Introduction
The Daily Click Christmas Competition 2004 has now ended and the judges have voted on all of the eight games which were submitted. There were a couple of last minute teething problems from a couple of entrants, but all that has been sorted out.
The idea of the competition was to recreate a 2D Mario platformer with severe limitations. The choice to not allow Fastloop proved to be very unpopular, so it was eventually allowed. Many extentions were NOT allowed, however, and everyone was tested on their own coding abilities. All of the submissions have been studied carefully by myself, Shab, and Pete Nattress, and the administration at TDC wish to thank everyone who participated.
The winner of The Daily Click Christmas Competition 2004 is... (a.k.a) Mårten Brüggemann with his wonderful little game Super Santa Snowland, which met all the requirements of the competition. Eve has won a copy of MMF 1.5 Standard (courtesy of Clickteam, and as he requested), and 100 DC Points.
What follows now are the final results. Thanks go to Shab who is hosting the entrants on his Sitesled accounts. We were considering linking to the open source files which you sent when the competition was running, but opted not to, in case you didn't want any other individuals seeing your coding. So, enough babbling... lets see the detailed results!
Detailed Results
CHRIS: A great, fun game with some wonderful graphics. Eve has really captured the essence of Christmas and Mario, and blended them both together. First rate. The storyline is perhaps a little predictable, but the subliminal gameplay is more than satisfying. One nit-picking point, however, is that the controls can seem to be a little fiddly. I've often bounced off blocks into enemies, thus resulting in death. Other than this annoying niggle, I see no reason why Eve shouldn't win this competition.
PETE: This is another strong contender. It boasts what are the best graphics of the competition by far - lovely pixel work and great little effects to complement it. Christmassiness naturally shines through because of this. The game is quite hard and sometimes feels unresponsive so I docked it a few marks for gameplay. Marioishness, however, is top notch. The game simply IS Mario, without actually being a Mario clone, if that makes sense. The speed of the characters is slightly off so I didn't award full marks for this category.
SHAB: Another good entry! This one is more like the classic Mario than the newer ones, which normally wouldn’t be a bad thing, if the engine responded properly. Not sure If it was just me or not, but I found myself fighting the controls more than anything. This hurts the game in the worse way.
CHRIS: Very not bad at all. The engine is virtually identical to the Mario style which was being asked of everyone, but it was timer based! Because of this the height jumping varied, no matter how long I held SHIFT down. It was hard to stop Santa while he was running as well. Marks lost on the gameplay front for this. Early levels were Mario-esque, but they seemed to turn into standard platform levels later on and the Mario feel got lost on occasion. Santa himself looked very similar to Mario as well. The storyline was quite amusing and effort was clearly put into it, but it looked a little scrappy perhaps. A nice touch was the level map; the only entrant to add this. Graphics overall were nice, although on some levels it was hard to tell which bits were platforms. Summing up, a pretty good effort, but not as good as it could have been, which is a real pity.
PETE: Another excellent entry, very very Mario-like, although I deducted a mark for the ripped music - a minor blemish in an otherwise great game. The graphics are certainly Mario-esque without being too like their inspiration. The story is standard fare (another elf rebellion) but well integrated.
SHAB: As I think this game reached the goal of being the most "Mario-ish" It got the highest marks in that category. Graphics were alright though some bugs present themselves during gameplay, so some minor marks off for that.
CHRIS: Graphically, this game is rather sweet. You don't normally see large chunky characters in a click game, but there's Santa in various guises here. I can't say that I like the scrolling style much and the whole thing doesn't really feel like a Mario game. Also, Santasm's level design is pretty blocky and nothing out of the ordinary. It's all very solid stuff, though and the presentation is excellent.
PETE: I liked this one. It's very Mario-like in gameplay, notwithstanding the several quirky additions like "Samurai santa". The level design is clever, the graphics are consistently good (a nice big clear Santa makes a welcome change), and the storyline is nice and "mature", if that were possible. A strong entry.
SHAB: Pretty good entry here, It’s got cutscenes, a good engine, good level design. Can’t really find much wrong with this entry, except that I wish the screen were bigger, as santa takes up a good portion of it.
CHRIS: I like this quite a lot, and is number two in my own personal list - after Eves game. I've enjoyed playing this, and the game has Mario-esque features. The level design though could do with some improvements, and really, you never feel like you're playing a Mario game due to the speed of the engine. More like a cross between the Sonic games, Novabrains Grand Adventure, and James Pond 2: Robocod. This is probably the most Christmassy effort, for me, in this entire competition, so top marks there. A very, very good effort.
