Matt McFarland  - Score: 7.00

This game is another original concept.  You are flying through a techno-ish looking cyberspace and your weapon is a beam cannon.  Primary fire results in shooting a straight yet more powerful beam.  Secondary fire results in shooting a beam that bends up or down depending in your direction.  The game's music doesn't seem to fit for me, but let’s talk about the game-play.  As far as game-play goes, I really liked how you could charge your shields if the bullets just touched the outside of your ship and really didn’t hit you.  I also like how you could turn on your shields (but not shooting!) and absorb the bullets, because there is a LOT of bullets.  The enemy boss was really cool, I liked how it talked to you (sort of) and I liked how it changed the more you damaged it.  The level design wasn't that interesting to me, I didn’t really feel like much time was put into it because you're shooting enemies and that's about it.  The game really shines when you get later to the boss part.  The game IS original, the game does have a cool boss, but overall it just didn’t do it for me.

Neil Yates  - Score: 5.00

Cyberspace Assault is one of those games where I know it's technically good but I just don't feel much fun seeping through. The game, as the title suggests is set in Cyberspace with vector graphics and sounds to match. Unfortunately I think this theme is its major downside. The music is incredibly tame and in my eyes way too laid back to be used in a shooter and the sound effects aren’t much better. For example when you destroy an enemy you are rewarded with a rather unsatisfactory high pitched beeping sound. Personally one of the things that make a great shooter for me is hearing a nice over the top BOOM and seeing a ton of particles race across the screen, but Cyberspace doesn't cut the mustard in that sense and as a direct result leaves the experience feeling rather dry. The game-play is good for the most part with a nice primary beam laser. There is maybe a bit too much focus on bullet dodging, and I don't mind that too much. Overall I think better media could make this game pretty good but at the moment it's just average.

Sean Doherty  - Score: 6.00

The visuals are very nice!  Also, I think thus game has a lot of potential.  In fact, so far, this is the best game I have played in the competition...  However, the music is just wrong and the sound effects are for the most part missing?  That said, this game is not well rounded.  I would recommend audio changes and tweaking of the game play.  Very promising!

Matt McFarland  - Score: 8.00

Alright!! RPG elements mixed in with some shmupping!  I found this game to be pretty cool.  I really liked seeing the hit points fly off the enemies when I hit them, and I liked how I leveled up.  I really also liked how you can walk on the guns or the square tiles and you shoot a different weapon.  It's almost like using an item, sort of, but it’s not in any inventory!!  What really adds a twist to this game is the fact that you end up having to shoot the guys that have misspelled words on them!  I almost felt like I was playing an educational game.  I love spelling though, so this game gets kudos from me for that!   My only gripe with the misspelled words is that the font used that overlays the sprites was too small...   I also liked the end boss; it would do a Final Fantasy(tm) thing when the boss would do special attacks!!  Seeing that made me crack up!!  The game was very easy though, I beat it on my first try! Still I think it was pretty fun (for me) and I'm going to score it respectively.

Neil Yates  - Score: 5.00

Don't let this game fool you, it's not a shooter! It's actually much more like side scrolling Diablo-where-you-have-to-only-kill-the-enemies-with-mispelled-words-flying-over-their-head O.O It's an interesting and original game-play mechanic but not one I'm a fan of. This game feels thrown together with its funky jazz music, female character that sounds like a man and charging donkies of death! I didn't really enjoy playing it but it did at least make me laugh a bit which is always a good thing. The main trouble was that controlling a human like it's a space ship just doesn't work.

Sean Doherty  - Score: 6.00

Well, this game does nothing for me personally.  However, it did have a Boss, the hand of death.  It took me about ten minutes to beat the hand until I start stepping on the spell squares. The graphics are average and the music could use improvement (the Music does change as you progress).  That said, the game play is a bit repetitive.  However, I didn't feel that it was really a shooter?

