Kildorf's Reviews

CRITERIA
Presentation = x/20
Gameplay = x/20
Theme = x/5
Bias = x/5
TOTAL = x/50

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MASON'S MEMOIRS
by Eldritch

At first I thought this was going to be an interactive fiction game. I quickly discovered that it is a resource management and strategy game more than anything else. Even so, thanks to the foreword and its text-heavy introduction it kept me in the mindset of playing a novel more than a video game.

PRESENTATION: The graphics in the game are entirely photos and user interface graphics. The photos aren't bad though I found they didn't really mesh with the atmosphere of the game. The music is repetitive (there being only piece of music) but decent. The game is not especially stand out as a piece of art but it does what it needs to do very very solidly. [[ 15/20 ]]

GAMEPLAY: The game is entirely menu-driven and unfortunately, this was probably its biggest failing. The menus get to be fairly deep and complex, and while you can learn to do things pretty quickly it does suffer from relying entirely on keyboard-driven menus.

One thing I really want to mention is that I felt like I was missing out on a lot of the depth while I was playing because there was no way to pause to read a character sheet or some dialogue. Because of this I always felt rushed and didn't want to spend all day figuring who was best for what job so I just sort of tossed people in wherever so I never really got anywhere. The only time I was successful at anything was when I scavenged food. [[ 10/20 ]]

THEME: Lots of Ms in the title but that was sort of the extent of it. [[ 2/5 ]]

BIAS: I realize that this has been mostly negative, but please don't get me wrong here -- I really wanted to find out what this game was all about. Unfortunately that just made it more frustrating when running up against stuff that was just stubbed out and when I ran up against one of the menu system's idiosyncrasies. That said, I'd love to see more of this game with a nice interface. [[ 4/5 ]]

OVERALL: I thought this game was a refreshing change of pace but it suffered from the competition timespan and some poor design choices. [[ 31/50 ]]

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WIND (WITH A CAPITAL M)
by Syn, Code, and Rockstar

A platformer RPG where you play a bird that throws boomerangs and uses the power of wind to affect changes to the level. It's somewhat light on story but it's got platforming, experience, and powerups.

PRESENTATION: The graphics certainly aren't a feast for the eyes but they are more than decent. Sound effects and music solid if a bit generic sounding. No complaints but nothing really jumps out at me either. Since it appeals to all the other parts of a platformer-RPG I really would have liked to see a bit of story in there as well. [[ 15/20 ]]

GAMEPLAY: I really like platformer-RPGs and I really wanted to like this one. The first version I played (the first one uploaded) was riddled with bugs and showstopping crashes but the updated version fixed most of my problems and I had a pretty good time playing. That said, the engine just didn't feel particularly solid and I had to retry a lot of jumps. I appreciate the mouse driven combat but again it could have used quite a bit of tweaking.

If anyone missed this: you can use the WASD keys for movement as well. [[ 13/20 ]]

THEME: Lots of M-named things (mostly enemies and levels but really not a whole lot of M stuff. [[ 2/5 ]]

BIAS: As I said I really like platformer-RPGs and I would like to have seen this as a more polished version of what it is. [[ 4/5 ]]

OVERALL: Some promise but could really have used more strong engine work along with some tweaking and testing. [[ 34/50 ]]

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MONSTER MAGNET MEOW
by Overkill and Toen

You are, once again, Molasses Meow. Instead of doing your darnedest to cause seizures you are instead protecting villagers from horrible, rampaging yetis with a magnet that I can only assume to magical.

PRESENTATION: Molasses Meow is kind of an abomination but I admit a bit of a soft spot for the weird rotation thing and for a little manic looking cat. The yetis are cute and the villagers look great. The tiles, once you've escaped from the Land of Atrocious Magentas, are nice. The sounds are spotty and the music is non-existent. [[ 15/20 ]]

GAMEPLAY: I really wanted to see the magnet mechanic fleshed out a bit more. It seems like it could make a really great puzzle game but its two levels leave a lot to be desired. A bit more of a tutorial might be nice.

And oh god why does the water have to kill you it's so irritating seriously who can I maim for that decision. Oh you know I'm kidding guys. [[ 14/20 ]]

THEME: Lots of Ms in the title. The magnet was shaped like an M. Yetis and villagers, sadly, contain no Ms. The yetis' mouthes look almost like little Ms I guess? [[ 3/5 ]]

BIAS: I let loose a bit of bias in the presentation. I think it's cute and that counts for something, but it really needed some more love. [[ 3/5 ]]

OVERALL: Fairly good looking and a great idea but lacking as a game. [[ 35/50 ]]

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MARBLE MASSACRE
by ustor

A small arcade-type game where you roll around a shiny marble of death and squash tiny people. They scream. You might want to play this with the sound off if there is anyone else around.

