40 replies to this topic

[Wizzrobe]

Played 4 of the quests so far, of those I only looked at Apixelypse and Legend of PokemonWarrior. Had fun playing through Thinking without Logic and I wanna be the superboss though Gonna tackle the ones I haven't finished yet whenever I stream again

[Mani Kanina]

Thinking Without Logic: I'll be honest, I'm not a huge fan of this one. The puzzles ranged from very hard to very easy, although, saying ranged implies that there is a full spectrum of puzzles, which is not the case. Either the puzzles are very easy, or very hard, without much of a middle ground. A lot of the hard puzzles are only hard because you have no idea what the crap to do until you try everything haphazardly until something works.

The level where you have to manually hit the restart button sticks out as particularly bad.

At least the quest is short so you don't end up feeling too frustrated, but is that really a good thing? *shrug*
It does a good job sticking with the 'portal' series theme though.


I Wanna Be the Superboss: I got a fair bit into this one, did sapphire and what I estimate to be around half of the dark level. My question is, how is this following the theme of I Wanna Be the Guy? I mean, I get that it does so narratively, but people don't play IWBTG for the narrative. Neither the absurdity in what is going on or the difficulty was there in this quest, so I honestly think it sort of does a bad job at being a crossover. (Let's not forget, IWBTG itself was huge on crossovers, practically every area was a crossover to another game series.)

Oh and, it feels entirely unfinished, caves going nowhere, etc. I liked the scripted weapon, but the level design bore me, especially the heavy use of slow walk tiles. After I got the secondary weapon and died while trying to kill the boomerang wizzrobe I didn't really feel like trying again, given how long it would take to backtrack.


You Don't Belong Here: This one is short, but it's really good. I don't really have much to say since there isn't much to comment on. It followed it's crossover theme very well, and it was enjoyable to play.


Legend of Pokemon Warrior: I like it, but, I also dislike it. I'm not a huge fan of some of the level design tropes used in making the overworlds, as I feel they only add tedium without any real benefits. But I also really dig the theme of the quest, and the areas themselves and the dungeons all feel fleshed out and interesting. I'm not done with this quest yet, since it turned out to be larger than I expected, but it's definitively one I'm interested in finishing.

There are also some questionable choices in the item place logic. Both for world 1 and world 2, I have had to advance into the next world in order to pick up items needed to fully finish the dungeons. I think this kind of hurts the flow of the quest a fair bit, as it adds needlessly much backtracking. I would much rather have finished up a world before advancing to the next, rather than having to trek back and forth all the time, leaving unfinished dungeons everywhere.


Zeldius: I beat it, and while I want to like it, I can't. The scripts are amazing, but this is a terribly designed shoot-em-up. Gradius is generally a series I find to have questionable design choices to begin with. (It gets harder the worse of a player you are, but get easier the better you are. Naturally, a game would get easier the better a player becomes at it, but that series magnifies both ends of the spectrum.) There are several points where this quest asks the player to navigate very tight spaces while the screen scrolls, which is generally reserved for later levels in shooters. (Or not at all.) The random drop rate of the powerups is also really bad, because this means that a player can be stuck without no powerups for very long. Essentially, a given run can be decided by the RNG, not a players skill.

That being said, this quest does follow its crossover theme very well, and it did pick an interesting one for sure.


The Apixelypse: Very interesting idea, and the gameplay seemed not too bad either. BUT! This quest has one huge flaw: Permadeath. I died in world two, (the mana world.) and I did not fancy replaying everything up to that point to try again. There are plenty of points in this quest where the player could be offered to save or have the game auto-save, to make sure not all progress is lost upon death. I'd love to finish this quest, but that's not going to happen until it has some form of option to save.

Follows the crossover theme of the contest very well if you ask me.


Quest Name: Metroid: Origins: No. Like, just no. I stopped probably only 10 minutes into this one. The jumping physics, which don't seem to work on slopes..., which you also can't walk up on, is horrible. The first thing that greeted me when I started this quest is also samus stabbing out beam sprites from her knees before firing from her cannon. And let's not even talk about how broken the ladders seem to be. The enemies in the path which I seemed to be required to go through were also fairly hard to hit and two-shooted me. (Also the graphics are sub-par.)


NightNight: too kewl for moosh/10

[Deedee]

Yeah, I don't think mine did a good job at being a crossover. I think I'll ditch that and come up with an original, more Zelda-like story for the database release. Especially seeing how I suck at making difficult stuff.

Also, how about a poll for "Most Potential"? There are a lot of quests here that didn't do too well in execution, but have the potential to be good in theory.

