TIG Assemblee Competition games

[MisterStone]

Has anyone else followed this? Here is a list of the games produced for the contest:

http://www.tigsource.com/features/assemblee/index3.html

From what I gather, the contest/event has two parts: 1) some artists and other people create sets of video game assets; and 2) game designers/coders make use of the assets to create games. Also there are time limits involved, so nothing really complex or high-production here I suppose.

I noticed that there are apparently a lot of roguelike/dungeon crawler games submitted to the contest, so I was wondering if anyone wants to split up the task of playing and review these. Apparently there are over 70 entries, I would bet around half of them have a dungeon crawling/rpg theme, so it's a bit much for one person.

And in case you are thinking that simplistic games from short contests like this invariably suck, just remember that the first version of DoomRL came from a project like this!

 

[MisterStone]

http://vacuumflowers.com/temp/tiny_crawl_assemblee

Tiny Crawl

A very simplistic but fun browser game. Arrows move your character from room to room on the dungeon map. You use <tab> to change targets while <space> allows you to attack or interact with things in a given room. Going from room to room, you attack the various monsters within, take whatever objects might be there eat mushrooms to heal (all of this using the space bar). You start with one spell, which can be used at most once per combat, and can find more "spell tabs" and weapon powerups. Spells seem to charm, heal, do damage in various ways, and they recharge at different rates. The dungeon is multi-level, and you apparently are trying to reach the bottom. If you stay on one level too long, monsters start to fill back in the empty rooms you have left behind, so you are driven to keep descending.

Only played for a little while, and have only gotten as far as level 2. My impression is that it is a pretty fun little game if you want to kill a few minutes.

 

[Berekän]

Another indie competition? The IGF finished a few days ago! Anyway, good things always come from those so the more, the best.

I'll wait for the winners to be announced, I'm not likely to try 73 games.

 

[MisterStone]

Dungeons of Fayte

Another fun little browser game. This one has four-player Co-op (on the same machine, not over the net, sadly). Gameplay is similar to Zelda, you can move in 8 directions, attack in the four cardinal ones, and use a special ability that depends on your class. The game consists of 4 phases. You start out in a dungeon with slimes and skeletons. After you either die here or exit, you end up in town where you can train or earn (either by paying gold, or taking a free option which is more random) at various places such as the tavern, city hall, a farm, etc. During each town phase you have four "weeks", allowing you to take four training or wage earning activities. At the end of the month you are given a final chance to shop for equipment or class training (you chose a class by buying it at the store, but your stats must also meet the minimum requirements; if you do not buy a class you are a generic "grunt"). After this, you must chose from one of four or five dungeon areas. Dying generally just penalizes you by charging you 100 gold and sending you back to town, which means you lose the opportunity to pick up treasure in the dungeon you are in. At the end of four of these "months" you are forced to face off against the final boss in a sealed arena like area.

All in all it is pretty enjoyable, and the writing and graphics (it has the same tiles by "Oryx" which a number of other games in the competiton use, but perhaps makes more extensive use of them) are simplistic but charming. I think it would be worth an hour or two of co-op fun with some friends.

 

[Aikanaro]

I entered this - my game is shit though, and I recommend not playing it.

Of the RPGish things, the only one I liked much was OrthoCrawl - there isn't much (any?) gameplay there, but it's kinda amusing. Mr. Kitty's Quest and Backworld are the two games that I thought were genuinely good.