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[POLL] 24 Hour Quest Contest - Quests

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Poll: 24 Hour Quest Contest Poll

Best Overall

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Most Creative

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Best Mechanics

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#31 Shane

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Posted 31 March 2017 - 11:41 AM

Actually, there's a list in the previous thread that gives out a list of names:

 

Gouanaco

Dimentio
Avataro
strike
Russ
Lut
TheBlueTophat

You can work from there. But who knows? There's an eighth entry submitted and who's to say all the people on this list submitted? ;) There's nothing wrong with guessing either way, it's part of the fun! :)



#32 Eddy

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Posted 31 March 2017 - 01:59 PM

Finally managing to get through these quests since college hell has cleared up recently. So here are my thoughts on all submissions:

 

Story of 24 Hours - Pretty basic quest, though the concept seemed interesting, especially with the fishing at the start. The dungeon was pretty cool too, but I do wonder if there's more after doing the dungeon since I couldn't seem to progress after the "More" screen. Decent effort, it was a fun short quest, but it wasn't anything too amazing IMO.

 

Tail of the Dragon Slayer - I actually really liked this quest. Besides some of the weird design with GB mountains with classic, this quest played quite nicely. Again, it's nothing too amazing, but I really did like the item ideas, especially with limited usage on jumping, fire etc, those were some very cool additions. I did wish they were used a bit more throughout the quest, but hey you can't do much in 24 hours :P Good job with this one.

 

What You Deserve - Really nice Z1-style quest. It's pretty amazing to see quite a lengthy quest for 24 hours. Feels like your typical NES style miniquest, but I really liked certain parts of the quest, especially the dungeon design. One criticism I have is that I feel like difficulty is completely non-existent, since it looks like you start off with the Master Sword, so you can just OHKO almost all the enemies in the quest. Not sure if that's intentional or just a design error, but besides that I really liked this one. Edit: Disregard that, turns out I was experiencing a ZC bug where for some reason swords were getting all mixed up due to having two equippable swords in the previous entry. Not sure how that happened, but I guess the bug made the quest much more easier than it was supposed to be.

 

The Moblin Question - The cleansing fire is a pretty amazing weapon, and I really love the variety of Moblins. Sadly the screen design doesn't look too good in most parts, and most screens look quite ugly and bad, though I understand it was probably all rushed due to the extreme time limit. There isn't much else to say though, but it's a decent effort.

 

Anemoi - This felt more like a condensed version of Yuurei, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. I really like how the areas look and the fact this was done in just 24 hours was pretty impressive. Though I do wish there were new mechanics or something rather than just reusing stuff from Yuurei, and I feel like those lava tiles in the Magma Hills appear and disappear way too quickly, making things kinda hard to navigate sometimes. Overall though, this was a really good quest. Good job.

 

Redemption - Interesting concept, felt kind of like one of those point-and-click flash games you see in the internet. It did feel quite short and the text was kinda weird with it being so close to the text borders, but other than that this was interesting and neat to play.

 

Faster - I really liked this quest, it was fun to play and generally was well made. I do really love how the overworld warps around in all 4 directions and I also love the puzzle feel with having Pols Voice drop one time use feathers. The difficulty wasn't very hard for me personally until that splitter right at the very end, but other than that, this was a nice quest. Also, my time was about 35 minutes or so. I should've took a screenshot lol.

 

Eternal Curse - Sucks that this was a demo since I was really loving what you had here so far. It feels a lot like RotS and Yuurei but quite unique and different at the same time, which was really nice. I do feel like the boss dealing a whole heart of damage for just 3 hearts was a little much, but once you get the rhythm and strategy down, it's not too bad at all. Definitely would love to see more of this though.

 

And so with all those quests done, my votes go to the following:
Best Overall - Anemoi

Most Creative - Eternal Curse

Best Mechanics - Redemption

 

And my guesses for all the entries are shown below:

Guesses


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#33 Anthus

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Posted 31 March 2017 - 02:13 PM

I would guess - Story: Avataro, Moblin: Russ, WYD: Lüt, faster: strike, Eternal Curse: Anthus, Anemoi: not Aevin, haven't finished the other two yet, Flag: Dimentio and Evan20000. It would help to know which 8 submitted btw.