Matt McFarland  - Score: 7.00

This game is another original concept.  You are flying through a techno-ish looking cyberspace and your weapon is a beam cannon.  Primary fire results in shooting a straight yet more powerful beam.  Secondary fire results in shooting a beam that bends up or down depending in your direction.  The game's music doesn't seem to fit for me, but let’s talk about the game-play.  As far as game-play goes, I really liked how you could charge your shields if the bullets just touched the outside of your ship and really didn’t hit you.  I also like how you could turn on your shields (but not shooting!) and absorb the bullets, because there is a LOT of bullets.  The enemy boss was really cool, I liked how it talked to you (sort of) and I liked how it changed the more you damaged it.  The level design wasn't that interesting to me, I didn’t really feel like much time was put into it because you're shooting enemies and that's about it.  The game really shines when you get later to the boss part.  The game IS original, the game does have a cool boss, but overall it just didn’t do it for me.

Neil Yates  - Score: 5.00

Cyberspace Assault is one of those games where I know it's technically good but I just don't feel much fun seeping through. The game, as the title suggests is set in Cyberspace with vector graphics and sounds to match. Unfortunately I think this theme is its major downside. The music is incredibly tame and in my eyes way too laid back to be used in a shooter and the sound effects aren’t much better. For example when you destroy an enemy you are rewarded with a rather unsatisfactory high pitched beeping sound. Personally one of the things that make a great shooter for me is hearing a nice over the top BOOM and seeing a ton of particles race across the screen, but Cyberspace doesn't cut the mustard in that sense and as a direct result leaves the experience feeling rather dry. The game-play is good for the most part with a nice primary beam laser. There is maybe a bit too much focus on bullet dodging, and I don't mind that too much. Overall I think better media could make this game pretty good but at the moment it's just average.

Sean Doherty  - Score: 6.00

The visuals are very nice!  Also, I think thus game has a lot of potential.  In fact, so far, this is the best game I have played in the competition...  However, the music is just wrong and the sound effects are for the most part missing?  That said, this game is not well rounded.  I would recommend audio changes and tweaking of the game play.  Very promising!

Matt McFarland  - Score: 4.90

Krait is a dark game, interesting, and has a lot of potential.  You start off in a post-apocalyptic city, destroying what I guess are mutants.  The strange flying enemies’ don’t fly right for me though.  They don’t move smooth, and I'm wondering how they coded their movement patterns?  Because the movement just doesn’t look good for me at all, and that really turned me off.  The weapons are pretty cool, but the game is pretty slow paced, and really you just find yourself destroying the enemies and really not thinking much, although you can look at the pretty graphics.  Once you go into the cave, things start to get more interesting, you fly through a tiny base, and there are some really cool obstacles.  I didn’t like the spider at the entry because it twitched way too much.  In fact, all the little enemies twitch too much too.  If they removed this twitch-factor I'd actually enjoy the game a whole lot more.  I'm not talking about a low-fps jerk; I'm talking about how the movement is just plain twitchy.  It could run at 2000 fps and these little buggers would still twitch.  The spider either looks diagonal up or diagonal down, and sometimes it twitches from diagonal up to diagonal down a whole lot and that just bugs me to death!  The growing plants are really cool, the moving obstacles are awesome, but everything else just didn’t do it for me.  Of course I think the graphics are awesome, but this isn’t a graphics contest!  I beat this game on the first go! Oh! And speaking of easy, the final boss was incredibly easy! I just stayed in one spot and shot it over and over again.

Neil Yates  - Score: NA

I couldn't get this to work due to black screen of death. Waited for 2 minutes and nothing happened, had to reset my PC.

Sean Doherty  - Score: 6.60

Krait has a very interesting concept behind the Boss at the end of the level.  Basically, the Boss is a big skull that attacks you with its metal tongue.  I am pretty sure that this game actually has some of the best graphics in the competition.  For that matter, the sound seems to fit into the game nicely.  Moreover, I like the game play and the total package behind this game.  However, there are a few cons:

- Loads extremely slow and there is no indication that it is still loading

- I couldn't kill the spider and I think I hit it pretty good

- ESC exits the game

- You can't play the level one again once you beat the level without reloading?