 

 

Legend of Pokemon Warrior: I like it, but, I also dislike it. I'm not a huge fan of some of the level design tropes used in making the overworlds, as I feel they only add tedium without any real benefits. But I also really dig the theme of the quest, and the areas themselves and the dungeons all feel fleshed out and interesting. I'm not done with this quest yet, since it turned out to be larger than I expected, but it's definitively one I'm interested in finishing.

There are also some questionable choices in the item place logic. Both for world 1 and world 2, I have had to advance into the next world in order to pick up items needed to fully finish the dungeons. I think this kind of hurts the flow of the quest a fair bit, as it adds needlessly much backtracking. I would much rather have finished up a world before advancing to the next, rather than having to trek back and forth all the time, leaving unfinished dungeons everywhere.

 

If I remember correctly, the items are randomized based on the filename.

 

 

NightNight: too kewl for moosh/10

 

Well of course. Everything DayDay is 2kewl4mush.

Edited by Dimentio, 14 February 2016 - 02:06 PM.

[Mani Kanina]

If I remember correctly, the items are randomized based on the filename.

I'm aware. But items are still placed based on some string of logic, otherwise you would have unbeatable scenarios.

[Moosh]

NightNight: too kewl for moosh/10

That's odd, I don't recall a quest by that name being in this contest. Are you sure you submitted it? Or perhaps, like a poorly written joke met with dead silence, I didn't even justify it with a response...shit, this counts as a response.

Um...NightNight gets a horses/10 I guess.

[Deedee]

So, just saying this now,...

The polls will be up at midnight EST.

 

So, in about 1 hour 25 minutes, unless Zoria wishes otherwise. I don't feel like seeing this contest be dragged down any further, and midnight is the latest you can get on the 14th.

 

 

In the meantime, how interested would you all be in a potential second contest of this? Say, for the month of April? It wouldn't be a crossover themed contest, but it would have a theme (or more).

[Deedee]

I lied. It'll be up tomorrow morning ASAP.

[Timelord]

The poll is up. It would have been up a day sooner, if not for a PZC site bug that prevents using the poll editor on a smaller display: The buttons to add additional questions, and submit the poll, are not visible on small screen dimensions, and there is no way to scroll to them, due to the site/forum codebase creating a virtual window over the actual window, to do the editing.

Note that I converted 'Best Story' to 'Best Presentation', as many entries have no story, and those that do are largely incomplete. I think this is a better deciding factor in any regard, as this expo is primarily about presentation, after all. This also prevents sans-story entries from being ineligible in one of the fields.

Note also that 'presentation' covers the theme, and if the quest manages to adhere to the theme the author selected, among other factors.

An April contest, should be 'April Fool' themed. i.e., Troll Quest.

Edited by ZoriaRPG, 15 February 2016 - 02:04 AM.

[Mani Kanina]

I won't be voting, given that I entered myself.

[Timelord]

I won't be voting, given that I entered myself.

 

I modified the poll, adding a 'NULL' option for each category, so that if people want to make partial votes (specific categories, only), they can do that.

 

I also found a quirky way around the site bug, that is extremely inconvenient. I prefer just to use a system with a larger screen, or VNC into a system with a larger display resolution, to handle the poll, but I was in a pinch, and thought of trying to remove my taskbar and run Firefox fullscreen. That barely allowed the full poll window to be visible, and I wish I had thought of it sooner.

 

Then again if I had been thinking sooner, I would have used VNC to do it, and it would have been up earlier. It still made it up by the end of the day stateside though.

 

Also, how about a poll for "Most Potential"? There are a lot of quests here that didn't do too well in execution, but have the potential to be good in theory.

 

 

There is a limit on the number of polls, else this would be one of the options. I had initially thought of replacing 'Best  Story' with that, and decided that 'Best Execution' was a higher priority, as that could cover this field. You are of course, free to discuss this in the thread, which I think is ideal, given how speculative it is.

 

Perhaps, if any of you want to work on updates, we can do that as a separate poll when this thing is done.

Edited by ZoriaRPG, 15 February 2016 - 05:48 AM.

[Eppy]

I figured. My second try I played more carefully, I figured as long as there was a save at the end of each world I could beat it. I got to the second world, no save tile, but there was a spot I figured you might've cleverly slipped an autosave into a cutscene so I wasn't that worried. Then I hit a bug that required I F6.

Thank you, Moosh, for making me feel a whole lot better, because I did the EXACT SAME THING on my 2nd. Attempt.