I actually didn't submit anything. :P
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#34 Eppy

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Posted 31 March 2017 - 04:14 PM

I actually didn't submit anything. :P

We won't know for sure until the end. It's likely that people reviewing who also entered the contest are likely throwing around false positives.


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#35 Naru

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Posted 04 April 2017 - 07:06 AM

Moblin Question - I just couldn't bring myself to stop the quest unfinished, but I am soo disgusted by myself right now. Use of tileset is OK, but nothing Polaris would ever dare to submit ;) Are the letters hylian (or whatever it is called)? The quest has a good message and some interesting ideas (at least things I haven't seen before), gameplay in general is pretty bad though.

 

The Moblin Question - This quest is beautiful. You are beautiful.

 

Why can't I stop thinking this must be a sneak attack at Aevin!?

 

Faster - 1,5h and over 20 deaths until I reached Gleeok #2 in the final gauntlet. And gave up. The whole quest feels like torturing me. I most likely will try it a few more time until I finally beat the game. Or go to bed while crying :'( I think this one might be the best for many people, but it frustrates me a bit too much. You can get stuck with mirrorrobe #1 and it doesn't help that he won't go down between the lower mirrors. Couldn't reach the area in the northeast corner and didn't figure out the blue rock secret. [Edit] After another 30min and realizing that I can go far enough into the water to beat up the darknuts unharmed I finally beat the game. And I deleted the file "faster" than I did ever before. The Unnoticeable puzzle and blue rocks are still a mystery to me though.

Redemption - Nicely build mini-miniquest with a great atmosphere. Retrying can be rather annoying though if you are worthless scum like me, dying twice in the bomb-room!! :P

Story of 24h - great use of tileset, great ideas, great music, like it a lot. Not much of a game though.

Anemoi - One of the things in ZC I have most problems with is dodging fire balls and traps. Even in relaxed mode I die a lot :D In the Boreal Summit I was stuck for some time since I couldn't figure out what the green ball right from the entry screen does and I thought I need some hammer item to get further. Also the traps don't go over the floor tiles if underground. Also I had once an enemy stuck in the unwalkable background. Compared to the rest I think the double battle in Boreal Summit is far too easy compared to the rest of the game (relaxed difficulty). And the text was a bit too slow for my liking so I hoped to get the whole string with pressing "b" (or was is "a"?) and I think I skipped a few strings instead. Also I totally dislike the tileset, though that is just me (and you know that pretty much no one would agree with me here ;) )

Capture the Flag - I hate this quest. the scripted attacks are rather nice and it has some incredible mechanics, but I don't like the story, the tileset the music or anything in general. Made it to 2nd Shia-Phase, think I will watch a Let's Play since I couldn't even beat most of the normal encounters in Shiacorp. Also, this part of the internet society I detest and avoid as good as I can, I feel dirty after playing this and it invokes many aspects of my self-hatred. Still, without question this can be considered a small piece of art, not one that I like, but one that catches the spirit of a community that is far too large to be ignored and just looked down upon. It would be a shame to not add it to the database, only with a big "don't play" warning of course.

Eternal Curse - I don't know how well the scripted stuff is, but the whole quest feels indeed like a first demo to show a concept, not an actual quest. The best is the boss-fight, but I can't call it perfect.

What you deserve - A solid miniquest and great use of the tileset and good music, well balanced, I like it a lot. Maybe the OW is a bit too big for a small miniquest and I don't like to have an arrow-counter without the "true arrows"-rule on. And to the end the dungeon feel a bit rushed.

Dragon Tail - Not really sure what to say here. Use of tileset is good enough, the file is playable, but for showing off a concept I think it kind of misses the point. A short background at the start and all enemies fit to it, but I still don't get what you actually want to do storywise. And since the quest is beatable with the sword and jumping three times I am not sure how exactly you want to use the item-limitation with counters, the idea itself is not that new after all. Making the jump limited this way seems not a great idea, you have to put these enemies where you could get stuck, making the limitation rather useless, faster gives a better example for it.
Btw, if noone mentioned it before you can jump off-screen over the water in some areas. ZC won't allow me to use cheats on my laptop, anything interesting I did miss?
 


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#36 strike

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Posted 04 April 2017 - 05:19 PM

I just finished faster with an in game time of 9 minutes and 54 seconds ^ _ ^ I actually messed up a lot. I died three times. My real time would probably be about 11:30 as I continued and saved several times to be sure if I missed up I wouldn't lose everything. It could definitely be under 9 minutes. Maybe under eight. I'm not really sure honestly. But I had a good time doing that.