- Some of the images look like they are animating at a strange speed

- Main Menu is hard to read

Matt McFarland  - Score: 6.00

SHMUP THIS does a few things right but at the same time it does a few things wrong.  Now this isn't a GUI contest but I felt that the GUI was very difficult to use, and hard to read.  After playing the game though I did enjoy blowing things up and the controls were pretty easy.  The game itself I feel is just too easy, I beat it on my first attempt.  You pretty much fly across a neat cartoony landscape and shoot everything that comes at 'cha.  You get power ups along the way, but not any power ups really stood out for me.  In the end, I found all I needed to do was sit at the bottom and fire straight.  I did really like the detail put into the game, and I felt it was fun for the first go.

Neil Yates  - Score: 5.00

SHMUP THIS has some nice graphics and fairly decent game-play, but it didn't blow my socks off. Visually the game has a nice cartoony style but at the same time it feels quite hardcore due to the design of the ships used. Unlike most entries SHMUP THIS allowed me to use the mouse and was implemented very well with the movement feeling as it should. The main downside was that the game seemed to drag on for quite a while without much variation and the enemies didn't really have any dynamic attack patterns. Another problem with the game-play is that the enemies fire too many shots. Unless you manage to get in front of an enemy before it starts firing and blast it's shots out of the way you're almost certain to get hit. And even if you do get in front in time actually killing the enemy is then pretty hard because when your shots collide they are both destroyed. This means you won't kill the enemy until you get right up close which is rather annoying and unrewarding.

Sean Doherty  - Score: 6.00

This game wins the award for having by far the most abstract GUI I have very seen.)  The game play is flawed because for the most part the units fly straight across the screen while and never stop firing.  I think the game play needs to be rebalanced and enhanced.  At the moment, the game play is pretty much one dimensional.  The graphics are good, but a bit blurry and sound fits in with the game.

Matt McFarland  - Score: 5.00

Zoink is an interesting little game where you control a goblin riding a dragon that spits fireballs.  The game features mouse control, which took a minute to get used to but after playing around it was very easy to use.  You have to dodge balloons with dynamite sticks on them, and dodge creatures such as humungous CRAZY looking birds and eventually you make it to the Boss.  The game seems different every time, and sometimes it's very easy, other times its very hard.  On one time, I received 6 extra lives while I easily dodged the balloons.  I thought the concept was pretty fun nonetheless, and I did enjoy the cute graphics.  The music was pretty interesting, although it wasn’t something I would pick for such a game.  I didn't like how I couldn’t pop the balloons with my fireballs, you simply better avoid them or you're going down!!  IT is good that you have to dodge some things, because otherwise the game would be way too easy.  The blue dragon seems to just move up and down and shoot fireballs at you, so I feel that the boss was a rush job.  All in all, the game was enjoyable, and that matters most to me!  Nothing else really stands out other than the cute yet somewhat bland graphics.  The random levels make it more playable, but it also is a curse because there simply isn’t much to the level design.  I thought it was a bit too short, but not too bad!

Neil Yates  - Score: 5.00

Zoink's major strong point is in its brilliant animations; all the characters in the game come to life with some brilliant artistic flare. The general quality of the art is also superb making this game very nice to look at. However it is a little lacking the game-play department; the enemies all seem to have the same attack pattern and don't really seem to do anything different apart from looking like something else. There is also a problem with the collisions in that they are way too big which is incredibly annoying. Unfortunately it doesn't feel well polished as the menu is pretty basic and throws up an error after you die. It's not bad but it's not what I'd go for either.

Sean Doherty  - Score: 5.40

This game features MP3 files and a runtime error at the after you die and restart the level?  Anyway, the graphics are well done and seem to fit the atmosphere of the game.  Sadly, there are not sound effects and the music is a bit out of context.  As for the game play, I really can't say that I was a fan of the using the mouse to dodge balloons.  Generally, the game looks nice but lacks sound and the game play is not that fun.