PRESENTATION: Fantastic. The marble has a cool rolling effect, the blood is nice and splattery, and the menus are solid. Definite polish and effort went into the presentation here. That said, the menus could use some more explanation and the sound and music could use some volume balancing. [[ 18/20 ]]

GAMEPLAY: Again, solid and polished. Ustor took an idea and ran with it, which let him use the relatively short compo time to produce a complete feeling game. That said, though, it gets kind of repetitive; I didn't really find myself wanting to go back and play the game as much as some other games in the competition. [[ 15/20 ]]

THEME: Marbles and massacres! But that's really where the theme usage ends. [[ 2/5 ]]

BIAS: As I mentioned above, I found it somewhat repetitive, but it was fun to begin with. [[ 2/5 ]]

OVERALL: Very polished, looks great, but somewhat lacking in lasting appeal. [[ 36/50 ]]

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DIAL 'M' FOR MACGUFFIN
by Gayo, Hyptosis, McGrue, ustor, Zathras, and MS Comic Sans

This is a Zelda-style top-down action adventure game which pits the mettle of a Dashing Chap (you) against the evil Lord Malefact, who has locked the doors of the whole village just before teatime.

PRESENTATION: Seriously, go read that blurb up above again.

The graphics and music are top-notch (unsurprisingly, considering the team). The enemies are good but don't fit in quite as well as they could. The map design is pretty good though I did manage to get myself locked in a room with no way out at one point. Also, I kind of wished that more of the huge overworld had been blocked off rather than just being a wide vast space for me to wander across for no reason (and get stuck at the last screen because the warp zones hadn't been hooked up properly). [[ 17/20 ]]

GAMEPLAY: It feels really solid, and is good. Until you are fighting more than one thing at a time. Unfortunately, the collision detection is kind of wonky and you end up being hit (or missing) when you feel like you should be safe (or hitting). It manages to stay fun despite this but it gets really frustrating at times. [[ 13/20 ]]

THEME: The story is actually ostensibly about finding a powerful magical M to defeat the lord Malefact. Also your health is measured in Ms. Not full marks, but I liked it. [[ 4/5 ]]

BIAS: I love Zelda games. I think a Zelda game staring a portly gentleman in tophat and monocle is one of the best ideas ever. I really want to see this engine fleshed out; even aside from the great concept it would be marvellous to have such an engine out there. [[ 5/5 ]]

OVERALL: I like the game but its flaws are showstoppers at times and that makes me sad. [[ 39/50 ]]

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MADEMOISELLE
by CrazyAznGamer

A side-view platformer with some cool switching mechanics with some hints of a more sinister backdrop.

PRESENTATION: The graphics are minimalist and honestly not very pretty, but they serve their purpose and there were some inherent difficulties in the design of the switching mechanism. The scrawled words and letters definitely add to the somewhat sinister feeling, and the music stacks up well here too. [[ 14/20 ]]

GAMEPLAY: First of all, just in case anyone hasn't played this yet, the 'switching mechanic' I mentioned is a very cool system where you are either pink or orange; blocks that are the same colour as you are solid while blocks that are the opposite colour are passable. Hitting X while standing on a sufficiently large patch of your current colour flips the whole map upside down and changes your colour so what was solid is now passable and vice versa.

The first thing I thought was, "Hey, this is a pretty good platforming engine!" Then I discovered the switching mechanic and I thought, "This will be so cool!" And then I got stuck for twenty minutes. Unfortunately the 'tutorial' bit at the beginning of the is a little obscure. I actually was somewhat unimpressed and stopped playing for a while. When I came back and figured it out, I discovered some fantastic puzzles and a really enjoyable game. [[ 19/20 ]]

THEME: While not fleshed out explicitly, there is clearly someone using the moniker "M" leaving you hints in something that looks suspiciously like blood. It gave the game an undefinable but omnipresent M and I think this is precisely what this compo should have had. [[ 5/5 ]]

BIAS: I really like the idea of this game. I don't know if the premise (or the look) could bear up under the weight of a whole game but I would probably play it anyway. [[ 5/5 ]]

OVERALL: Not easy on the eyes and difficult to get into but a clever and creative platformer. [[ 43/50 ]]

SDHawk's Reviews

Criteria

Games are ranked in overall (how everything comes together) and theme. Overall consists of 5 possible M's while theme consists of 2 M's, creating a total of 7 possible M's. It's a rather bold move to have two judging factors, but the classical categorization of things to judge on tends to create commentary irrelevant to certain games and allowing your categories to do the ranking rather than stopping to consider comparisons more directly yourself. Judging the theme was rather difficult in this compo since you could follow it just with your title so most of the bonus points were dolled out on how much I felt the creator's went out of their way to use M or how effectively it was used.