-Strike

#37 Architect Abdiel

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Posted 05 April 2017 - 06:04 AM

So. I'm gonna give my thoughts on the other 5 after completing them now. I also watched Eppy's playthroughs to see what he may have seen that I didn't.


What You Deserve - I love the simplicity of this one. It's very impressive for being done in 24 hours. The dungeons were designed well as well, and there was a decent amount of secrets. I guess what we deserve is a very solid quest.

Anemoi - I love this one as well. The areas were very well designed. I like how the individual areas were basically levels. I like seemless quests about a world to explore. It did has some bugs here and there, but it was still fun.

Redemption - I felt this one was the most creative. The examine feature was cool, as was the multiple endings. It was short, which makes it difficult for me to put it on the same level as WYD and Anemoi, but still very nice.

faster - The world did wind out catching my attention more after coming back to it, and I decided that it turned out to be a nice quest. The darknut room was a bit cruel though. And I don't like mirror robes.

Eternal Curse - Really interesting ideas in this one. I love how the blocks were used. Like Redemption, I would like to see this one expanded on cause there are some good ideas in here.


For me...

Best Overall - What You Deserve
Most Creative - Redemption
Best Mechanics - Anemoi


I wish Capture the Flag was still in, cause I saw Eppy's playthrough and really liked it.

Edited by Maikeru D. Shinigami, 05 April 2017 - 06:06 AM.


#38 strike

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Posted 05 April 2017 - 08:00 AM

The games I have played so far.

What You Deserve- this is actually my least favorite so far. There is nothing bad about it, it is just so so so incredibly bland that I couldn't finish it. It's obviously made by a good quest creator but it has no content. Something just really rubbed me the wrong way about this quest. But it is one of the only ones that feels like a completed quest.

Dragon Tail- this was pretty darn good but really short. And anticlimactic. I just walked up and killed the Gleeok on my first try with like three hearts, not realizing it was the final boss. So I was surprised it was over. Feels like a demo.

A Story of 24 Hours- I really like the creative elements of this quest. I am wondering if it used scripts or not for the fishing. But yeah I really enjoyed it though it was short and not that hard. I liked the Ice Hammer. Pretty good. Though short and didn't really feel like a completed quest.

The Moblin Question- this one went in a pretty obvious, well trodden direction. The concept was cool but I felt like the execution was lacking. The idea wasn't taken even near its full potential. Still, the scripted enemies were nice and simple and little touches added significantly to the experience. I just feel like this quest could have been way better. Especially if multiple paths were offered to the player, like a pacifist route where you find out about the Moblins.

Faster- one of the better quests I've played so far though I haven't played Eternal Curse, Redemption, or Anemoi yet. Some of the combat portions are pretty stupid and it's a fairly simplistic quest but overall I liked it. The wrapping overworld was cool and I liked some of the combat that wasn't unfair. I also like that it is made to be speed run. I had fun trying that.

That's it so far. I need to play the rest.

-Strike

#39 Shane

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Posted 06 April 2017 - 01:46 AM

Best Overall:
Anemoi wins Best Overall with 66.67% of the vote!
 
Final Results:
  • Story of 24 Hours (0 votes [0.00%])
  • The Tail of the Dragon Slayer (0 votes [0.00%])
  • What You Deserve (2 votes [16.67%])
  • The Moblin Question (0 votes [0.00%])
  • Anemoi (8 votes [66.67%])
  • Redemption (0 votes [0.00%])
  • faster (2 votes [16.67%])
  • Eternal Curse (0 votes [0.00%])
Most Creative:
Redemption wins Most Creative with 33.33% of the vote!
 
​Final Results:
  • Story of 24 Hours (2 votes [16.67%])
  • The Tail of the Dragon Slayer (0 votes [0.00%])
  • What You Deserve (0 votes [0.00%])
  • The Moblin Question (0 votes [0.00%])
  • Anemoi (3 votes [25.00%])
  • Redemption (4 votes [33.33%])
  • faster (1 votes [8.33%])
  • Eternal Curse (2 votes [16.67%])

Best Mechanics:

Anemoi wins Best Mechanics with 41.67% of the vote!

