Castle Paradox

[The Wobbler]

OHR Game of the Year 2010 Rules

WHAT
It's that time again; the time in which we gloat about how great the games we released this year were. My count is 60 released games this year, counting updates to games from previous years, but not counting multiple releases of the same games in one year. Let me know if I missed any. The goal here is to highlight the absolute best of 2010, in various categories.

WHEN
Voting begins now and goes until March 13, 2011, giving everyone plenty of time to catch up on games they missed. The results will appear in the April issue of HamsterSpeak.

GAMES?
"I haven't played any of these games yet!" Well, you've got a couple of months to play some. How do you know which ones are worth playing? That's up to these threads. Even if you're not ready to officially vote yet, discuss and nominate your favorite games of the year. Let people know what's worth checking out.

HOW
Votes can be submitted either by PM, e-mail or by responding to the GOTY2010 discussion threads. I think that posting in the thread is good, as it will help remind people of what was fun this year, and maybe inspire people to try a few new games.

Vote for your favorite five to ten games in the Game of the Year category. Vote for your favorite two to five in the sub-categories. Your first through third place picks in the main category will receive bonus points, first getting three extra, second getting two, and third getting one extra point in the overall standings. In the sub-category votes, only your top pick will receive bonus points.

You CAN vote for your own games, but those games will not receive bonus points. Bonus points will be given to the highest ranked games in your vote that weren't made by you. When voting, specify if you worked on the game in question. Use full titles when voting. Don't have tied votes in your submission. Votes can be changed up until the deadline if you play some new games and change your mind, but make sure you notify us if you do so.

WHAT ARE THEY
These are the games released/updated in 2010:

An Odd Thing
Angel Whisper
Apophenia Demo
Automagically! Bizarro Carnival in Salad Kingdom
Bacon Origins
Barnabus Collection
Batman & Robin
Bell of Chaos
Boulderbeast Tech Demo
Carson and the Quest for Color
Chronoboy Adventures
Crystal Chasers
Damnation
Danse Dance Whale: Total War
DIGIMON SAVEZ THE WROLD
Distress (Re-release)
Do You Want to be a Hero? (HORH Update)
Dr. Coffin's Cursed Maze
Dragon Bustier
Duck
Eternity Fragment (Preview Release)
Field of Dwarves and Endless Dreams
Final Fantasy III OHR
Hero the RPG
Homeward Bound: The Account of Duck Duck
Horse Game
Kitty House (Update)
Last Crusader
Legendary Heroes
Lightning Heroes
Lost Legends of Prismia
Meh
Motrya
Mr. The Hamster's Math Class
Nightmare on Elmo Street
OHR Tetris
Okedoke (HORH Update)
Pacman and Pacwoman
Pacman Halloween
Philip's Adventure
Powerstick Man (HOHR Preview Release)
Puckamon
Quick and Dirty RPG
Reign of Grelok
Seinfeld Teaches Typing
Skyfall
Snake Game Tech Demo
Star Wars – Episode IV: An OHR Hope
Syzygy
Tales of the New World I (Update)
Tales of the New World II (V. 2)
Tilt
Tim-Tim's Tower
Tomb of El Saki
Vikings of Midgard (Update)
Viridia – Chapter 2
VocabMosaic
What is a Zelda Game?
Who Killed Dinosaur Giant?
Yo Ghost Reborn

These are the categories:

Best Game of 2010: The overall best games. Vote for five to ten games.

Best Graphics: Best style, best pixelation, etc. Whatever made your eyes weep with joy. Vote for two to five games.

Best Design: This can be Plotscripting, map design, battle systems, or any other technical game aspects. Vote for two to five games.

Best Writing: Story, dialogue, world creation. Vote for two to five games.

Most Ridiculous: What games baffled your mind this year? The reasons don't matter. It could be an astonishingly confusing game, a shockingly funny one, whatever. Some sort of wild card category or something.

Most Anticipated 2011: What games would you most like to see updated this year, and which announced games are you most excited about? You'll have to do the digging on your own for this one, because we get dozens of proposed games that never come out and finding/listing them all would take forever.

Let's do this. Start discussing some highlights of 2010 and we can get moving. When voting, feel free to comment on the games you chose. Your comments may be used in the results article! Voting and discussion threads can be found on Slime Salad, Castle Paradox, and the Internet Walrus Forums.

[The Wobbler]

It looks like no one who just uses this site is going to vote, but I'm posting this here anyway:

Voting is extended to April 2nd, though I'd really prefer to see more votes earlier than that!