Matt McFarland  - Score: 5.00

Astronomo Rex is a freestyle horizontal shmup where you fly a plane around with a goal to destroy 250 enemies.  It can be any enemy type, destroy them, and you’re good.  The music is sort of an instrumental Punk / Ska (sorta) music which I am just not fond of.  Of course, I've been to shows that feature that style of music; I just don’t care for it myself.  Let's examine the game-play.  Ok, you use the W key to move forward, use the S key to slow down.  The A and D key will tilt your plane up and down.  If you find yourself upside down, you can change that by pressing the F key and your plane twists around.  The controls are difficult to get used to; it took me several tries to finally get them down.  Once you get the controls down, the game starts to get a little fun!  I really enjoyed flying the plane after I learned how, the problem is, it took me too long to learn and I feel that most people would simply disregard the game.  The way to keep interest would be to actually have easier levels, and tutorials.  So, I don’t think that the challenging control scheme would be damaging to this game if it were a full game, IF the level design was correct.  I'd like to see more levels, but at the same time I wouldn’t want this to be level 1!!  Ok! I know this is a competition, so I don’t expect tutorials and super easy levels or anything! The power-ups were cool, the graphics were nice, but the boss was silly!  I mean... a Ship!? A ship that floats in the sky!?  A carrier ship!?  It just didn’t do it for me!!  At any rate, it’s still a pretty good game for what it is, and it has potential to be a real game, should they fix a few things...

Neil Yates  - Score: 3.00

When I started playing this game I immediately felt like it was incredibly unpolished as the graphics aren't very good at all. The control system is fairly original and interesting with a plane that can fly upside down and travel both left and right, but this and maybe the is the music is the only real good part about this game. Game-play wise, it just felt incredibly hard and somewhat boring as I could only destroy the buildings. When hitting the fire button I didn't see any bullets on the screen, in fact the only real visual effect in this game was the building sinking into the ground rather unrealistically when hit. I have a distinct feeling that this is a bug rather than bad design, but either way it served to ruining what little enjoyment I might have got from playing it as I was just flying around getting killed as I couldn't fight back.

Sean Doherty  - Score: NA

Can't see the primary game play screen?  Only the radar at the top?

Matt McFarland  - Score: 3.30

Deathflake is a game where you use the WASD set up to control your ship and the mouse to aim.  If you go right then the scrolling speeds up, left it slows down.  Your goal is to make it to the end, and the boss itself is more of an obstacle than something you have to destroy.  I was able to beat this game by just sitting at the bottom and shooting directly in front of me.  If I tried to play the game otherwise I would get killed rather quickly because the enemy ships fire very fast bullets that seem to hit you every time.  Also moving up and down is extremely fast.  The game has "rush job" written all over it, but its no big deal because this game was designed in merely 7 days (or less) - all in all, I'm not judging it but on game-play alone..

Neil Yates  - Score: 4.00

First impressions of this game were good due to the fairly nice graphics but I soon realized there was no sound or music which put a downer on it. The menu was especially nice but once I got into the game I was disappointed again. The controls make this game very hard to play coupled with being incredibly fast paced this didn't feel much like a game, rather a watching game-play movie at triple speed. Another problem was that after a mere 15 seconds of playing the game would suddenly quit out into the menu without giving a reason. I assume I'd either died or completed the level. I wish the developer had put more time into this as I think with a fair bit of tweaking it could be quite good. But for now it's not very good.

Sean Doherty  - Score: 4.60

The game looks good, and I think it has some promise as it just needs some game play changes...

Matt McFarland  - Score: 2.20

Well, the sketched idea has been used before, but I still find it pretty original when I see it in a game.  I also enjoy gravity games, and free scrolling isn't too bad either.  I found this game lacking in color though, everything was black and white.  I didn't like the color contrast, but with it being a sketch I didn’t think it was too bad for use. I played the game for about an hour and couldn't get to a boss.  I found myself frustrated by crashing into the ground quite often; also I didn't really like the music much.   With the bad controls, bad music, and extreme difficulty this game didn't set well for me.  The theme of the game is perfect, everything is sketched, and the game is good for what it is.  Unfortunately I just don’t think this game is a good one.  I give it a couple of bonus points for being well themed, but that's about it.

Neil Yates  - Score: 3.00

This is a game where the player must keep his ship off the ground, but below the skyline and at the same time kill enemies. This is done by thrusting in a similar way to Lander, but unlike Lander you can turn and thrust in any direction.

I liked the theme of this game, or at least I liked the concept of the theme. However the execution of it was in my opinion was far from great. In order to get a kind of pencil sketch look the developer makes everything 'wobble' as it would in a flick book animation. Nice idea, but unfortunately it really made my eyes hurt, and made the game look pretty messy. It's nice when people have these ideas, but I just wish in this case a little more thought had gone into what the end user's comfort levels might be. Because of this theme the graphics look incredibly bland and somewhat vomit inducing to look at, so overall the graphics get a low mark from me.