Rankings for the impatient:

1. Mademoiselle
2. Dial `M` for MacGuffin
3. Wind (with an M)
4. Mason's Memoirs: The Middle Months
5. Monster Magnet Meow
6. Marble Massacre

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Marble Massacre

The amount of enjoyment you extract from this game is exactly as much as you get from rolling a ball on helpless dots who leave sprays of blood on the ground. The style of the whole thing is pretty darn amusing and you'll at least try it out 5 times thanks to the usual bevy of modes but ultimately there's not much here unless you're excessively amused by nonsensical violence.

Which isn't to sell the game completely short here, the presentation is top notch going so far as a fancy ball rotation animation and slick menus with records. It's just that there isn't much else here and it lacks the simple but lasting entertainment of some of Ustor's other titles.

Overall: M

Theme: M
m: The title is filled with M's and the game revolves around Modes.
m: The game comes dangerously close to ignoring the 3 area rule. But I think the multitude of modes makes up for it with the spirit of the rule.

Total: MM / MMMMMMM

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Monster Magnet Meow

There's not a whole lot to say about this game. It's conceptually really clever and the first time you grab a key you feel like a god. But the few (two) puzzles in place aren't really enough to exercise the system's potential in any meaningful way so it feels very hollow. Hollower than most compo games and their content deficiency, I mean.

I really can't think of another paragraph to write about this. I basically summed it up right there. The lack of music hurts it as well, I guess. The water death is incredibly annoying, too. If you're wondering why I put this higher than Massacre despite of the dramatic difference in polish: I had a lot more fun with this conceptually.

Overall: Mm / MMMMM

Theme: M / MM
m: It has 3 areas though one is hilariously tacked on from a previous game.
m: The title has some M's in it. Just a few.

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Mason's Memoirs: The Middle Months

Atmospherically this game hits it out of the park. The music, dialogue, and filtered photographs come together perfectly with the fascinating setting to really be something. It's unfortunate that it's also pretty much unplayable.

The general concept here seems to be to gain the trust of the various leaders of the settlement in order to gain authority over their followers. This basically means they want something from you that you can work towards by assigning tasks to your own followers. Each of them has their own set of statistics and skills you can build up as they accomplish things and you also have to deal with resources and population to build structures around the town.

It's a very solid concept with one horrific flaw that throws the whole thing off the tracks: It takes forever to assign tasks. You have to go through menus several layers deep with multiple confirmations and it's generally exhausting to do just for a few of your followers. You start the game with 7 of them and assigning tasks is what the majority of your time is spent on aside from building assignments (which you only do every few days), reports, and finding out what leaders want. The menu based interface just isn't up to the task to keep it from being frustrating. It doesn't even allow you to just say "do the same thing you did yesterday" to save time. I can't imagine how frustrating the game gets once you actually befriend another leader and get even more to assign to. A simple GUI to assign tasks and view stats more easily would have done a lot for the game.

Besides all that, various pieces of the game are unfinished with little other indication than messages to the effect of "Aw, that's not done yet". A game of this intimidating nature could really use a more detailed manual or tutorial to explain what you're even doing, though it is understandable with some patience. The whole time system is still confusing to this day and I'm hoping it's just another unfinished thing.

There's not a whole lot else to say here. This game has some amazing potential but it needs a serious interface overhaul before it becomes playable, ignoring the unfinished bits. It's unfortunate since everyone knows that compo games never get continued, but at least it's interesting.

Overall: MM / MMMMM

Theme: M / MM
m: It has 3 areas though it's hard to measure in this kind of game.
m: The title is loaded with M's but little else in the way of Mness is around that I could see.

Total: MMM / MMMMMMM

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Wind (with an M)

Wind is probably the least technically proficient of all the entries. Button animations are weirdly broken and hurt your ears, the physics are all wrong (gravity accelerates, guys), those bouncy things don't react to air if you stand behind them, and sometimes one of the weapons gets spawned in the wrong place. There are a bevy of issues with this thing. Even so, it manages to show you a decent time despite them.

The difficulty is pretty frustrating at first: The boomerang takes forever to come back leaving you defenseless for long periods of time with no recourse but to wait, enemies hit for a seemingly random amount of damage that managed to kill me at 20hp once (bug? fluke? randomness? I don't know), and moles damage you even when underground. Eventually you come to term with the game's quirks and the difficulty ends up reversing itself with an excessive amount of HP gained from leveling making death an unlikely event.

Once you get into it's pretty fun to activate platforms with the mouse, fight with it, find the few sorta-hidden areas giving you a choice of weaponry, etc. It's all hampered by its problems but never enough to kill the game. Likewise the art is serviceable but has oddities like no jumping animation, stiff walking animations, and blatantly Photoshop filtered blur backgrounds in certain areas. It's all serviceable but never exceptional. The music on the other hand, is fantastic and fits perfectly.