 

​Final Results:

  • Story of 24 Hours (1 votes [8.33%])
  • The Tail of the Dragon Slayer (1 votes [8.33%])
  • What You Deserve (0 votes [0.00%])
  • The Moblin Question (0 votes [0.00%])
  • Anemoi (5 votes [41.67%])
  • Redemption (1 votes [8.33%])
  • faster (0 votes [0.00%])
  • Eternal Curse (4 votes [33.33%])

Congratulations to not only our winners but to our participants for managing to make outstanding quests in under 24 hours!

 

Without further ado, here's the list of authors:

Story of 24 Hours - Avataro

The Tail of the Dragon Slayer - TheBlueTophat

What You Deserve - Lüt

The Moblin Question - Lejes

Anemoi - Russ

Redemption - Gouanaco

faster - strike

Eternal Curse - Dimentio

 

I'll leave this thread open. Be sure to congratulate everyone who participated in this contest and to our winners, they worked hard and accomplished a lot. Also feel free to discuss the future of this contest, would you like to see it again? When? Any changes? We're open to suggestions!


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#40 Architect Abdiel

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Posted 06 April 2017 - 02:12 AM

Well, that was quick. Glad I got a chance to finish them all. And I would like another yeah. That way I can say I am going to enter but never actually follow through with it!
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#41 Russ

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Posted 06 April 2017 - 04:36 AM

... huh. Apparently I got Lut's and strike's entries confused. Ah well. 6/8 isn't a bad score. Honestly, trying to trick people into thinking Aevin made Anemoi was the most fun part of this all. I put in a few tells to hint that he didn't do it in the quest itself, but people mostly missed those. The most hilarious moment for me being a certain streamer who was basically berating Aevin for making "his" entry so obviously his when the point of the contest was to guess who made what. That was wonderful.

Anyways though, thanks for everyone who voted for Anemoi! And congrats to Gouanaco on Most Creative! And, ya know, orchestrating this contest. It was tons of fun. Now that I don't have to pretend anymore, I wanna respond to some of the criticism of Anemoi.
 

but I doubt I could have done so in 24h and if you really did so I'm rather shocked and want to say I admire your effort - and maybe beg for some tips ;)

I can gladly give tips, both on quest design in general and on contests. For contests, the biggest thing I can recommend is planning well ahead. For example, I mapped out the entire game before creating it. You can see it here. (I don't know if my shorthand is at all understandable, but that's what I usually draw when planning dungeons and such for ZC.) It's not perfect; I didn't have all the gimmicks planned, and a few things changed in the final version. But it gave me a pretty good idea of what to do when the contest started so I could blast through things quickly.
 

yes, I have proven that it's possible on difficult, though hard. I found the double battle harder...


Anemoi - One of the things in ZC I have most problems with is dodging fire balls and traps. Even in relaxed mode I die a lot :D In the Boreal Summit I was stuck for some time since I couldn't figure out what the green ball right from the entry screen does and I thought I need some hammer item to get further. Also the traps don't go over the floor tiles if underground. Also I had once an enemy stuck in the unwalkable background. Compared to the rest I think the double battle in Boreal Summit is far too easy compared to the rest of the game (relaxed difficulty). And the text was a bit too slow for my liking so I hoped to get the whole string with pressing "b" (or was is "a"?) and I think I skipped a few strings instead. Also I totally dislike the tileset, though that is just me (and you know that pretty much no one would agree with me here ;) )


So the double battle is too hard on difficult and too easy on relaxed. Oh boy, this is gonna be fun to balance...

Regarding the other things you brought up Naru: Green ball, yeah, I wasn't thinking there. I put it there cuz it was possible to get stuck by F6ing in thr area above and I needed a way to reset the switches, but in hindsight I should've put an explanation. The traps don't go over the floor when underground cuz of the way Aevin's sand submerge script works. It was used in Yuurei, and I basically threw it in here without a full understanding of how it worked, just that it would work if I did it a certain way. It kind of shows... I'll try fixing that. Regarding the enemies... no clue what happened there. The background is solid, so I really don't know why they could walk on it. I'll see about bypassing strings with B. This was my first try using tango for strings, and I didn't have time to work out all the little kinks with it.