PETE: This is pretty average all told. Graphics are a mixed bag; there are some nice sprites but others just look rushed. You can't go wrong with Christmassiness, so good marks there. Gameplay got a low score for being quite frustrating in some points, and the platform engine is not exemplary. Marioshness - all the main stuff was there, but I felt the pace was wrong for a Mario game - the characters move too fast for example, and this also added to frustration. The storyline was, urm, novel. All in all, a nice effort
SHAB: Well this was actually a pretty good attempt, if not a bit rushed. The engine feels kind of strange, and some of the graphics were kind of out of place, but all in all, not a bad attempt.
CHRIS: Hmm. "Rushed" would probably be the word I should think of. The author has spent a lot of time working on the graphical style, which has paid off nicely. The level designs though, while resembling the Mario games in many ways, vary from not bad to poor. I dislike the engine, it really resembles the default platform engine and its bugs. The less said about the tacked on story, the better, while the levels lack variety.
PETE: Again, a good entry with few flaws. The graphics are nice, with the appearance of being rendered in some sort of 3D which proves to be a pleasing effect. The game gets annoying in places, particularly the inability to jump through platforms on the 2nd level. There's plenty of similarities with Mario, and of all the games this was the one I felt truest to the pace of the Mario games. The storyline is pretty feeble and not integrated with the game.
SHAB: This game is very reminiscent of Mario, plus it’s got pretty decent graphics, although there are some problems with the level design, it’s probably one of the better entries here.
CHRIS: Just creeps above the average mark. Phizzy has gone for a more retro Mario feel (ie, a NES style Mario game) - complete with that scrolling we all love to hate. The engine isn't bad; there have been many times where I've jumped on top of an enemy, only to be killed for no reason. The presentation is terrible, and rushed. Ingame level design is pretty similar to Mario, actually. Overall, Phizzys effort isn't quite good enough; I don't see it winning the competition, to be honest. A good try though.
PETE: "Ho ho oh sh*t!" is what Santa says when you die in this game, and I think it pretty much sums up the game itself. The graphics are poor and, whilst the engine is OK, the gameplay is not conductive to either fun or Marioishness. The brief storyline (kill all the children) is predictably Phizzy, but extra marks as it made me laugh.
SHAB: I'm not quite sure what to say about this game except it's a Phizzy game, so it's a bit out there.
CHRIS: Well, at least this game has a custom platform engine. Unfortunately it doesn't actually detect some walls, meaning death is quite frequent. The Santa sprite isn't bad, but this really lacks any form of gameplay, let alone Mario style. At least it isn't as bad as Floating Head Santa.
PETE: A weak entry, though not as weak as Floating Head Santa. The game has obviously been very rushed and the result is a pretty unejoyable mess. There is very little resemblance to Mario, and the player moves so fast the game simply isn't fun. The graphics are equally poor and do not give the game any christmas spirit.
SHAB: Well, the engine in this one is alright, just like the rest of the game. By alright I mean it runs and there an identifiable “game” in here. Unfortunately, it’s not very interesting. The storyline is pretty original though.
CHRIS: This is terrible. It plays nothing like Mario, and I get the impression the author had no intention of winning this competition, but would prefer to make a bad name for himself. Well, mission accomplished! One of the worst games I've ever played.
PETE: More like Floating TURD Santa. This game is abysmal, easily the worst of the competiton. There's no gameplay to speak of, there's no resemblance to Mario, the graphics are poor, and no storyline is supplied. The only perk is the Zeppelin song at the start, but unforunately there's no category for Ripped Music - in fact, it shouldn't be there at all, as the rules clearly state MIDIS ONLY. *sigh*
SHAB: I have no idea what this person was trying to make, this game is a mess. The gameplay is pretty bad as it is, but it confuses me more that this game got made when the goal was to make a Mario like game.
Dr Evil Face takes 2nd place with his game Fat Santa, and earns 75 DC points, while Radix is third with his game Santasm and gains 50 DC points.
So, there you have it, folks. The end of the competition. As mentioned earlier, thanks to all who took part, even though there were some people who didn't take the competitive spirit seriously ;)
The Daily Click and its staff would like to thank the generous folk at Clickteam, who have supplied the prizes for this competition. Clickteam are in no way affiliated with this competition.
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