The game-play itself, whilst novel is incredibly frustrating and hard. I personally really dislike W S A D control, and would have much preferred being able to use the cursor keys, or least have the option to use them. Though, even if I could use my preferred control method, I doubt I would have got any further than I did (not very far), simply because the game is just very, very hard from the word go. Thrusting for even a second sends you rocketing at super high speeds to the game's limits, which if you hit, you die instantly. This means you are constantly having to lightly tap the keys which is really frustrating. Just keeping yourself above ground is hard enough, but having to kill enemies, and dodge their bullets at the same time makes this game near impossible. I'm sure if I practiced for 20 hours I might be able to get past the first level, but I, nor many people are really going to put that much effort in. It gets points in novelty, but this is outweighed by the shear frustration you get when playing it.

The sounds for this game are very basic, and so is the music. I can't really say it's bad, but it's not exactly good either.

This game also has a few problems with the menus. The main menu is a simple 'click on button with mouse affair' but some screens require you to press a key to go through, which I think is rather annoying. Much better to have clickable menus all the way through. There is also a point after dying where you have to press 'return', which is a little silly seeing as all other screens just say 'any key'. Though having a menu for a small competition piece is nice, so it gains points in that respect.

Overall I didn't really enjoy it, and if I were to find this game out of this competition it wouldn't stay on my hard disk for more than five minutes. If it were easier (a lot easier) it might be a different story, but for now playing it is just pure mental torture.

Sean Doherty  - Score: 4.00

The concept behind Sketched is basically Lunar Lander combined with a side scroller.  Pretty impossible to say whether the game has a Boss or not?  I had read other reviews of Sketched before playing, so I was surprised that my first impression was that it wasn’t that hard.  However, as soon as I reached the first hill in the game the sky lit up with bullets.  That said, the concept behind Sketched is seems solid but the game is way too difficult.

The following are a few other issues that I had with the game:

- After losing a life it seems that you have to press ESC to continue.

- The screen flickered on my machine.  However, this wouldn’t be the first time that I have had issues with vector graphics.

- There seems to be menu items on the Main Menu that do not work.

- The in game text does not seem to be all translated to English.

Matt McFarland  - Score: 3.00

Vaznolen has a power up hierarchy type deal.  The more power up orbs you collect, the stronger your weapon.  Eventually you get this floating orb around you so you can hold the right mouse button down to shoot missiles.  Then you get this laser that kills everything it touches, which makes the game very easy.  It's tricky at first, but once you play a couple times you get the level down well.   I didn't particularly enjoy it as many objects moved too fast!  The background moved smoothly, but everything else moved like it was in fast-forward.  It was like things were moving by many pixels per frame, and that created collision issues and also made things a bit hard to get used to.  The boss was a big head, and the coolest looking thing in the game.  The game itself was just pretty much lacking in smoothness.

Neil Yates  - Score: 3.00

This game feels incredibly rough around the edges and the game-play is somewhat lacking. Like other games that I've given a low score to, Vaznolen makes your ship feel incredibly weak and useless and you will spend much of your time trying to kill things rather than killing them. This is paired off with rock bottom levels of polish. The graphics are poor, there aren't many sound effects and a lot of effects haven't been put in and sometimes enemies move in a rather ugly fashion - at some points the enemies move so fast you cannot possibly hit them. Vaznolen did at least make an attempt at a menu screen and an introduction which I suppose is a good thing.

Sean Doherty  - Score: 2.00

Vaznolen is a standard collect the orbs from the attaching starships that you destroy.  The game really lack polish, for example:

- The only way to exit the credits to wait for them to complete

- The only way to skip the Mission Objectives is to wait for them to scroll by

- The graphics look like there are a lot of blending issues with the edges

- There are a lot of missing sound effects

I think the lack of sound effects when your bullet strikes a starship really takes away from the game.  Lastly, some of the starship move way to fast, especially when they have to be hit multiple times.  Overall, this is a good start, but the game is not ready.