The city was dying, the streets filthy with death and decay as the faint wind blew nothing but stale air about. Many were the bodies of the dead littering the road, whilst the scarce few living that remained sat about in the gutters, either too sick to move or too drunk to care. As I passed through, I saw a small group of poor, dirty children sitting on the sidewalk and poking each other with sticks as a way to pass the time. Feeling sorry for those unfortunates, I bent down and said onto them, "Pitiful vagrants, I beseech thee: what could I do to help thou to live better than this?" "Well, you could always whip us up another GIAW..." We put you to the poll, and the results said that another classic contest was called for. Well, you wanted it, you got it.
Prepare for the thirteenth round of the classic time-crunch competition,
GAME IN A WEEK XIII! Harking back to the days of ole, I, Bayard Zylos, once again rise to leadership to
rule guide you all as the master of ceremonies! As this is roughly our thirteenth time doing this, I'm sure everyone is familiar with what the GIAW is all about, but just in case you're brand new to the forum or have somehow been completely oblivious to the last 7-8 years of the competition, the rules are quite simple. Contestants are given exactly one week to create a game with RPG Maker, a grueling challenge with the sole purpose of pushing our game-makers to their limits. In the past, we've had a couple of people who have made absolutely incredible games that I would have paid money to play, while some others have made games I would have paid money to erase from history itself. After the week is done, all of the games are then scored by a panel of judges to determine the best of them based on ingenuity, playability, entertainment and polish. At the end, the person with the highest score is declared the god of all game creation whom everyone must worship, before we pass out the prizes and all head to the nearest bar to have a good laugh about all of the games.
The Rules: You may choose any starting date for your seven days anywhere from Sunday, August 10th, to Sunday, August 17th. For more detailed time slots, see the choices below the rules. You MUST declare when your start date is. Any starting date after the 17th but before the 24th will still be allowed, but you will still have to submit by the latest date of 23rd, and thus will have less time than the other competitors. You will have exactly one week from the your starting point to turn in your submission. Seven days is the strict limit. For example, if your starting date is August 12th, then you start at midnight on August 12th and your final submission must be in my PM box by 11:59 PM on August 18th at the latest, or else you will be disqualified. You may NOT start work on your game until the your week begins. You may plan out the story or download pre-existing resources and such, but you may not create new resources, scripts, or events. If you're not sure, ask. You may use any resource you wish, as long as you provide proper credit for it and the creator has no specific objections. You may sign up for the contest either as an individual or as part of a team. Teams can not consist of more than three members at most though, and the members of such must be made known. No signing up as an individual and working with your private creative team from some other forum. Games may be made using any RPG Maker, but only with RPG Maker. 2k3, XP, VX, VXA and the like are all permissible. Other programs like the Game Maker programs are off-limits. You may not post playable builds or demos of your submission until after the judges have finished scoring all submissions. Screenshots are allowed. Finished submissions must be given UNENCRYPTED for judging purposes. Don't worry, the judges aren't going to tamper with anything they shouldn't or steal anything of yours; this is mainly to check for any cheating and forcibly getting around any bugs they might encounter. Time Slots: Sunday, August 10th - Saturday, August 16th Monday, August 11th - Sunday, August 17th Tuesday, August 12th - Monday, August 18th Wednesday, August 13th - Tuesday, August 19th Thursday, August 14th - Wednesday, August 20th Friday, August 15th - Thursday, August 21st Saturday, August 16th - Friday, August 22nd Sunday, August 17th - Saturday, August 23rd To join in, simply post us a shout out that you'd like to enter in and tell us when your start date is gonna be. If you're super late to join in and want to start in after the 17th, you will be allowed, but you'll still have to submit your final product in by the last due date of the 23rd. This way the contest may properly end on time without being unfairly dragged on for those who are already done with their submissions.
When you're ready to submit, upload an UNENCRYPTED COPY of the game to someplace like a Dropbox account or Sendspace and PM the link to me. It's also very helpful to tell me the name of the game and give me a brief description of what your project is about so that the judges will know a little bit of what they're getting into before they start your game.
Scoring Guidelines: When your project is handed over to the judges, they will play through your game to the best of their abilities and give it a score from one to ten in four different categories:
polish (visuals and audio),
playability (gameplay and general mechanics),
ingenuity (originality and story), and
entertainment (the fun factor). Obviously, a score of 10 in a category is like having commercial quality greatness, while a score of 1 is our polite way of saying that you suck. However, even a game that looks absolutely terrible and is scored a 1 in polish could easily make up points by, say, being addictively fun and scoring a 10 in entertainment. For more details on what the judges will be looking for, see below.
