Competion 15 Results!

[dislekcia]

Comp 15 Results

Mention the fateful combination of "Educational" and "Games" in the same sentence and gamers roll their eyes, game developers shuffle their feet and educators stare at you as though you're crazy. Thankfully there are a stalwart few out there that believe learning is fun and worth building games around, especially when given a concept as perfect for marketing speak as "Guerrilla Learning". Mindset Learn sponsored R10 000 in cash prizes for the entries that best managed to create a guerrilla learning game, the results speak for themselves.

This competition was a test in many ways: A test to see if games could carry learning messages and still be entertaining and interesting to play; As well as a test of Game.Dev and the capacity of local developers to come up with interesting ideas. Both were very successful, meaning that we've taken a significant step towards growing the game development industry here in SA. In fact, the possibility of extending the various games entered (and finding funding to do so) was a frequent discussion topic during the judging!

I think I speak for all of us when I say "Mission Accomplished!" and I'm particularly excited about the prospect of some of you coming away from this with not just the chance to win prize money, but also a very real possibility of being paid to further develop your game ideas. That's exactly what I've been working towards for quite some time now :)

REVIEWS:

Angle Racer - edg3
The concept of bouncing rays of light around a maze or puzzle-based level is a good one - so good that it had been done before - but Edg3 was keen to explore it from the point of view of tacit learning. Unfortunately he didn't manage to get the maths behind the game itself 100% perfect, which must have proven a learning experience for him :). With a little tweaking and some applied optics information visible, this could be a really great exercise for pretty much everyone. Although perhaps building it might prove even more helpful as an interesting application of geometric rules.

Cartesian Chaos - Evil_Toaster
Evil_Toaster kept lobbing ideas at his friends until he hit upon the core idea behind Cartesian Chaos (originally named Monster Maths, but given a much cooler moniker by the forums) - that's what producers call focus testing. ET's long term goal is to make a living off his games and that shows in his attention to detail and his dedication to making everything he produces as polished as possible... On top of all that, Cartesian Chaos is an educational dream: It's fun, it's about a decidedly useful concept and it's got a learning curve that pulls players from "Uh - there, I think - *click*" to "Hah, I'm doing linear substitution in my head 5 times a second!"

Cloudy Day - UpsiDownQuestionMark
First time developer UpsiDownQuestionMark went for a holistic approach to learning: Give people a sandbox they can play with and they'll naturally figure out the rules and systems that govern it. Cloudy Day isn't finished or overly polished, but it works and there are some really nice touches, most notably the way pollution messes up clouds (turning them yellow, hah! Sulphur = acid rain, go me!). It's less of a game and more of a toy at the moment, but that's never a bad thing: Toys are there to be played with, if an outcome of that play is greater understanding of our environment, that's great!

CyberJam - Tr00jg
Unfortunately we couldn't get this entry to compile... We blame our Java runtime, it seemed as though we were missing a lot of class definitions.

Elkwood High - CiNiMoD & Darth_Penguin
Adventure games are a well-established genre, getting them to be correctly themed for learning isn't quite as an established art form. Cinimod and Darth_Penguin decided to make their puzzles match typical school questions and quizzes, this works up to a point, but it tends to feel like the learning is an added afterthought - much like it does while you're at school ;). This could be a clever result of their story, which is amusing (you have to break out of a maximum security educational institution, nobody knows why you're there) and laugh-out-loud funny at times. In general though it feels as though something is lacking, perhaps if another aspect of adventure/RPG games were used as a learning system - combat - for instance, it would feel more complete. Generally adventure games are difficult projects to complete because they're so driven by content, so the fact that you can finish this game is a very good thing™... And the light fading effect in the air conditioning system maze is just perfect.