 

Anemoi - This felt more like a condensed version of Yuurei, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. I really like how the areas look and the fact this was done in just 24 hours was pretty impressive. Though I do wish there were new mechanics or something rather than just reusing stuff from Yuurei, and I feel like those lava tiles in the Magma Hills appear and disappear way too quickly, making things kinda hard to navigate sometimes. Overall though, this was a really good quest. Good job.

And my guesses for all the entries are shown below:

Guesses

Yeah, I'd originally planned to put more new gimmicks in, but time constraints suck. I wanted to do a lot more with the burning grass/vines gimmick and to have something equally cool for water, but I ran out of time to do anything there. As for the magma tiles, that should be a simple fix. Also, congrats on figuring out all the quest authors! I thought I had it but it looks you've got me beaten.
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#42 Lüt

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Posted 06 April 2017 - 04:42 AM

OK, finally finishing up...



Redemption:

Very strong atmosphere in this one. Though the design itself isn't particularly remarkable, it has a feeling and a general mood that many quests using more advanced designs / tilesets don't have.

The way you can inspect various things around the room, and especially find items in them, reminds me of classic adventure games like Shadowgate or Dungeons & Dragons (Eye of the Beholder in particular).

Though the occasional bits of cheesy dialogue were staples in those games, I suppose you can decide whether to keep it (i.e. the skulls staring back into you) and stay true to those games, or "correct" it and avoid putting off people who think it undermines the atmosphere.

Overall: very intriguing start, would love to see a full game like this.

Anemoi:

I don't have much more to add than has already been said. This was the most well-rounded of the bunch. Obviously whoever did this is very good at budgeting their time in a balanced manner.

It was quite enjoyable to play, even though I had to backtrack through the entire game to find all the life pieces I'd missed just to slip by the final boss with half a "heart" remaining.

The division into smaller areas of distinct themes was good at providing a gradual sense of completion given the absence of standard dungeons. A worse design would have left people feeling overwhelmed at being halfway through this big area with no clear reference of accomplishment.

Gameplay was a good mix of fresh and familiar. I always forget how much effort I put into maintaining top health for the sake of sword beams until I play with a weapon that still has range even when I don't have health. The only thing I found generally overbearing throughout the main game was the projectile floods coming from those flowers on the vines. For the amount of shots they fired, a little less damage would better balance them out. Otherwise, quite nice.

Overall: I should finally get around to playing Yuurei.

Faster:

The wrapping overworld is certainly unique. I've only seen it a few times in other games from the Z1 era, and only in one other quest from the database so far (Islands of Zelda).

Feather-gathering points being halfway across the (admittedly small) world isn't the best idea... maybe give the player the ability to stock multiple feathers? Granted, I did like how the limit of 1 feather was built into the first dungeon - having to get the boomerang to pass the halfway point in the room to the right of the entry. At least, it was the first time I noticed Pols Voices don't hop over wide lakes heh. But if you did it potion-style and allowed 2 feathers, it wouldn't be that hard to create the same obstacle by redesigning that room to use 3 jumps instead of 2.

TrapRobe is... heh. OW MirrorRobe made me say "fuck that" after 30 minutes. Dungeon MirrorRobe was much easier. Gleeok worked surprisingly well. 1-tile darknut fight, definitely not.

Overworld was generally serviceable. Things like pushing the rocks around to get to the treasure chest were nice. Grass-slash rocks and warp-trees were... unconventional. Having to feather-hop between 2 screens could get me trapped in a death-loop by continuously taking water damage while stuck scrolling between the 2 screens with no way out until I finally died or F6'd. You can also trap yourself on the MirrorRobe cliff with the push-mirror. Layout was otherwise fine, detail was decent enough.

Overall: good start, size is right for speedrun attempts, a bit many rough edges, v2.0 could provide notable improvement.

Eternal Curse:

For a demo, this has a lot of potential.

I like the look (warming up with Anemoi probably helped), the functionality lends itself toward a thoughtful puzzle-based environment (some things, like pushing blocks into the water, specifically remind of other NES puzzle games like The Adventures of Lolo), and there seems to be potential for this to have strong story/character-driven elements as well.

Overall: pls to finish.

What You Deserve:

Alright, seeing how the authors were officially revealed during the time I was writing this post, I suppose I'll skip my own fake review and mention:

A 36-HOUR UPDATE HAS BEEN MADE: DOWNLOAD PRE-RELEASE HERE. OFFICIAL RELEASE NOW ON DATABASE.

