Ectocomp 2011 Results

[Duncan_B]

The results are in for Ectocomp 2011! They are as follows:

1st place: Bloodless on the Orient Express, by Hannes Schueller
2nd place: Attack of Doc Lobster's Mutant Menagerie of Horror, by Duncan Bowsman
3rd place (tie): Blue, by Marius Mueller
Death Shack, by Mel Stefaniuk
4th place: Ignis Fatuus, by DCBSupafly
5th place: Dash Slapney and the Calamitous Candy Corn Cornucopia, by Andrew Schultz
6th place (tie): Dark Deeds, by justahack
The House, by Finn Rosenloev
7th place: Hungry, by Richard Otter
8th place: Stuck Piggy, by Mike Desert

Our winner this year is Hannes! Please make an announcement as to your prize choice ($10 Amazon gift certificate or Cthulhu action figure) on this thread. Thanks and congratulations go to all who entered and to all who submitted votes for this competition. Voting breakdown to be published below...

[Duncan_B]

JUDGE: DCBSupafly

---------------------------------------------------------
Attack of Doc Lobster's Mutant Menagerie of Horror | Duncan Bowsman |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 8/10
Comments: A very creative project that involves a lot of teamwork between the creator and the player. I enjoyed it for its monster-movie feel and language manipulation!

---------------------------------------------------------
Bloodless on the Orient Express | Hannes Schueller |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 9/10
Comments: Believable storytelling. Great attention to detail. Had trouble interacting with the Italian men, but walkthrough solved that!

---------------------------------------------------------
Blue | Taleslinger |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 7/10
Comments: I was frustrated at being stuck in the car when I wanted to go to the shack. The spiders were certainly scary, but too often I would eliminate a problem (the helmet cable after removing helmet, or the man after hitting pipe) only to find that the restriction was still in place.

---------------------------------------------------------
Dark Deeds | Justahack |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 9/10
Comments: Excellent presentation. Diverging storlyines actually give this replay value! Not too serious, but I could identify with the main character, so it felt important.

---------------------------------------------------------
Dash Slapney and the Calamatous Candy Corn Cornucopia | Andrew Schultz |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: /10
Comments: The beginning was good for some laughs. I liked the methods for dealing with unimportant objects and barriers. I never made it out of my place though. I don't know how to get at the source or proceed any further so I can't really rate this.

---------------------------------------------------------
Death Shack | Mel S |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 7/10
Comments: Made me laugh, several times. The text, unfortunately, seemed to vanish at certain times, sometimes before I could finish reading, which was a bummer.

---------------------------------------------------------
Hungry | Richard Otter |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 7/10
Comments: It felt a little vague, but hey, 3 hours. Even in a competition full of non-hero protagonists, this was an intersting perspective.

---------------------------------------------------------
Ignis Fatuus | DCBSupafly |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: _/10
Comments: With such a random final puzzle, it's inexcusable to not have a walkthrough! Still, it was a fantastic piece. :p

---------------------------------------------------------
Stuck Piggy | Mike Desert |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 5/10
Comments: I couldn't get through the GTV, and never knew my motivation. I am a big fan of simple get/use gameplay and don't mind (read: love) the sinister, but it felt too random for me to get into it.

---------------------------------------------------------
The House | Finn Rosenloev |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 8/10
Comments: Getting into the house was tough, but not much fun. Inside the house was great, and the two endings were well thought-out. This has a lot of classic Halloween imagery and appeal.

JUDGE: Sean M. Shore

---------------------------------------------------------
Attack of Doc Lobster's Mutant Menagerie of Horror | Duncan Bowsman |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 5/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Bloodless on the Orient Express | Hannes Schueller |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 7/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Blue | Taleslinger |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 6/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Dark Deeds | Justahack |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 3/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Dash Slapney and the Calamatous Candy Corn Cornucopia | Andrew Schultz |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 5/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Death Shack | Mel S |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 8/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Hungry | Richard Otter |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 4/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Ignis Fatuus | DCBSupafly |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 5/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Stuck Piggy | Mike Desert |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 1/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
The House | Finn Rosenloev |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 2/10
Comments:

JUDGE: E. Joyce

---------------------------------------------------------
Attack of Doc Lobster's Mutant Menagerie of Horror | Duncan Bowsman |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 7/10
Comments: It got a little dull after a while -- I'd love to see a version of this game with more possible objects to combine -- but on the whole I had fun rampaging through the city with my ungodly abominations. It's a well-coded game for the most part, and it's unusual enough to feel fresh.

