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[nuclear_winter]

I loved the idea and wanted to enter, but didn have enough time.
Next time i'm in!

[metamorphium]

Verdict no. 1

I am sorry, that my reply comes so late, but after unexpected hospitalization (which left me with two return flight tickets I'll never use ) I just arrived from many hours spent in not very christmas environment. (sorry odnorf...)

Anyway here's my verdict:

First of all it's really great that someone from the community stepped out and created one room game with very original handling of the
room escape. I am giving five points for the premise and also to artistic imagination which portrays Lovecraftian creatures in a highly
original way.

The game contains of 9 screens (including closeups) which is quite an achievement for the little time assigned. It has additional 2 intro screens and all in all it has the feel of the game having menu, intro, game and endscreen.

A few implemented puzzles are well integrated to the plot and I found them believable in the game context (although the safe puzzle could
have been more cryptic).

Another well implemented feature is 4 different enemies which are called upon you randomly at the beginning which affects one puzzle you
encounter later on. It's obvious that nihil approached the small scale means creatively and here I again assign 5 points.

Ok, and now we got to the bad part of the game. It's a pitty that the game contains a lot of bugs. It's not "badly coded" but it's really
buggy. And the bugs are ranging from complete show stoppers to mildly annoying ones. And the pitty is that obviously the bugs are there
only as an overlook and the time pressure which obviously prevent nihil from testing the game properly.

Here's the most important findings:

1, you can't enter the menu since you'll never come back. Guilty is

Game.ChangeScene("Game.PrevSceneFilename");

now if you put away the quotes you'll have the propper behavior. Thanks to this I had to start the game couple of times since
I sometimes tried to escape the closeup with Esc key (just a habbit) and was never able to get back ingame.

2, In larger blocks of dialogues it's VITAL to set the game into non interactive mode. It's especially the case of the door dialogue which sets
variable end to true at the very end. But there are Sleep (incorrectly called as Game.Sleep) so you think the dialogue is over and leave the door which causes the game not setting the end variable and consequently leaving you dead ended until you try again to speak with doors
and wait the whole way. Also if you click the door while trying to fast forward through dialogue, it gets interrupted. So this simple Game.Interactive = false would fix the most annoying bug in the game.

3, Duplicate action handling is not well. You can for example look behind the image and all the time you find the paper there even if you've
done it already. Also if you exit the closeups from items, it brings you to fix location instead of the actual screen. The same applies to eg. book in he drawer. It gets there again and again. Also if you exit the scene and come back, the drawer gets locked again.

4, It's wiser to use not pixel perfect inventory. Trying to grab the key is extremely annoying although it extends the gameplay.

5, Even if you unlock the safe the hotspot remains so you can enter combination around and around while safe gets locked again.  (also pressing escape at code gives you script runtime error)

There are other minor annoyances but I won't list them, since this is enough to justify my giving 2.5 points only to code.

Next time I'll be probably less generous, because it was obvious that too much time took the graphic design of the game and there was
not enough time for coding and testing. But of course the author knew the time frame so he could fit the game into less screens on
behalf of propper testing. It's a good experience to understand the small scale means. On the other hand nihil was the only one who stepped out from the community and actually created something so my verdict below is rightly deserved.

So the final verdict is 4 points for the nihil's game Beyond the threshold

Let's wait what other judges think.

[Mnemonic]

Ok, firstly thanks to nihil for taking the time to create a game for the contest.
Overall, I think the quality of the game is very high, in terms of story, puzzles and execution. No complaints there. The game even uses a random element which is always good for confusing the walkthrough writers As for "Cleanness of the source code" meta already posted a detailed analysis, and we'll probably all agree that the code could use some more cleaning. Nevertheless, since nihil's game was the only contribution, and since I really do appreciate his effort in this hectic pre-holidays time, I'm giving full 5 points to Beyond the Threshold.

Hopefully this wasn't the last WME competition and hopefully we'll see more contestants next time to make the work of the jury a bit more interesting

[TheDerman]

Well done to Nihil. 

So, do we get to play the game?

[odnorf]

Time for me to speak..... bwahahahahaha 

This game surprised me in a good way. The puzzles are well integrated in a good story and the end fits nicely. And there are also multiple scenes in one room. Good job.