Finally posting my own votes:

GOTY 2010

1 - Duck - This was honestly my most enjoyable OHR game experience of the year.

2 - The Account of Duck Duck - Another game about a duck, but a very different one. Aside from the boss at the end being kind of broken, this game's wonderful, and I really feel it was ignored. I have no idea why.
It looks nice, it's well scripted, and it's a lot of fun.

3 - Horse Game - I like the pepper.

4 - Who Killed Dinosaur Giant? - I want to do a follow-up to this game, even if the response to this one wasn't what I expected.

5 - Do You Want to be a Hero? - A game that manages to actually make me want to fight battles with random thugs has achieved something few RPGs do. The art and dialogue rules too.

6 - Motrya - The best traditional RPG of the year.

7 - Batman & Robin - There are little things about this game (THAT SAFE PUZZLE) that need to be cleaned up, but it's a very complete package that does what it sets out to do well.

8 - Barnabus Collection - There's nothing else like this. I'd rank it higher, but it's not going to age as well as some of these games, because half the fun was being there when it all went down.

9 - Vocabmosaic - This is probably the most overlooked of James' games this year, but I think it's the most well done and fun.

10 - Mr. The Hamster's Math Class - This isn't a game for us. Its target audience is much younger, so while I didn't have "fun" playing it, I greatly appreciated what it set out to do. It's a very, very nicely made
tool for helping kids practice their math skills, and it has adorable graphics. You don't have to be its intended audience to appreciate the value of this one.

Graphics

1 - Puckamon - I didn't care for the humor and I thought the gameplay needed some major tweaking, but I love this game's style.

2 - Viridia - A very unique style that's pulled of very well. I want to see more of this world.

3 - Duck - They're not pretty, but they're perfect in a way that nothing else would be for this game.

4 - Motrya - It feels kind of weird ranking Motrya below Duck, because its sprites are incredibly well drawn. I guess I prefer the bizarre.

5 - Batman & Robin - An impressive cartoony look. I liked chubby Batman, and I really liked the enemy art. Some of the portrait art may be really scary (Ivy's eyes, Bruce Wayne's face), but most of the art here is really fun.

Design

1 - Boulderbeast - Even if it's not a game, it's the first OHR program I've downloaded where I didn't even have the slightest idea how it was pulled off.

2 - Barnabus Collection - The amount of variety in the games is pretty remarkable, and the way it was pulled off will probably never be able to be reproduced.

3 - Motrya - Lyte Snap is the best minigame I've seen in an OHR game, looking forward to seeing more of it.

4 - Do You Want to be a Hero? - Everything in this game works just the way I want it to work. Not perfectly balanced, but the execution is fantastic.

5 - Horse Game - I thought the red door puzzle was clever.

Writing

1 - Horse Game - I had too much fun writing/recording the taunts to not list this here.

2 - Who Killed Dinosaur Giant - I liked the ending.

3 - Duck - I wish there had been a way to skip scenes you'd already seen when replaying it, but that's not a slight against this game's writing. Darkly funny and charming.

4 - Barnabus Collection - These games cover a huge swath of genres, styles, and tones, and somehow they're all still coherent. Impressive and slightly scary.

5 - Motrya - I felt some of the dialogue distracted from the action, but the world and its people are so very well fleshed out.

Ridiculous

1 - Yo Ghost Reborn - An attempt to take the comedy Yo Ghost fad and use its momentum to remake the original game made me assume this was going to be a funny game, or at least one that tried to be funny. Instead, it's played totally straight, and manages to be less fun than the original Yo Ghost. I don't know how or why this game happened, but its very existence boggles my mind. The "What the hell was that?" feeling I had when I was done was even greater than my number 2 choice.

2 - Barnabus Collection - This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to do something insane, and Barnabus pulled it off perfectly. I'm ranking it below Yo Ghost Reborn because it's a more calculated form of madness.

3 - Duck - I was not expecting this at all and I loved every minute of it.

4 - Horse Game - It's a game with a horse in it.

5 - Who Killed Dinosaur Giant? - Burgers grow on trees, rivers flow with shakes, and Dinosaur Giant has great sunglasses.

Most Anticipated

1 - Motrya Complete - When this is actually complete it will almost definitely be the best traditional RPG of the year.

2 - More Apophenia - Tons of potential in the disappointingly short demo, very much looking forward to where this goes.