---------------------------------------------------------
Bloodless on the Orient Express | Hannes Schueller |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 8/10
Comments:

">open bags
What are you looking for? A care packet containing fresh human blood?

>yes
That was a rhetorical question."

I love it when IF writers anticipate the silly things I try to do. Anyway, though laden with spelling errors, it's a pretty cohesive and well-implemented game with at least one decent puzzle and four distinct endings, and I enjoyed it.

---------------------------------------------------------
Blue | Taleslinger |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 6/10
Comments: Though it had some problems and one of the endings was fairly odd and disjointed, it had nice atmosphere and some lovely writing.

---------------------------------------------------------
Dark Deeds | Justahack |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 2/10
Comments: In a multiple-choice story where there's nothing like "gameplay" or "puzzles" to carry it, well-written prose is pretty important, and this was just clunky and not fun to read in a way that the short writing time doesn't excuse. There seem to be a fairly impressive number of branching paths and possible endings, but I didn't enjoy reading it enough to want to see them.

---------------------------------------------------------
Dash Slapney and the Calamatous Candy Corn Cornucopia | Andrew Schultz |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 4/10
Comments: It's got a good sense of humor, but so many omitted important details and read-the-author's-mind puzzles that it's hard to get through it without the walkthrough. Seems like it has a bit too wide of a focus for speed IF.

---------------------------------------------------------
Death Shack | Mel S |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 3/10
Comments: I didn't get all the way through this one; the game didn't understand most of my commands and I got fed up. It was decently funny, at least.

---------------------------------------------------------
Hungry | Richard Otter |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 4/10
Comments: It's a zombie game. It's not bad, I guess. The "This is a chair for sitting on. You're not sure what a chair is or what it's for" descriptions worked for me at first as flashes of humanity reasserting themselves, but after a while they just felt like lazy substitutes for figuring out how something that doesn't think like a human would describe things.

---------------------------------------------------------
Ignis Fatuus | DCBSupafly |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 6/10
Comments: It's undeniably weird, but it's a very solid little game. It's not too buggy, it has some world-building and plot progression (albeit in a very odd direction), and it's definitely Halloweeny in a rather unusual way.

---------------------------------------------------------
Stuck Piggy | Mike Desert |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 1/10
Comments: Buggy and underimplemented even for a speed IF, and I found it pretty tasteless.

---------------------------------------------------------
The House | Finn Rosenloev |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 3/10
Comments: Buggy and not very interesting gameplay-wise; the story and writing were okay, but not really enough to carry the game.

JUDGE: Martin Barth

---------------------------------------------------------
Attack of Doc Lobster's Mutant Menagerie of Horror | Duncan Bowsman |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: _/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Bloodless on the Orient Express | Hannes Schueller |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 7/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Blue | Taleslinger |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 5/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Dark Deeds | Justahack |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: _/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Dash Slapney and the Calamatous Candy Corn Cornucopia | Andrew Schultz |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 7/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Death Shack | Mel S |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: _/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Hungry | Richard Otter |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: _/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Ignis Fatuus | DCBSupafly |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: _/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
Stuck Piggy | Mike Desert |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: _/10
Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------
The House | Finn Rosenloev |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: _/10
Comments:

JUDGE: Mel S

---------------------------------------------------------
Attack of Doc Lobster's Mutant Menagerie of Horror | Duncan Bowsman |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 7/10

Comments: An interesting, ambitious idea that's executed surprisingly well in only 3 hours but feels more like a technical demo than an actual game. I'd love to see an expanded version that offers more ways to build your monsters in ways that have a bigger impact on how the attacks play out. Still, it was worth playing for the brilliant "Deadly toxin is deadly" description alone.

