Judging this competition has truly been a bittersweet experience for all of us here at JIG Casual Gameplay. Sweet because we have been graced with so many wonderfully creative and original puzzle games to play. Every last one of them deserves the usual treatment we like to give around here, so look forward to seeing each game highlighted and reviewed in the days and weeks ahead. That these amazing interactive experiences have been created in Flash for immediate delivery anywhere in the world through the window of a browser is remarkable. The calibre of games submitted is a testament to the achievements that become possible with an accessible and easy to use development platform, as well as to the near ubiquitous penetration of the Flash Player itself.
But having to narrow this playing field to just three (3) winning entries is an unenviable position to be in. The competition was very close. Sometimes too close to call and another scan through each game was required to validate or reevaluate the scores that were tallied. Four (4) reviewers total—John, Drew, Noah and myself—scored each game in detail according to a set of rubrics established for the theme of this competition. And the summary of that data lead directly to these three choices:
Congratulations to all of the winners, and to everyone that submitted an entry. A warm and gracious thanks for helping to make this first ever Casual Gameplay design competition such a memorable one and a success.
Please show your support for all of these talented game designers by casting your votes, and dollars, towards the Audience Prize, to be announced when voting ends early Saturday morning, September 2, 2006. Please refer to the Audience Prize page for links to vote for each of the games.
Thanks also go out to Adobe for generously providing the Flash 8 licenses for the competition, and to Graeme for helping to procure a black Nintendo DS.
Prizes will be awarded as follows: The author of the first prize winning entry may choose either a Flash 8 Professional license or the black Nintendo DS. The remaining prizes will be offered to the authors of the runners up entries, using a drawing, if necessary, to settle a tie.
Congratulations Sean, Phillip, Rey & Anders :D
Clack is a good choice for a winner. Such a beautiful and simple idea (but hard to solve). That is a true 'casual game'.
Thief, Cyberpunk and Gateway on the other hand shows us some fresh approaches how you can combine number of puzzles on one game.
Congratulations to all the winners and those that didn't make it- I couldn't make up my mind what to vote for. I definitely enjoyed Clack, though, and it kept me entertained for quite a while.
Clack is a very entertaining game, congratulations.
But I beg for more levels for Personal Universe, it's definitively my favorite game of this competition.
In a sense anyone who entered this game is a winner because they get A. a t-shirt, and B. the honor of having completed a wonderful little flash game that gets an honorable spot in this competition and featured on this website. :)
Don't you fear, that presenting the results of the "reviewer-jury" before the audience prize is finished, might unwarranted influence the audiences opinions?
Congratulations to the winners from the 'Free the bird' creator!
And my complements to the organisors of this compo. I'm already looking forward for future jayisgames compos :)
Will there still be an interface that will unite all the entries?
Cheers!
Great choices. I really like Clack, although I only have 11/20. There were some other really good games in there, but they didn't follow the gist of the competition; simple and short puzzle game. Clack clearly fulfilled this requirement, and the beautiful playing field and mezmorizing (to me) sound effects really makes this game worthy.
Now I need to go back and play Thief a little more.
Congrats to all!
Thanks Jay and everyone for the kind words on Clack. Im proud that it won, but I feel I must say that it's not nearly as good as the puzzles in Click Drag Type. The entire duration of the competition was spent trying to come up with something as genius as the concepts in that game.
If you haven't played Click Drag Type, please do. Chopping wood and nailguns? Genius.
Sean
Clack was fun, definitely. I didn't expect it to win, but looking back on it, it was one of the best short entries.
I remember clack fondly, figuring out which positions were definitely right, and progessing in parts. First getting the first five, then the first eleven, then the first sixteen, and finally getting all twenty by accident when changing a few minor lengths.
Oh I also wanted to say, the the few who showed interest in my other 2 concepts, that I intend to give them the interface they deserve.
I knew what people would say about Houses before I even submitted it (not enough space to work, etc.)
I also had an idea of what people would think of Weight. It turned out, in the end, to be a bunch of clutter. It also wasn't very clear and required you to deal with decimal points (thats just bad game design)
So hopefully sometime in the near future you'll see the new versions of these games reviewed here.
Sean
Congrats to all the entrants and winners! I don't envy the judges on this one. Some great stuff put together in record time. Bravo!
For some reason all three of those games are ones I haven't yet figured out how to play...
Congratulations Sean!
Congrats to all the winners! And thanks to all who played my entry (Sigil of Binding). I'd say the first Casual Gameplay competition has been a success and a great time for all!