3 - Mr. Triangle's Maze Complete - This game is SO CLOSE TO DONE. It needs a push for a final release, it's the best Mr. Triangle related game and it's one of the better puzzle games on the engine.

4 - Legendary Heroes Complete - I have plenty of little issues with the demo, but this game has a lot of potential and I want to see Spoonweaver actually finish this.

5 - Batman & Robin 2 - The first game is satisfying but flawed, but most of those flaws could be easily remedied in the sequel.

[TMC]

Awesome, now I can play some games and vote. I've been too busy for the last 3 weeks to do so, which was a pity.
_________________
"It is so great it is insanely great."

[TMC]

I actually forgot about this until a few days ago :( Since then I've been hurriedly playing games. I've played some excellent games which I had overlooked! I can't wait for GOTY 2011 voting!

I realise I'm really pushing the deadline, so I'm going to post my preliminary votes here now. I'll modify them slightly later tonight (most noticeably I left Motrya for last :( ) and add more comments, if that's not too late.

Edit: OK, finalised. I haven't played through every 2010 game, but I think I got at least 90% of the significant ones. Also, let me complain as usual that the max number of votes per category felt too restrictive!

GOTY:

A lot of strong competition this year! I felt like my top 6 games were all reasonable choices for first place.

- The Adventures of Powerstick Man (HOHR Preview Release)
Hey, it's on the list, and I saw someone else vote for it, even though Pepsi refused to, so I'm going to count this as eligible. Which unfortunately means it gets #1 near-automatically (pretty enormous update since the previous demo, I think). I'm pretty biased though; I've been a playtester for years.
- Motrya
- Who Killed Dinosaur Giant?
The voice acting was near perfect and the dialogue superb. Elect Ronald McDonald for Best Villain.
- Batman & Robin
Surprisingly good fun with lots of twists and cutscenes, although the lack of variety of enemies in some areas was a weak point.
- Bell of Chaos
- Duck
- Viridia Ch.2
- Dragon Bustier
Didn't feel all that grindy to me - a pretty good rpg.
- Tilt
Aside from some camera glitches, the execution was great.
- Horse Game

Special mention:
- Do You Want to be a Hero?
I feel bad for not noticing this game in 2009. I would have ranked it highly it if was released in 2010, but it looks like the 2010 rerelease was quite minor?

Best Graphics:

- Damnation
This is a graphics demo, not a playable game, so it's understandable that it's been overlooked. It ought to be high on everyone's "Best Graphics" list, but it's way below the radar and probably wouldn't even be consider eligible by many.
- Bell of Chaos
James is awfully multi-talented, isn't he?
- Dragon Bustier
- Okedoke
- Motrya
I got the feeling that the muted palette made me see past/ignore the graphics actually, which is not to say that they were anything but well drawn!

(Runners up:)
- Duck
- Tilt

Best Design:

- Motrya
Best battles, and much else besides.
- Batman & Robin
RMZ really surprised me with this game. Battles with depth but not too much complexity, choices, and plenty of stuff aside from battles to keep you interested.
- Bell of Chaos
- Duck
- Horse Game

(Runners up:)
- Dragon Bustier
- Who Killed Dinosaur Giant?
In the sense of "Best Concept"

Best Writing:

- Who Killed Dinosaur Giant?
- Powerstick Man
I have to agree with Shiz's description of the game as "overwritten" though. Pepsi never stops cramming stuff into this game, and that includes text.
- Duck
- Viridia Ch.2
Intriguing story.
- Horse Game

(Runners up:)
- Motrya
Motrya felt like 3 different games, largely due to most of the current demo amounting to an extended introduction. After that it started to feel disappointingly like any other RPG though.

Most Ridiculous:

- Horse Game
- Duck
- Barnabus Collection
- Who Killed Dinosaur Giant?
It's so great that the ridiculousness just melts away.
- Seinfield Teaches Typing

Most Anticipated:

- Motrya 25%
- The Adventures of Powerstick Man Extended Edition
Will it make 2011? More likely Pepsi will never run out of ideas to add to it.
- Who Killed Dinosaur Giant? followup
- Together For victory
- Saminaster and Sorcery

(Runners up:)
- Viridia (Chapter 1?)
- Dragon Bustier 2
- Batman & Robin 2
- Bell of Chaos 100%
_________________
"It is so great it is insanely great."

[The Wobbler]

Voting's closed, results will be in HS48 tomorrow.