Matt McFarland

The competition entry was mistakenly using a messed up xml file that causes the game to be way too short.  A big mistake for a contest, but the game itself shines with potential.  I found the graphics to be great, the bullets to be very nice with the glowing and the background to be spectacular.  The boss was way too easy though as you can fly right through him and just shoot the parts needed while not getting hit at all.  Way too many lives too for what it was.. 

Graphics: 91

Sound: 68

Innovation: 43

Overall: 40

Tim W

Shining Storm is an alright vertical shooter, though short in content it does offer a fair challenge but very little of anything else. A great start but unfortunately the author doesn't take his creation any further than that.

Graphics: 65

Sound: 45

Innovation: 25

Overall: 65

Charlie

I liked the dreamy feel to this game, the background, hazy colour palette etc. although at time I wished that collisions between bullets and player were a little more clearly defined. The music also suits.

Game play wise, I found that it was pretty difficult to dodge bullets due to them blending in with the background. The orbiting gun is a nice touch, but I found it too unwieldy to be of any great use.

With continued development, I’m sure that this could be a good game.

Graphics 60

Sounds 60

Innovation 45

Overall 65

Matt McFarland

Dragon Tejina has some nice graphics but that's about it.  I really liked how you play as a baby dragon whose roar makes the enemies laugh (really, try it out!) but it falls short on so many levels. 

The Game's Menu System is flawed, enigmatic, and frustrating to deal with.  But putting all of that aside, the game itself I found very boring.  The enemies slowly fly in and don't have any interesting movement patterns, and because they are very easy and slow swarms come in over and over again I found myself getting sleepy.

The author is still working hard on this game and I hear that the Menu system is getting fixed and there are many more improvements underway.  I'm looking forward to updates because this game has a lot of potential! 

Graphics: 70

Sound: 50

Innovation: 50

Overall: 25

Tim W

Probably much more suited for the previous competition, Dragon Tejina decent horizontal shooter which features a dragon with fire-breathing abilities. The controls are rather awkward and one stage is probably too short to leave an impression though credit has to be given to the author for pulling through when others had not.

Graphics: 60

Sound: 50

Innovation: 50

Overall: 65

Charlie

Nice graphics, shame about the game. I liked the animations of the enemies  (especially them giggling at the dragons pathetic roar) and player, the art style is quite attractive and the painted look to the backgrounds. It’s a shame there isn’t a bit more variety here though.

The menu sets new standards in confusing trial and error design, I quit the game, viewed the hi-scores, saw the credits and viewed the control page before I discovered I couldn’t remap the keys to something more usable.

The game itself is pretty dull, with no interesting enemy patterns or any great sense of speed or danger. The difficulty level I also found to be way too low, I finished it on the first attempt, without the aid of the rapid fire button which I hadn’t worked out at that point (turns out it’s the ‘y’ key, who knew?).

It would be nice to see the game behind the graphics develop into something a bit more compelling, and I hope the author of this entry decides to continue development. There’s certainly a lot of graphical charm present, and it would be great to have the game make use of this positively.

Graphics 75

Sounds 45

Innovation 30

Overall 45

Matt McFarland

Well, I tried out REPULSOR with high hopes after viewing the screenshots.  I love the title screen art and it's too bad the game doesn't hold up.  The game's frame-rate was pretty low but still playable.   I didn't really like the sound effects as they were mixed way too loud, but the music was ok.  The control scheme and gameplay works, but nothing really jumps out with excitement.

Graphics: 70

Sounds: 10

Innovation: 25

Overall: 20

Tim W

Repulsor is an alright arena shooter with Asteroids-type controls. Sprites are rather plain but the game does offer decent gameplay. The sound effects could use better quality, animation needs more frames and the background is simply static. Average at best.

Graphics: 45

Sound: 20

Innovation: 25

Overall: 45

Charlie

While it’s not much of a game per-say, I did like the kind of ‘home made’ feel to this one, if that makes sense. Especially, the music I thought was a great touch, even if it doe suffer from a bit of distortion.

The graphics are pretty average, and the sound effects distort and are too fuzzy for my liking, and I didn’t much like the stop-start flow between each wave of enemies. With persistence though, I think that this could be made into something far more interesting.

Also, it’s the only game in the competition that sings the control scheme to you on start-up, a nice touch.

Graphics 35

Sounds 50 (the ‘you finished the game’ IS great)

Innovation 30

Overall 45