Could I get all my biggest haters and complainers to take another hour and give it a try? I suppose fans wouldn't hurt either.

The big changes have to do with nerfing the difficulty of high-level enemies during the 2nd / 3rd (blue / red) parts of the game, nearly doubling the amount of items / caves / secrets, repricing existing items to account for the new ones (big items down 25 - 50, rings down 100 each), reworking the subscreen to fit only this quest's inventory, multi-layering rocks nearly everywhere, turning the green cave into the rainbow cave, splitting the overworld into 4 DMaps for continue points at transitional areas, and most of all, expanding the final dungeon to fit the progression of the first 3 (because if there was ever a dungeon that screamed "DEADLINE COMING HURRY UP," the straight stack of 6 rooms in the 24-hour version is it).

If there's no big complaints, I'll upload it to the database later this weekend.

And for those wondering, I named the quest in anticipation of negative feedback: "...what, you wanted sprawling dungeons, purpose-driven story, perfectly balanced gameplay and groundbreaking graphics all while forcing a 24-hour limit on me? Ha! You get What You Deserve."

Also, I guess my dialogue didn't trick anybody into thinking Ben/Bagel was the mysterious anonymous entrant. Oh well.


Edited by Lüt, 15 April 2017 - 05:55 AM.

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#43 Eddy

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Posted 06 April 2017 - 05:42 AM

Congrats to the winners! And I'm kinda surprised I managed to get all of them right. Redemption and Faster were quite hard to make guesses for so I kinda just had to randomly choose those two at that point, but I managed to pick up things that all the other authors would do in their quests which made me know who made what.


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#44 Avaro

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Posted 06 April 2017 - 08:48 AM

Congratulations to the winners!

 

 

Anemoi - Russ

 

Wow, you and Aevin fooled us all. xD

 

 

I'll see about bypassing strings with B. This was my first try using tango for strings, and I didn't have time to work out all the little kinks with it.

 

Nice job with those, they were great. You don't often see tango being used and it looks authentic in this quest.

 

About my quest:

 

 

But yeah, indication that there's more than just fishing would've been cool.

 

True. The only indication that there's more is the "more" message but that could have meant anything, so you're right.

 

 

It's worth noting the player can get semi-stuck in the doorway because the outsides of the doorframe tiles by the edges of the screen are fully walkable rather than partially walkable.

 

Oops. I couldn't have known. This is one of the "new" tilesets that was a zgp before. I just assumed the door combos were set up right.

 

 

It would have been amusing if, after dying, there was a dialog box saying "death."

 

Missed potential. Damn.

 

Also, all midis used in my quest are inverted Zelda midis.


Edited by Avataro, 06 April 2017 - 08:49 AM.


#45 Architect Abdiel

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Posted 06 April 2017 - 01:36 PM

I mapped out the entire game before creating it. You can see it here. (I don't know if my shorthand is at all understandable, but that's what I usually draw when planning dungeons and such for ZC.)

  

Makes perfect sense to me. I do the same thing myself. It makes designing anything so much simpler. So for what it's worth, I would back up that planning out like is a good thing. And doing this, I can definitely see how you can accomplish what you did in a day.

May I also add on that doing this makes each screen easier to make? It can be hard seeing the bigger picture when you're working with one screen at a time.

Also, I want to add on, I have to say don't be discouraged if your screens aren't coming out as nicely as you'd like. Instead take the screen you have and use it as a boss. Ask yourself what you don't like about it and improve. The same can be said about playtesting. If you feel something is off with your creation, consider what you can edit to reach your goal. I find that in most cases it's better to simply edit what you have than to erase and recreate. Have some confidence. Your mind comes up with your ideas for a reason.