---------------------------------------------------------
Bloodless on the Orient Express | Hannes Schueller |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 5/10
Comments: A surprisingly large game for three hours but perhaps too big as a lot of the rooms seem superfluous, the puzzles get abstract and the writing seems rushed. I admire the attempt at doing something grandoise but personally, I'd have preferred something focused instead of sprawling.

---------------------------------------------------------
Blue | Taleslinger |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 6/10
Comments: A bleak little game which manages to make up for some of its problems by simply being a unique idea told in an interesting, minimalistic way. I'll never look at brain-eating spiders the same way.

---------------------------------------------------------
Dark Deeds | Justahack |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 6/10
Comments: I'm a sucker for choose-your-own-adventure so I was really into this at the start, especially with some solid writing creating a surprisingly dark mood, but the problems that a three-hour time limit create don't take long to reveal themselves as the writing gets progressively sloppier and sillier as it goes along and each ending you get is unsatisfying. Nice to play something with no guess-the-verb though!

---------------------------------------------------------
Dash Slapney and the Calamatous Candy Corn Cornucopia | Andrew Schultz |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 5/10
Comments: I had fun playing Dash Slapney - splashing water on kids, jamming batteries into brownies and just generally being a misanthrope - but I was forced to rely on the in-game walkthrough constantly to figure out what I had to do next and that quickly put a damper on things. It's incredibly tough to make a gameplay-heavy IF game in only 3 hours and this unfortunately is further proof of that.

---------------------------------------------------------
Death Shack | Mel S |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 0/10
Comments: Awful.

---------------------------------------------------------
Hungry | Richard Otter |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 3/10
Comments: I'm not a big fan of wandering around a maze-like blur of rooms so it was frustrating to have to do that here, especially when they're all so similar and are referred to as 'Some Place' on the map. There's a solid premise here but the map layout and constant deaths make it hard to have any fun playing.

---------------------------------------------------------
Ignis Fatuus | DCBSupafly |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 5/10
Comments: This is a very odd game, one with its fair share of problems yet still weirdly charming enough to make it something I kinda enjoyed playing. It's hard to be overly harsh of any game which requires you to type 'swat crotch' to finish it.

---------------------------------------------------------
Stuck Piggy | Mike Desert |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 5/10
Comments: A suitably grisly entry for a Halloween competition, containing all of the nose-grating you could possibly want, but it suffers from some guess-the-verb problems which made me turn to the walkthrough often. Definitely something I think could be interesting in an expanded, more polished form.

---------------------------------------------------------
The House | Finn Rosenloev |
---------------------------------------------------------
SCORE: 7/10
Comments: It's always fun to explore a spooky abandoned house, especially when there are some clever and well-executed puzzles involved and the writing is as sharp and snappy as it is here. Next year's Ectocomp may have to see the release of a game entitled 'The House vs. Death Shack: Domiciles of Doom' to determine which dwelling truly is the most evil of them all.

[Hannes]

Hey, thanks to all the judges, that was unexpected – especially with such an impressive turnout as this year! Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad people liked the game. Of course, Mel's criticism is spot-on; I went for size rather than depth.

That said, as Martin was so nice to send me two transcripts already, I'm preparing a second release of my game. I'm not planning any groundbreaking changes; it is was it is and that's what it will remain. However, there are a couple of unfortunate bugs in there, one of which even makes the game unwinnable under certain circumstances. I also tried my best to fix spelling mistakes (from the "wodden" coffin to "You see the change/chance"), though my English language skills don't seem to be sufficient to identify the amount E. Joyce seems to have found. So any input, be it transcripts or just individual pointers about what is still wrong language or gameplay-wise would be appreciated!

As for the prize, I'd sure like to have the Cthulhu action figure, but I'm not sure if I can expect you to ship it overseas, Duncan? You will find the black suitcase is in the agreed location...

[DCBSupafly]

Congrats, Hannes. I guess it was missed but I also wanted to donate the latest Humble Indie Bundle or Trine 2, both of which are Indie projects and totally downloadable, if you're interested. If you're not interested, that's okay, I understand not everyone here is into the 'video' in video games. If you'd like to know about the games, let me know.