It's over pretty quickly despite of the 3 areas but it uses most of the mechanics that it has by then anyway. It's also lacking in other polish areas like having no title screen or ending but it's perfectly playable without. Overall it's entertaining if rough around every edge.

Overall: MM / MMMMM

Theme: Mm / MM
m: It has 3 distinct areas.
m: M is all over the place with the title, enemy names, and area names.
m: I can't believe this is the only entry to use W. Props!

Total: MMMm / MMMMMMM

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Dial `M` for MacGuffin

Overall:

This game is all about the compo dream of making a fully featured action RPG during an extremely limited period of time. It's a dream that all men dream, but few fulfill.

Like most of these attempts Dial M falls flat in the usual area: content. There's a basic overworld which pretty much dries up after a short walk to the first dungeon. The actual dungeon has a fair number of rooms and puzzles contained within it though it's still fairly short by the Zelda standards it aspires to.

That said, it still manages to be a pretty enjoyable experience. You bash in monsters, gain an item, solve simple puzzles and it all gels together pretty well. The major mis-step the game makes is the warp puzzle at the end of the dungeon which is best described as bullshit trial and error which drags the enjoyment of the whole thing down by several notches. Messing up a guess to walk around to the other side of the dungeon is not fun, and neither is guessing at warps for 5 minutes. It's boring, it's stupid, and it's annoying.

Combat works fairly well but it has a few pieces of wonkiness that throw the whole thing off a little bit, most notably the fact that enemies will survive in a permanent undead state for as long as you keep hitting them. Not a big deal overall, though.

Artistically the game is gosh durn pretty though it falls prey to being so stylistically similar to certain SNES RPGs that I'd wonder if it was ripped if I didn't know it wasn't. This isn't a particularly big issue since it's still easily the best looker in the contest.

The music is well-written and appropriately epic for a gentleman of this caliber's quest but has an odd sort of "quietness" to it that betrays it, though it may have to do with how loud the sound effects are relative to it.

Overall it all comes down to a fairly entertaining time marred by its own length (which is still pretty good for the contest length) and its warp chore. It may fall short of the dream, but it comes closer than most.

Overall: MMMM / MMMMM

Theme: Mm / MM

m: Three areas and then some.
m: Usage of M in the title.
m: They actually go out of their way to use M all over the interface and (more impressively) the dialogue, making it go a step further than most of the other entries.

Total: MMMMMm / MMMMMMM

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mademoiselle

For whatever reason the recently popularized independent gaming vibe of depth through ambiguity hasn't really been done with verge before until now. It works out pretty well, though that's the least of this game's charms.

The Achilles' heel of the production is that its attempt at a wordless tutorial falls somewhat flat. Specifically, it took a very long time to figure out that any opposite colored block of your height works rather than only square blocks (which are featured almost exclusively in the tutorial). This would be a pretty small thing by itself but it basically boiled down into a half hour or more of getting through the second level purely through confusion and randomly trying things. Given how disorienting the flipping mechanic is in of itself it's pretty killer to be confused as to how it flips to begin with.

When it finally clicked, though, wow. While most of the mechanics here have been done individually before the combination at work here is brilliant. The blending between moderate platforming with the puzzles works out really well. The only downside is that by the time you figure out the mechanics it's already over, though a replay with knowing the mechanics adds to the experience a bit if you're like me and muddled through the entire second stage without knowing what was going on.

The music and visuals work together perfectly to create a rather haunting setting with the mysterious M taunting you onwards. To top it off, the ending is basically the best ending in any compo game ever and took me by surprise. Overall the game comes together really well, the only issue is the absolutely brutal learning.

Overall: MMMMm / MMMMM

Theme: Mm / MM
m: There are most certainly three areas.
m: The name of the game, among other thing, has a few m's in it.
m: The signed m scrawls really added to the setting. Even though a lot of other games used M's in names and titles this actually felt like a significant piece of the atmosphere.

Total: MMMMMM / MMMMMMM

don't worry, there was plenty of bribing going on.
also, your entries were super fun. cheers all around!

Quote:Originally posted by mcgrue

(It's also the second compo in a row that Molasses lost. Mwahaha. Failcat is FAIL!)

Perhaps it WOULD be if you judged the other compo :D
And seeing as it's been so long, there's no point in judging it now. Whoever won shall FOREVER be a mystery.

Molasses Mystery Meow.

These judgments are atrocious. Is this some kind of joke? This is an affront ot all that is right and good in the world and I'm ashamed to be a part of this circle.

Seriously though, I'm glad to see that Mademoiselle took the trophy. I felt like it was the standout game and I really enjoyed playing it.