Sean, now that I have given a second thought for Houses, the limited building area is actually part of the challenge. I think you would suprize how many solutions I have found in that game. And in real life the size of the building site and the number of floors can be very restricted too. But you can allways add more levels. Some of them easy and a few more restricted and difficult.
my $0.02
Though the "too-short" boolean returned a value of 1/T, my system
"totally subjective experience vis-a-vis gameplay and/or fun"
returns scores showing Gateway as the clear, unequivocal winner.
(affirmation method: money-where-mouth-is)
> "Don't you fear, that presenting the results of the "reviewer-jury" before the audience prize is finished, might unwarranted influence the audiences opinions?"
Grid - no, I do not. On the contrary. I believe the JIG audience to be one of conviction and steadfast in choice and preference. (After all, isn't that why you come here? ;)
Therefore, it is my hope that if your individual pick was not selected as winner for the competition (or even if it was) that you will do as beefhaze has done and put your "money-where-mouth-is". =)
Congratulations everyone! =] Truly impressive work all around.
Congratulations to Sean for Clack. It would definitely be my choice for most original concept. I spent a good deal of time trying to solve it (17 has stymied me so far.) Gateway may have been the most enjoyable to play, but I think the spirit of the competition was more toward the type of small puzzle that Clack was.
bb - I'm working on it. =)
The competition turned out to be more work than I expected. No worries, though; it's been a tremendous learning experience.
Next time we will likely begin with a common starter file.
Woooooo congrats Sean!
Have finally mastered Clack - well it won didn't it so I thought I'd better work out what all the fuss was about!! I confess that before I'd hardly given it a second glance...when I first tried to play it I couldn't work out anything - like even how to make anything move! Finally got something to move and had a twiddle. Read a spoiler which was harder than the game ;).....couple of hours later, I've finally cracked it! Good stuff! Though, as a total games idiot with not a lot of time to spend fiddling to make something get started, a couple of hints would have been handy.
Don't change Houses, there is plenty of room to work and you have the 'see through' option. Couple more levels would be nice though :)
As for Weight, well, that one will forever remain a mystery to me - and one, to be honest, I don't feel like trying to solve!
I'm glad Thief was up there in the winners and that Gateway got a mention.
As for Cyberpunk, I can see that appealing to the techies but for my type of casual gamer it's just too hard and too reminiscent of the computer old days when my dad tried to teach me MSDos...... Maybe I'll give it another go in a few days - and read all the spoilers!
Jay, all your hard work was worth it. You got some cracking games for your finalists which must have been a big boost to the developers and to you and your team.
Simple and yet infuriatingly deep game, that Clack. Well done, congrats.
(psst, I'm on 16, can't find 17, hehe)
I was pretty sure this one would win it. Good work.
Honestly i cannot figure out what to do at all!
Ok now i do lol :P
i got to number 6 but now i cant go anywhere else from there.. ? any clues
ok i can do it but now i really am stuck after number 10!
Clack help:
Can't get it to do anything?
Hanging off the bottom of one of the "greens" is a triangle and a square. The triangle is a play button and the square is a stop button. Hitting play puts the puzzle in motion
Ok, so one part moves, what else can I do?
When the game is not in motion you'll find that clicking on a clock hand moves it into one of three positions (short, medium, and long).
What is the point in changing the clock hands?
If the ball on the end of one clock hand hits the ball on the end of another clock hand it will put the other clock hand in motion, and stop the first. The rotation can be passed from one clock to the next and progress around the court.
What am I trying to do?
Notice the few circles on the board? When the ball of a clock hand goes through the middle of a circle, it lights up. Light them all up in order, and you win. Most of the circles are hidden and you have to find them. As a clue, there is a triangle on each circle that points in the direction of the next one.
Any other hints?
As you move the cursor around you will see a shadow cast under the cursor. There are circles around each clock that shows the path that the clock hand will take. This is very helpful in figuring out how long to make each hand so that one will swing into the other.
I liked Gateway the most.
I suppose Clack is a good winner though, it's pretty original. Although it took me a while to figure out how the game works.
Same goes for most games, I still don't understand what I'm suppost to do in some of the games. It's a puzzle in itself to figure out the controls, rules, possibilities and goal of some of these games ;)
Congrats to the winner!!
but I still think that cyberpunk was the most original.
When is the next contest?!
I got stuck on 13, I'd spend more time trying to crack it (and will) but right now it's late and I'm getting tired!
But I love the game, it's a brilliant idea!
@Sean
Did you use a hittest to stop/play the mc's?
well not what I was expecting to see but........what can you do?
clack would have been in my middle rankings
gateway would have been top 3
Imok20..
No actually, I did at first but rotating movie clips complicates things. I tried simply attaching a 'ball' mc at the end of the swingarms to do hittest with, but that didnt work so well.
So I broke down and used trigonometry, probly not the best way to do it, but its perfectly accurate and there was a time constraint.