Extreme Elements - UntouchableOne
While playing Extreme Elements we kept looking for the reason that the game was using the elements from the periodic table, but we couldn't find the content that justified it. Gameplay-wise the game is playable, but it doesn't have much variation until the game speed gets crazier: You're hitting buttons to "catch" falling elements when they hit the right area of the screen; And that remains all you do... The various combos weren't immediately obvious and would often just pop up in the middle of said button-hitting. If the nature/name of the elements was emphasised, perhaps the combos could become the learning tool they were intended to be. In a way this feels like a single mini-game out of a collection.

Epidemic - herman.tulleken and Chris
This is an interesting entry, from two guys lucky enough to be working in game development for their day jobs. Epidemic tasks you with trying to contain and cure outbreaks of various diseases on a city map. The game looks great and the idea is certainly exciting, but often the gameplay feels far too fast: You hardly know what's going on most of the time and end up deploying doctors and quarantining like mad. This excitement is good for tension, but often it doesn't give players time to really learn anything... Mindset were particularly intrigued with the idea of turning this game into a slightly more sedate choice-consequence game with the same objective, but more involved actions from the players (students, nurses, healthcare workers) in various "screens". Ranging from diagnosing the actual disease via symptoms and/or detective work (ala House) and then enacting the correct measures to contain it.

K.I.S.S. - Kimau
The idea of a play simulator, as in a theatrical production that needs to be tailored to make it appeal to the audience and project some sort of message, is really novel. It's a shame that Kimau wasn't able to find enough time to complete the project. Experimental gameplay would have loved this game...

Math Attack - Squid
What happens when you take a solid puzzle mechanic, add in a little maths and rapidly prototype the idea? If you go by Squid's resultant Math Attack, the answer is 100% pure potential. From a learning angle, splitting maths into single digit operations - while maintaining the importance of positioning in a larger number - is apparently a truly momentous feat. To hear Mindset's resident maths curriculum person, teachers routinely try and fail to achieve this conceptual understanding in their students. Who would have thought that it would be so easily achieved in a game? There was a lot of interest in helping Squid turn this into a cellphone game :)

PartyType - cairnswm
PartyType is one of the two typing-tutor games entered into Comp 15, it behaves relatively well apart from a few issues around the apostrophe in words (which it refuses to recognise, even though some of the words in its dictionary have apostrophes in them) and white menu text on a white background... Not being the market the game is trying reach - it's clearly aimed at young girls - we can't say how well the theming works. One idea though would be to extend the customisation reward a little more, perhaps allowing players to build their own tea rooms or something similar.

Projectile 169 - Aikur
The mathematics of parabolas and firing projectiles has always been closely linked. That makes it natural for at least one of Comp 15's games to have something to do with both, thankfully Aikur was willing to oblige. Taking a different approach to the usual angle + speed method of firing projectiles, you are tasked with finding a parabolic equation for a trajectory that intersects your target point. The actual parabola-defining interface is very simple to use... Too simple, actually: It's very easy to simply drag your sliders back and forth until you get a trajectory that works. Elements like adding time constraints on how long you have to do all your firing in makes it worth your while as a player to understand a little more about how parabolas work, but nothing really major as you can still get by with random sliding. The game could do with a little more visual feedback in terms of the final equation to help the players along more...

Rockets! - Gazza_N
Build rockets. Fire them into the sky. Learn physics! Literally, that's exactly what Rockets! is about. The learning aspects aren't in your face, they're simply integrated completely into the gameplay: If you want to see how well your rocket is going to do at a glance, you'll quickly grasp the interplay of forces in a vector diagram. The design values are also very well thought out, with a tutorial level that has you almost-but-not-quite reaching your goal several times until you get the gist of the game. Smart. This is another game that Mindset was very keen on expanding, adding more information about how rockets (and the propulsion systems in the game) work and cleaning up the interface a little... Small touches like placing a schematic of your current rocket configuration in the top right of the screen, etc.

The Journey - Thaumaturge
The Journey is clearly not finished and thanks to a few oversights (missing instructions) it's rather difficult to play... It is possible to set yourself on fire though, so there isn't too much else you can really complain about ;). Educationally the idea of spellcasting to understand the concept of equal and opposite reactions can work, it's just that there's very little content here to grasp the idea with... Perhaps with a little more feedback on effects and consequences would have more impact.