[Po. Prune]

Congrats Hannes...
Job well done

[Mel S]

Congratulations Hannes, you definitely deserve the win after putting so much work into your game, I still can't believe how much you managed to pack in there in only three hours. My game only had four tiny rooms and I still struggled to get it it finished.

I thought this was a pretty great Ectocomp overall, lots of diversity in the games which meant you had absolutely no idea what you were in store for when you loaded them up. It would've been nice if we could've had more judges chiming but I guess with 8 games to go through, it was a pretty big time commitment to have to play and critique each one.

[Hannes]

I also wanted to donate the latest Humble Indie Bundle

I hadn't heard of that one before, but it sounds interesting. How is that download option handled? Any spyware client like "Steam" necessary or a straight download?

[Duncan_B]

Hannes: I'm fully willing to ship a Great Old One overseas, if you'd like. If you're thinking of choosing the Humble Indie Bundle instead, just lemme know.

[DCBSupafly]

While many are Steam games, they will all be run without that most heinous of computer afflictions. They will supply you with a link to your downloads. The current Humble Bundle is called the Introversion Bundle. You will get:

Multiwinia
Uplink
Darwinia
DEFCON
Crayon Physics Deluxe (which I have played and is neato)
Aquaria (which I bought thanks to a fellow 'DRIFTer and is so pretty)
Dungeons of Dredmor

I will buy it (for a considerable amount more than the average, but much much less than the sum of all the included games' individual prices) and send you a code, which grants you access to a download page that should stay up forever (I download my bundles and put them on an extra HDD for posterity :p)

http://www.humblebundle.com/

I have bought all humble bundles ever and they are always great exposure to lots of creativity in the game world.

I thought the winner would get ALL the prizes offered! You have to choose?!

[MikeDesert]

SCORE: 1/10
Comments: Buggy and underimplemented even for a speed IF, and I found it pretty tasteless.

*sniff* this was all I ever wanted... well not the buggy part. yeah, major GTV problems (mostly during the torture, and that's supposed to be the fun part!) Going to add a ton of tasks and wild cards soonish, so if anyone ever wants to play the thing it won't be so frustrating.

[MikeDesert]

For what it's worth Bloodless and Death Shack were my two favorites.

[Po. Prune]

That's one thing I found quite amusing... that a time limited game, and with a short time limit as 3 hours at that, could be judged buggy
The authors had 3 hours to complete their games, so no wonder that the games were buggy. That is one of the things, in my opinion, that makes it very hard to judge in competitions like this. How much are we to expect from a game that's creted within 3 hours?
Some authors will aim for an entertaining story whereas others will set their aims at making the game as perfect as possible. So in the end it all depends on the eyes that watches.

Back to reviewing;
This is by no means meant as a critisism of the judges, but it's a "cheap" way out to just say that a game is buggy. Writing games is an ongoing learning process, so if there's something you don't like about a game take the few extra minutes to point out what it is you don't like.
I got a "buggy" game comment too, which is alright if that's the judge's opinion, but how am I supposed to learn and get better if the judge can't be bothered telling me what it is that's wrong?

[Campbell]

I've updated the competition page (since the organiser hasn't ) with the placings so the awards are assigned. Not all the games are up on the page yet tho. Also I shifted the positions down one as 4th shouldn't exist presumably if there was a joint 3rd.

[Hannes]

I will buy it (for a considerable amount more than the average, but much much less than the sum of all the included games' individual prices) and send you a code, which grants you access to a download page that should stay up forever (I download my bundles and put them on an extra HDD for posterity :p)

Alright, sounds good! Please mind that I will need the Linux version of the bundle (in case this is relevant at the time of ordering). Thanks!

That's one thing I found quite amusing... that a time limited game, and with a short time limit as 3 hours at that, could be judged buggy
The authors had 3 hours to complete their games, so no wonder that the games were buggy.

Yes, all of the games had their share of bugs. I guess a "buggy" comment is meant to be interpreted as "buggy above the competition's average" I agree that it would be much more useful to have the bugs pointed out, of course (just like the "laden with spelling errors" comment about my own game).

[justahack]

Congratulations Hannes!

On a random note, will there be a ChristmasComp?