CHRIS:
An interesting idea - Paczka is more or less a collection of mini-games tied loosely together by a plot that involves your character trying to impress a small gang of boys. These chaps initially challenge you to a snowball fight, which initiates your first mini-game - a point and click affair as you throw snowballs at the boys before they target you. It took a few goes to get the hang of this as there are toddlers present that you must not hit - but they look pretty similar to the gang. Once this mini-game is over, you can return to your house, where the game takes on the loose form of an RPG - where you have to find and combine items to progress. A case in point - gaining access to the pitch-black garage requires a torch - but the one you find doesn't contain any batteries - so you need to find some. Once this is achieved it's possible to combine items (which would be a rather clever system if only the inventory told you what the items actually are) to progress in the game. Paczka also has a save system but its not made clear on how it is used or where to find it - it's actually stored on the characters PC at home. In fact, this is really the games biggest flaw. There are no hints as to what you should be doing and no indication to tell you what your items are. It's a bit unfair and spoils the gameplay. Overall I wasn't really excited about this effort but I can appreciate the generally good presentation and work that went into it.

FLAVA:
I was quite enjoying this game at the start as it was a change to some of the other entries. You control a character and you go around your house picking up items in order to complete or compete in certain tasks. But after a while, these tasks started becoming a bit tedious and a lot of the time I was left wondering what I was actually supposed to do next. It was difficult to identify which objects I can actually interact with, and the interface itself was also a bit of a struggle to use. When I eventually figured out what I had to do, this game wasn't actually half-bad and I was quite happy when I would complete a task. But then I'd just come to another task which I'd have to figure out by myself. To fix my sledge I had to find a hammer and then destroy a picture frame with a wrench in order to get the pin to fix my sledge, which isn't really something obvious (at least to me anyway). The controls were also slightly annoying in that you'd just bounce off objects, but the mini-games like car racing and pong were a nice touch (although pointless, I think..). Overall the game had potential, but little things just let it down for me.

ASSAULT ANDY:
Graphics - I liked the graphics they all fitted together well. I also liked the dialogue screens, they were really neat looking. There were lots of different objects so quite a lot of work has gone into drawing those items. The animations however needed work, mainly that 2/3 frame walking animation. There were some good visual effects such as the footprints and snow flakes. Audio - A few tracks, some more sound effects would have been good. Gameplay - The ideas are good, but the gameplay isn't very intuitive and it's frustrating. For example if you start the game and go into the bottom right room, then it says that its too dark and you can't leave the room. I expect that's a glitch. When you go outside at the start and then you come back inside, there's no explanation of what to do next. There isn't really a goal in mind most of the time. Another example is when you go to the kitchen. First you look in there and it says there's nothing of use. But if you in there after seeing the box then you can suddenly find a knife. I mean it makes sense, but it would have been better if you could pickup the knife in the first place. The combination of mouse and keyboard controls is also not a good idea. The player should not have to be moving from mouse to keyboard constantly, it should be one, the other, or both simultaneously. For example when you move outside and do that snowball minigame, or when you open up the inventory and have to take your hands off the keyboard to click on items. Programming - it's not bad, but a custom movement engine would have been better as the jitter is quite noticeable. There was that glitch that I mentioned before. Some of the effects are quite cool such as the menu screen. Inconsistencies with entering/exiting the room are also annoying - Sometimes you appear in the middle of the room, sometimes at the door.