Treasure Hunter - Emerican
Treasure Hunter places the player in or near ancient Egypt and asks them to solve a variety of themed puzzles. The first puzzle is a simple cypher, the second is a maze and we have no idea what the third one is because we couldn't get through the maze... As a foray into 3D it's commendable, but the old-style education-gameplay-education split makes it feel tacked together.

Typing Tower - ShadowMaster
The second of our two typing games, Typing Tower adds a sense of urgency and motivation to the standard typing mix by asking you to avoid inexorably rising water: Jumping from platform to platform by typing the word on each platform. Typing Tower received a lot of forum ideas and polish suggestions, but we can only wish that Mindset's suggestions had been around from the beginning: Take the gameplay and instead of focusing on typing, reproduce english "drill and practice" exercises that are typically boring or uninspiring for learners. Or even make the game about spelling and reward players for correcting spelling mistakes on the platforms with even bigger jumps (higher platforms have more errors in the words, which get reduced as they come closer to the player).

RESULTS:

This is the first time that an external sponsor has helped judge a Game.Dev competition. In this case Mindset's expertise came in handy while picking out the titles with the most learning content, if it would have been a competition for sheer learning potential we'd have had to give out many more prizes: The ideas for improvements and expanded game ideas came thick and fast during the judging.

First place - R 5000: Cartesian Chaos - Evil_Toaster
Slick. Polished. Great learning material. Fun game... Those are just some of the phrases that describe Cartesian Chaos. ET really has worked hard on the game and it shows. He deservedly takes first place with a game that hopefully will soon make many people's mathematical understanding slightly better!

Second place - R 2500: Rockets! - Gazza_N
Again, with guerrilla learning being the prime judging criteria, Rockets! quickly established exactly what it was there to do: Make things make sense. No complexities, no frills and no seperation between gameplay, fun and understanding. Exactly what the competition was set up to create.

Third place - R 1500: Math Attack - Squid
For a prototype to so elegantly capture a game idea isn't rare. But for a prototype to wow as many people as Math Attack did, that's special. In terms of potential I'm sure Squid will be able to create new puzzle mechanics to flesh out a fuller version of the game - And Mindset is keen to see that happen.

Best new entrant - R 1000: Typing Tower - ShadowMaster
With a slightly changed focus, Typing Tower could have claimed a podium spot. As it stands it's not hard to award it the best new entrant award for focusing its gameplay so tightly around the core objective of the game. All the other work that went into it: menus, sounds and the like did not go unnoticed and bode well for ShadowMaster's future games.

...

Congratulations to the winners, as well as to everyone that proved that edutainment (shiver) was simply a poorly thought out and badly executed attempt by people that didn't understand games. As an approach, guerrilla learning works far better and can lead to some really interesting and enjoyable games! That counts as a win any way you look at it... Add in Mindset's growing keenness to help grow these budding young developers and I reckon this has been our most influential and successful competition yet!

The final prizegiving will be held at rAge - Saturday afternoon on the main stage, but more details will be released on the website (and here) closer to the time. If any winners aren't going to make it to the expo, please let us know via this forum.

-D

[ShadowMaster]

Cool I actually won a prize! Booya!

Now since I live in Cape Town, I doubt I will be able to go up to Gauteng, but I'm not totally sure yet

As for the idea I might do it if I have the time, but randomly creating spelling errors is hard, especially on the easy levels. The words would be dynamicly change, because that would tax the engine and user.

[Tr00jg]

Congrats to those who won!

:(... Cyberjam didnt compile? Damn you Java! Dis did you use JDK 1.6?

[cairnswm]

Well done everyone :)

And thanks to dislekcia and Mindset Learn for the Contest.

[BlackHawk]

Congratulations and joyous celebrations to all the winners!