Spoiler for :
Polish is how the game visuals and atmosphere feels, the sound and appearance of everything. Breath-taking original graphics or an amazing selection of music would be scored highly here. If the maps look empty or unappealing to the eyes, the judge would lower this score. Essentially, how does it look overall? Things like visual glitches, poor audio (or lack of sound completely), distractingly different art styles, or bad mapping would be affected here.Playability is the underlying mechanics and gameplay of the project. If the scripts and events are magnificently executed, the judges would give a good score here. If there are things like bugs or errors that take away from the game, the judges would score lower here. How easy is it to play the game? How much does it feel like an actual game rather than a chore for the judges to play through? The judges will be on the look out for glitches, game length (ie, demo vs. full game), difficulty, and the general components that make a game a game .Ingenuity is how new and original the ideas of the game feels. Even the poorest of projects might have a captivating storyline or concept, or a unique gameplay idea that we've never seen done before with RPG Maker. Things like having an inspiring story or showing cleverly created plans would get good marks, while being cliche or having nothing but bland default RTP stuff would hinder this category.Entertainment is... well, the entertainment value of the game. How fun of a game it is, how captivating or addicting it is, and above all, how enjoyable of a game it is versus how boring or frustrating of a project. The score here will likely be a representation of how much the judge liked playing through the game no matter what the scores were in the other categories.Additionally, I'll be having the judges write small reviews of your game to show why they gave you the scores they did in the particular categories. It'll be up to their own anonymous discretion for how detailed those reviews are, possibly ranging from single sentence explanations to giant essays depending on how they want to do it. We learned our lesson from the last contest!
But wait, there's more! This time around, we've got more than little trophy icons for you... WE HAVE PRIZES!!!
The Prizes: Origin Game - Medal of Honor (From IAMFORTE) Origin Game - Battlefield 3 (From IAMFORTE) Origin Game - Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 - Uprising (From IAMFORTE) Origin Game - Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box (From IAMFORTE) Origin Game - Dead Space (From IAMFORTE) Origin Game - Mirrors Edge (From IAMFORTE) Origin Game - Crysis 2 Maximum Edition (From IAMFORTE) Steam Game - "Enclave" (From Kodi123) Steam Game - "To The Moon" (From Zylos) Steam Game - "Binding of Isaac" + DLC (From Zylos) Steam Game - "McPixel" (From Zylos) Steam Game - "Organ Trail DC" (From Zylos) Steam Game - "DLC Quest" (From Zylos) Steam Game - "Thief Gold" (From Zylos) Steam Game - "Terraria" (From Zylos) Steam Game - "Final Fantasy VII" (From Zylos) Steam Game - "Nuclear Dawn" (From Zylos) Steam Game - "Papers Please" (From Zylos) Steam Game - "Five Nights at Freddy's" (From Zylos) Steam Game - "Dishonored" (From Zylos) Steam Game - "Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light" (From Zylos) RMRK - Free selection of Pokemon! (6 regular) * (From Roph) RMRK - Free selection of Pokemon! (3 shiny) * (From Roph) RPG Maker - Complicated puzzle or event system request! * (From Zylos) Other - PIZZA NIGHT #1! (From Sophist) Other - PIZZA NIGHT #2! (From Zylos) The top placers will get their pick(s) of some neat stuff we've piled together, while everyone who participates will at least be walking away with their free choice of any RMRK Pokemon! Most prize options, aside from the pokemon and RPG Maker stuff, are first come first serve and not tradable, so obviously the higher you place, the more likely you'll be able to pick out something you like before someone else grabs it.
Again, all you need to do to join in is simply post in this thread that you'd like to join (along with telling us your starting date). The more people that join, the more fun the contest will be, so don't be shy!
Contestants: Exhydra (13th to 19th) Bluntsword (17th to 23rd) hiromu656 (10th to 16th) llama32 (16th to 22nd) PhoenixFire (13th to 19th) Legacy (11th to 17th) Chaos_Zexion (15th to 21st) SamieltheMDS (15th to 21st) yuyu! (11th to 17th) NekoBucket (11th to 17th) flapbat (12th to 18th) kingjing (14th to 20th) akatharsia (13th to 19th) Namagomi (17th to 23rd) sipsop (17th to 23rd) Darkness & Axel (15th to 21st) worrierjeb (17th to 23rd) Lige (16th to 22nd) Kodi123 (16th to 22nd) KilgoreTrout (17th to 23rd) Malson (15th to 21st) Urbanlord3000 (16th to 22nd) Judges: Zylos Boe IAMFORTE Acolyte Brady And that's it! Come on in and let's make some GIAW magic for our lucky 13th run!