But... and the purpose of this competition are the "buts".... I'd expect some better use of the random entry since you can solve the puzzle by random clicking all items. It would be better if you had to click them in a fixed order. Oh... and the religion themed puzzles that require certain knowledge are imo to be avoided because they can get a little difficult with people like me 

I still haven't read meta's lengthy post but I guess it must be about bugs. And I'm not talking only about run-time script errors in various places but also designer's bugs like items not disappearing after picking them, returning to fixed locations after reading a book, save-load doesn't work etc.

Finally... I give 4.5 points to "Beyond the Threshold" although it should have been more polished because nihil is the only one that actually released something.

[BoBo]

Well done to Nihil. 

So, do we get to play the game?

I have wanted to ask this, so it's a good question, I'm curious too  .

[metamorphium]

don't worry. Not only you'll get to play it, but you'll also get the full project including sources to play with. That's one of the purposes of this competition. Just read the original post.

[Jerrot]

Hiya,

so - I'll make it short, especially because I'm too short in time these days. The more I appreciate the work nihil did in the same time, I'd love to give points for the graphics (that would be 6 of 5) he did in the time, but we said we wouldn't, so... too bad.

Actually everything is said, I maybe wouldn't underline all of meta's statements, especially not for the first contest, but (as I'm the evil guy in the Wintermute Army anyway) I have to take away one point because of the bugs and some minor issues I won't even mention, other than that the story was well-driven, the splicing of the room into separate scenes was well done, everything is fine.

So I'll end up with 4 points, which is the last vote for a total result of 17,5 points - nihil is the 1st place winner! (Surprise )

Congrats and thanks from my side. I'll let metamorphium do the final words as he worked this out (thanks!) and I hope to see more competitions very soon - and I'll try to participate then as well (I know, everybody says so... heh).

Enjoy,
Jerrot.

[metamorphium]

Okay, so everyone casted their votes. Before I'll write here the obvious result, I'd like to first and foremost
thank Mnemonic for creating WME, which made this and all other future competitions possible. Although the engine
quality is really high, WME doesn't have much showcase so far. With this competition, we hope to increase WME finished projects with
games which would never appear otherwise. I'd also recommend nihil (since his graphics is done) to implement all his ideas and maybe
add some music / sfx to bring the whole game in a sense he originally wanted and without any deadlines.

I'd like to thank the other jury members for looking over the game. It's not that easy task in this hectic time to go through the source codes and hunt for the bugs, but it's necessary.

But I also want to thank nihil who spent a lot of the time to create his game and brought it as a very nice contribution to WME community. I just hope he's not the only one and other members will follow him.

Jury decided that nihil's game Beyond the threshold should get 17.5 points which gets him 1. place in the historically first WME competition!

Congratulations and here's to you: 

[TheDerman]

Looking forward to it.

I will enter future competitions - I guess it all depends on when they are since sometimes we are too busy with our full games to take time out. But anyway - it's a good idea, so I look forward to the next one. 

[BoBo]

don't worry. Not only you'll get to play it, but you'll also get the full project including sources to play with. That's one of the purposes of this competition. Just read the original post.

OK, thanks. Also, it would be good to repair the bugs, don't you think ?

Oh, you already mentioned it, so Nihil, we all are looking forward  .

[shuin]

First of all congrats to nihil for being able to complete the game and for making it quite good (since it quallified 4 the 1st place). I look forward to playing it. Keep up the good work 

Secondly, I have a request. I couldn't make a one-room game for the competition due to several factors (seeing the announcement late, having a job, not having a team etc). Nevertheless, i'm still going to make (hopefully) a one-room game special for this competition (with exactly this theme, escape, as its theme).
I ask you to judge my game (when finished) as if it was sent before the deadline, as if it was part of the competition.

10x in advance

[metamorphium]

maybe it would be wiser to wait for january, when the next intriguing theme for one room game competition appears.

[Nihil]

Sorry for the late reply, I have been busy with university and xmas.

First: Thanks a lot for voting me on the first place ;-) It has really been a lot of fun to work on the game, and I guess I'll join the coming contests, too if I find the time.

I will release the complete project the next days when I have fixed all the bugs the jury already mentioned. Unfortunately I ran out of time to finish the game the way I wanted it before the deadline was over, so roughly half of the planned content (storywise, riddles, complete sound etc) is missing - therefore some day there will be a "Version 2" of the game.

As soon as all bugs are solved I post here and give you a download link.

[metamorphium]

that's great. We too hope you'll participate in next competitions as well, but we also hope that this time, we'll have some
other participants as well.

Congratulations again!