I'm starting threads to give feedback to all of the entrants to this year's CCN Speedgame contest. Everyone did some good things this year, and I wanted to make some threads to give encouraging comments and constructive criticism. This week, I'll be making threads for 3 games each day, so as to hopefully not bump all of the other discussions off of the main page, and give everyone some daily-focused-feedback on their games. Feedback is an important part of the CCN contest, and I hope that we can give a big "thanks!" to our entrants by letting them know how they did! I don't think everyone should necessarily give numbered ratings like I did -- just some words of feedback and encouragement would be fantastic.

Lost Lamb (by Jon):
-------------------
Xian: 4 (hard to communicate without much text, but still a good storyline that does a decent visualization of the Parable of the Lost Sheep)
Fun: 6 (It was fun to make it all the way through to completion)
Orig: 6 (Very good usage of Game Maker to create scenes, especially with the boss sequence. In other respects, gameplay is fairly standard fair).
Gfx: 5 (I liked how they were all done by hand by you. )
Stab: 7 (No stability issues at all with that Game Maker project)

Summary:
An action-based adventure side-scroller where you play an adventurous shepherd who sets out to find his lost sheep. Watch out! You'll have to acquire a sword and fight a group of enemies to do so!

Feedback:
Hey Jon, congratulations on your first game entry! I had a fun time playing your game, and there were many things that I really appreciated about it.
First off, I really liked how you did all of the graphics yourself. You kept a fun and consistent visual style that could have felt much more out of place if you had used pre-made stock graphics from anything. I enjoyed playing through with the look and feel of the game.
I was also really impressed with your good use of Game Maker -- I thought that you were very creative in your usage of the different GM scenes -- particularly the last level with the boss fight -- that was a really fun action sequence, and, while I'm not sure if it was very intentional or not, I really liked how the camera jumped around with each blow that you landed on the final boss monster -- it helped it all feel like a very dramatic and chaotic fight.
I also thought that embedding the dialog in the NPC graphics was a creative touch as well, and a good solution to a classic programming dilemma (how to get text into the game). It really helped that you included an introductory readme file -- that really helped me understand what was being said, and what was going on. Not all entrants had that, and so I'm impressed to see that you did a good job with the documentation.
All told, well done for a first entry! It was rough, but it was complete, and that's the most important part -- getting something complete. I think this project was a great way for you to get your feet wet, and I couldn't be happier that you made a complete project pretty much completely on your own. Well done!!!

[This message has been edited by HanClinto (edited August 28, 2007).]

------------------