Sean
@Sean
Well, it ran like a dream, great work! Do you have a website with your games/works on it?
By the way, where did you get those sounds/how did you make them?
No website
sounds:
http://www.flashkit.com/soundfx/
Sean
I really liked Weight, Sigil of Binding and Thief.
Weight = because it was a good math workout. Really cool, actually. It's rare that I get to see a math problem that's worth doing. Not a great "game", per se, but my calculus professor would have a field day with it!
Sigil = Again, reminds me of a small game that I played during calc on the TI-89 called Flip Tile. :) Awesome.
Thief was the embodiment of what many contestants tried to do with a perfect blend of light and sound; while I still can't understand Clack, Thief just clicked for me right away :) The writing (wow, that was weird) is fantastic as well (that's something I don't say often about many games, let alone flash games).
And Jay, next time could you make the interface a bit less OS X-ish, please? :P Great site, BTW. Really, really great.
Congrats to all the winners!!! I thank you all for giving me something to do with my brain on my off time (and making it enjoyable at that!).
Congratulations to all of you for all this games. I just become addict to them and even at work the first thing I do is connecting jayisgames.com.
I hope we will soon have some instructions for some, cause as I saw, I'm not the only one who can't figure out what to do for some games (weight, puzzle #1 & #2, quadra pair 42).
and i'll surely need some spoilers for some others.
thank you very much to all of you, you all did a great job.
some of us (like me) have ideas but not even a bit of programming, it would be good to be able to suggest ideas for developpers on your site Jay.
vink the froggy who speaks english as a french.
Thanks for the suggestion, vink. It's a good idea, let me think on that for a while.
As for instructions and reviews for the games of the competition, they are forth coming, I promise. The other authors and I have already begun work on the first batch that you will see very soon. =)
cheers!
raihan - thank you very much. =)
Grats, Sean :)
I enjoyed both Clack and Houses very much (did not understand much about Weight, but it is most likely my fault and not the game). I hope we can see bigger versions of your games in the future with more levels. And hopefully see more new games from you with other great ideas.
I also like to thank everyone playing my puzzles and saying good words about them. I did not include any instructions since the figuring out what to do was suppose to be challenge itself.
All the entries were surprisingly good, big thanks to everyone submitting such great games.
Game's not over till the "wealthy" person(s) do the vocals :)
There's still time to vote for your personal favorites! I think that less than 100 have cast their votes so far.
w00ts for Clack, for sheer originality, professional finish and great implementation. totally agree with the winners bar the placement of cyberpunk, and prettymuch the only thing I didnt like about that was that it came across like an almost-total steal of the Introversion classic 'Uplink'
:D
Still, <3 the results
first congrats to all the winners, is there a listing on here for gateway, i need some help with the game and cant find where it was listed to play other than the competition pages. help
ts
None of these links work today (August 31) ?! :-(
Jay, is it September 1st or this Saturday? Because according to my calendar, today is the 31st and that means Friday is going to be Sept. 1st.
Err for the game if anyone has completed it, can they make a screenshot of it and send it to me thanx
oh and btw Congrats to all the winners
Wee - my apologies. Dreamhost is having 'issues' again. I've moved all the games to a different server temporarily, so they should be all functional again.
Ben - voting ends late Friday night, at 11:59 PM (GMT-4:00).
(That would be early Saturday morning, September 2nd -- cheers, Sami! ;)
They're not great, but a colour to suite every site!
Say the word and I'll send you the images Jay (or you can just download them from where they are, but they won't stay there for ever...)
Or say a different word and I'll go back to the drawing board (or graphics tablet I guess...)
anyhoo:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/giftedweasel/JIG/buttons2.htm
Well done on all the entries! Really enjoyed playing them :-)
How on earth do you work out the password in Thief? Love the game but is it sypher substitution or some kind of code... or am I looking into it too deep?
I'd say too deep, Drew. Hints:
Look at the journal entry screen again, the place where the author said he had hidden the clues. What do you notice about it, what information is there that you have not utilized?
Now look at the password entry screen. Do you notice anything that may provide a clue?
I really loved Clack. Congrats on that one.
Could I get a little bit of help with the Alchemist's Apprentice? I keep coming up with blue goo :/
Sarah, I would say the solution is not quite obvious. Notice
the way how the features of the stock are listed in the text. Then think it as this way:
The most potent charasteristic of the stock is mentioned first. Therefore you need to put e.g. only one chicken in to the pot to bring soften the mixture.
YES! never thought i would complete this, especially after the first time i looked at it, it looked tedious, but once you get into it, its great! took me a while to work out the last few though
giftedweasel: A small hint:
Yes, you're looking into it far too deeply. It has nothing to do with the body of the journal entries.
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