[Cyberninja]

Congratulations to all the winners! Bring on the feta and streamers at rAge! :)

[CiNiMoDZA]

Congrat congrats everyone!!! And thanks for the comp dis! Cant wait for the next!!! :D

[Gazza_N]

At this point, I feel that I'm fully justified in saying:

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO! \0/

Not as much as ET though. :D

Sincere thanks to the judges and well done to everyone. Some killer games in that review list. ;)

[CaptainCrunch]

Congrats to all the winners.
Are the entries perhaps available for download somewhere?
Would like to check out what the locals can do.

[edg3]

Congrats to the winners!! :)
the entries are on the old forums.

[herman.tulleken]

Congrats all! There are some awesome games (I nearly lost a contact lense playing Typing Tower - there is just no time to blink!)

ht

PS: we will be b a c k ;-)

[ShadowMaster]

Originally Posted by herman.tulleken

Congrats all! There are some awesome games (I nearly lost a contact lense playing Typing Tower - there is just no time to blink!)

What's your highscore in version 1.00?

[herman.tulleken]

I have to download the new version. I'm actually not good at all (it just one of those addictive things "maybe this time" and "just one more try"). In the _v e r y e a s y_ 0.98 version I got to 530..., and less in the harder ones...

ht

[ShadowMaster]

Originally Posted by herman.tulleken

I have to download the new version. I'm actually not good at all (it just one of those addictive things "maybe this time" and "just one more try"). In the _v e r y e a s y_ 0.98 version I got to 530..., and less in the harder ones... ht

Version 0.98 is basicly the same as version 1.00(tweaking wise), the only thing that changed was graphics and I added my voice overs(which due to being ashamed I turn the sound off).

As for the rest of the winners, great stuff!

@dis: isn't there a more complete list of who came where, ie where everyone's rank is given? If you don't want to post it for whatever reason, could you atleast tell where I came, in absolute position?

[Fengol]

I just want to add my congratulations to all the winners and entrants!

[Insomniac]

Congratz to all the winners and spend the prize money wisely ;)
And also well done to everyone who entered, just wish I had the time to play all your games :)

[Himmler]

Congrats to all the winners and great work on your games. Hope to see a good turnout for the next Comp, and maybe I'll see you guys at Rage.

[dislekcia]

Originally Posted by ShadowMaster

@dis: isn't there a more complete list of who came where, ie where everyone's rank is given? If you don't want to post it for whatever reason, could you atleast tell where I came, in absolute position?

The judging doesn't work like that: We only focus on picking out the top 3. Trying to rank every single entry would take far too long and generally be pointless: The feedback/review already takes a lot of time and is designed to help people improve their games instead of make people compete against each other needlessly.

-D

[Fengol]

@Gazza_N: PLEASE continue working on Rockets!. I spent today playing through all the missions and I had a blast!

Things I want to see
* Random wind strength and direction changes in Free Play. Make it natural so it'll grow or shrink in strength and migrate in direction.
* More mission with a series of targets. The ballon gauntlet was fun, now give me different objects to navigate.
* Show degrees when aiming in pre-launch. It's a bit of a pain to have to guess (especially when clicking on the circle to move jolts it from its current location) the angle. When I click Launch it shows me the angle so it's not much of an advantage.
* Cancel launch. Provide the ability to cancel the simulation in mid-flight. Sometimes I screw up and now I have to wait until the rocket natually crashes to re-configure

[Gazza_N]

@Fengol: Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the game! :D

- Wind change: Good idea! The wind does randomize, but only when you first enter free play. I'll look at shifting it dynamically as you play.
- I mentioned on the old forums that I'd consider releasing a mission pack if the game did well. I don't think I need to say any more than that. ;)
- I didn't design missions for absolute pinpoint accuracy, so I left angle information for the in-flight status bar. That said, I see no reason not to show it while aiming. Consider it added.
- It mentions in the tutorial that you can smack spacebar while in flight to reset. However, I agree that a clickable button would be better, if I can figure out where to put it. :p