OK, finally finishing up...Redemption:
Very strong atmosphere in this one. Though the design itself isn't particularly remarkable, it has a feeling and a general mood that many quests using more advanced designs / tilesets don't have.
The way you can inspect various things around the room, and especially find items in them, reminds me of classic adventure games like Shadowgate or Dungeons & Dragons (Eye of the Beholder in particular).
Though the occasional bits of cheesy dialogue were staples in those games, I suppose you can decide whether to keep it (i.e. the skulls staring back into you) and stay true to those games, or "correct" it and avoid putting off people who think it undermines the atmosphere.Overall: very intriguing start, would love to see a full game like this.Anemoi:
I don't have much more to add than has already been said. This was the most well-rounded of the bunch. Obviously whoever did this is very good at budgeting their time in a balanced manner.
It was quite enjoyable to play, even though I had to backtrack through the entire game to find all the life pieces I'd missed just to slip by the final boss with half a "heart" remaining.
The division into smaller areas of distinct themes was good at providing a gradual sense of completion given the absence of standard dungeons. A worse design would have left people feeling overwhelmed at being halfway through this big area with no clear reference of accomplishment.
Gameplay was a good mix of fresh and familiar. I always forget how much effort I put into maintaining top health for the sake of sword beams until I play with a weapon that still has range even when I don't have health. The only thing I found generally overbearing throughout the main game was the projectile floods coming from those flowers on the vines. For the amount of shots they fired, a little less damage would better balance them out. Otherwise, quite nice.Overall: I should finally get around to playing Yuurei.Faster:
The wrapping overworld is certainly unique. I've only seen it a few times in other games from the Z1 era, and only in one other quest from the database so far (Islands of Zelda).
 
Feather-gathering points being halfway across the (admittedly small) world isn't the best idea... maybe give the player the ability to stock multiple feathers? Granted, I did like how the limit of 1 feather was built into the first dungeon - having to get the boomerang to pass the halfway point in the room to the right of the entry. At least, it was the first time I noticed Pols Voices don't hop over wide lakes heh. But if you did it potion-style and allowed 2 feathers, it wouldn't be that hard to create the same obstacle by redesigning that room to use 3 jumps instead of 2.
 
TrapRobe is... heh. OW MirrorRobe made me say "fuck that" after 30 minutes. Dungeon MirrorRobe was much easier. Gleeok worked surprisingly well. 1-tile darknut fight, definitely not.
 
Overworld was generally serviceable. Things like pushing the rocks around to get to the treasure chest were nice. Grass-slash rocks and warp-trees were... unconventional. Having to feather-hop between 2 screens could get me trapped in a death-loop by continuously taking water damage while stuck scrolling between the 2 screens with no way out until I finally died or F6'd. You can also trap yourself on the MirrorRobe cliff with the push-mirror. Layout was otherwise fine, detail was decent enough.
 
Overall: good start, size is right for speedrun attempts, a bit many rough edges, v2.0 could provide notable improvement.
 
Eternal Curse:
 
For a demo, this has a lot of potential.
 
I like the look (warming up with Anemoi probably helped), the functionality lends itself toward a thoughtful puzzle-based environment (some things, like pushing blocks into the water, specifically remind of other NES puzzle games like The Adventures of Lolo), and there seems to be potential for this to have strong story/character-driven elements as well.
 
Overall: pls to finish.
 
What You Deserve:
 
Alright, seeing how the authors were officially revealed during the time I was writing this post, I suppose I'll skip my own fake review and mention:
 
A 36-HOUR UPDATE HAS BEEN MADE: DOWNLOAD PRE-RELEASE HERE.
 
Could I get all my biggest haters and complainers to take another hour and give it a try? I suppose fans wouldn't hurt either.
 
The big changes have to do with nerfing the difficulty of high-level enemies during the 2nd / 3rd (blue / red) parts of the game, nearly doubling the amount of items / caves / secrets, repricing existing items to account for the new ones (big items down 25 - 50, rings down 100 each), reworking the subscreen to fit only this quest's inventory, multi-layering rocks nearly everywhere, turning the green cave into the rainbow cave, splitting the overworld into 4 DMaps for continue points at transitional areas, and most of all, expanding the final dungeon to fit the progression of the first 3 (because if there was ever a dungeon that screamed "DEADLINE COMING HURRY UP," the straight stack of 6 rooms in the 24-hour version is it).
 
If there's no big complaints, I'll upload it to the database later this weekend.
 
And for those wondering, I named the quest in anticipation of negative feedback: "...what, you wanted sprawling dungeons, purpose-driven story, perfectly balanced gameplay and groundbreaking graphics all while forcing a 24-hour limit on me? Ha! You get What You Deserve."
 
Also, I guess my dialogue didn't trick anybody into thinking Ben/Bagel was the mysterious anonymous entrant. Oh well.


I will try to make time to play this between my work days and hopefully continuing to make the quest or two I've started. I found your quest fun and well designed, so I look forward to it.
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