard job to pin on just one medal. Back to the horror zone, then... (Shivers slightly at the very thought...
)
 

Minakill

Towns Guard
Xy$
0.00
Thanks Dad3353 for making your entry playable in the web browser - it's much easier to play and review MV games that are deployed to a webpage.

Thanks MinisterJay for deploying a Mac version of their MV project - if you've not deployed to a website then you should always deploy MV as both a Mac and Windows version as there's zero reason not to.



Halloween Board Game by Dad3353

Pretty much a random number generator demo. Despite the numbers being random, I had all players roll 7 twice in a row and they all gained 6 candies in the same round. Some additional logic to make the numbers feel more random would have been great.

Skelee's Halloween Adventure by MinisterJay

I laughed for a good 2 minutes at "Stempleton". Apologies to anyone who has that name in reality. I think the narration could have been better without the windowskin, displayed in the middle of the screen, to set it apart from the spoken dialogue.

Game is pretty much run around mashing the interaction button. I suggest everyone turns on auto-dash. Skelee is a wimp, only managed to take down 2 enemies. There's no reason not to use the attack option.

The human characters gathered up at the lower left and lower right of the map for me, so I beat the game by accident it felt like.

Clown Ghetto by Minakill

The grammar is its own horror story.
There was strange, jerkiness to the character following at the very start. Gameplay is basically run away from the nemisis. I loved the clown stabbing animation and the lighting is okay. Not being able to go into the doors was frustrating.

"Why would I want to go in there?" - I don't know, maybe because there's a killer clown chasing you?

I don't think I ever found the lighter.

Hallo by JoePie

I loved the artwork and the animation. Really good job. The writing isn't so great

I think I broke the game as my character disappeared after some events looped a few times. The traffic-cone pyramid head guy killed me every time, I couldn't guard in any direction.

I thought the event loops were intentional, I find horror stories that loop very scary, but this looks like a bug rather than intentional.

Couldn't reach any kind of ending, sorry.

Missing by Ike

Grammar mistakes. Custom artwork is appreciated, but it looked incredibly flat.

A long time ago I made a horror/puzzle RPG Maker game set in an abandoned hotel, the biggest complaint I got was the slow movement of the character, I think this character feels slow-moving too. If you want to have slow-paced horror, you can achieve it with additional animation. So rather than have the main character walk slowly, have them turn around or make a movement like turning their head.

Was sort of a creepy-pasta style story. I'd say the police officer's questions were unrealistic, but I literally had a police officer ask me questions about a missing person in real life and they were just as useless as this game's police officer. More details in the story were needed, but I think you were being thoughtful about how much reading is involved for the player which is why the interaction was rather bare.

Ouija by Nite Umbrium

The title screen reminds me of genitals. The characters didn't really have a very smooth introduction, which made their names feel rather generic. Found an impassable blank tile error.

The Ouija made a spelling mistake, which actually helps it feel authentic, however I think some animation would have improved the Ouija sequences. The sound effect of the sliding cup was good, but felt lengthy. I think some fading in-out letters of the alphabet would have been good and simple enough to implement.

Also, Rowan is traditionally a boys name - so it was a little weird having a girl character be called Rowan.

Not sure the maze towards the finale was neccessary. I could change my player character's direction during the finale too.

The use of audio was good.

Geode by Orange Jones

Ringing sound, yet the text says <bzzt>? Probably didn't need that text there. Appreciate the custom artwork.

The atmosphere is actually pretty tense, but the dialogue had me bursting out with laughter a little too much.

The dialogue directed the player very well, and having them walk past the labelled rooms to let them see where they are before the player needed to find them helped a lot. Felt like some good thought was put into helping the player navigate - hopefully this was intentional and not an accident. The character portraits were great too.

Alien sounds nearly broke my speakers. Also, their heads look rather phallic.

I actually really liked the setting.

Felt like some good effort was put into the areas that the developer felt they could do best within the time limit.

Servers operate on a need-to-code basis? Those must be some very unreliable servers...
Thanks for what i can be satisfied for and what i need add and change it's help me much.
And don't worry game have been continue and make game about 10 more chapters if it's fits good and yes you find lighter later in final demo. :)
[doublepost=1476994729,1476986673][/doublepost]Are somebody upgrading his game or only hot fixes? Because i think it may be unfair to add content when you already joined. That means when i joined i don't done game how i want be to seen in voting. Fixing bgs it's good because porson want to play his game and judge her so it's good to can play game properly without bugs.
 

Xilefian

Adventurer
Xy$
0.00
I don't think entrants should be updating their games after the deadline, it doesn't seem fair to fix problems/make your game easier after the fact when other entrants aren't doing the same.
 
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