[Sun Kitten Red]

My 1-hour game Sun Kitten Red is an epic tale about a bloody kitten trying to reach the sun, while overcoming life's harsh obstacles.

Screenshot: http://www.oxeye.se/dev/junk/Screen-100116-00.jpg

[Horrifying Sunshine and Bubbles of Darkness]

I tried to make Horrifying Sunshine and Bubbles of Darkness but got stuck on problems and didn't make it in time. Here's a screenshot, though:

http://www.oxeye.se/dev/junk/Screen-100115-03.jpg

The game was supposed to be about trying to navigate your vampire to your coffin while avoiding the rays of sunlight bouncing into the castle.

Sometimes I just want to cry.

If you are going to copy http://www.onlinegames.com/basketball/ at least make sure you get the same basketball'y feeling.

Haha... Swedish Game Awards actually does that from time to time The year when we participated with Harvest, Gustav Kilman got the "One Man Game Factory" special award for "Streambolt Desero" (this game, http://www.indiegames.com/blog/articles/index.php?c=pl&y=2007&gid=10 ).

If I were a judge this year I would have voted for Overgrowth

There were some comments about this on the IGF site. Some people felt they were being handed an engine and not a game. Like if Unity would participate, or something.

And I agree... They'll have a much better chance next year, methinks.

That looks like a lot of fun!

More guidelines and examples for judging might be helpful in the future. When should you report a bias and request reassignment? If you hate JRPGs with a passion and you know it? If you're personal friends/enemies with the developer? If you were assigned a bullet hell game and you bluntly lack the skill to play it? Or are these sorts of random variables affecting scores entirely intentional, in order to produce winners with broad appeal? (I am not saying any of the above happened to me, I'm extrapolating based on comments.)

Simon and the other organizers rely on self-censorship on these matters. A judge had written a note on one of the games in my list saying, "I shouldn't judge this since I am their teacher" (not exact words). Simon had replied to that saying "Thanks, we'll assign you a different game."

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/2010007-0107/GreatBritain.A2010007.1150.1km.jpg

Wow
That's awesome 

If I had my way, Joe Danger and Super Meat Boy would be competing with Tuning and Enviro-Bear 2000 for the Grand Prize.  So that's why I suggested letting the Nuovo games compete automagically for the Grand Prize.  I think that's a good idea, dammit.

I think that's a great idea, but in that case, why only the Nuovo games? Maybe drop the "overall" category altogether and pick the grand prize among all finalists. That would push for more "innovation," I think, since you are nominated based on excellence in something specific, rather than excellence in polish.

(Of course that would suck for us in Oxeye, since we've given up on innovation and fully focuses on polish )

The entire IGF would be turned into a popularity contest.

I agree.

With this system at least all games were given the same chance. Sure, it's a lottery in a sense, and sure, a majority of judges didn't agree with dessgeega that "Space Spy" was a great game, but I think it's hard to find a better way of judging 300 games.

I think one problem is that the overall feeling of a game will influence the scoring in other categories. A way to avoid that would be to have dedicated judges for different categories, like the Nuovo award. In other words, evaluate the games like it's done now, but have that "yes/no" option in all categories and not only Nuovo. A game that gets a "yes" in audio, for example, would be nominated to the audio design expert panel, and they would filter out the games that "just have awesome music."

Regarding feedback:

dessgeega has a point regarding the judge-to-judge comments, that more discussion would probably improve the feedback given. One possible option here would be to make the feedback form public for other judges to see, and allow judges to comment on other judges' feedback. The whole discussion thread would then be made anonymous and sent as feedback, instead of separate judge notes.

TheDustin: Just email Simon and tell him you are interested and what you have been doing (Play This Thing) in time for next year's IGF, and he'll likely let you help out. That's what I did, and my background is simply that I've tried to get our indie company running (and participated in IGF two years in a row... and not participating this year, obviously).

Feedback is mandatory for the student category as well.

It was harder to comment on the student games, though, because many of them were really in the prototype stage and didn't offer much game content.

Why are you so negative? The feedback I've seen so far in this thread is a hundred times better than the feedback we received a year ago. Stop whining!

When I participated in IGF I didn't pay $95 to recieve feedback. I paid to have a chance at being invited to San Francisco for a great party! You all talk like you placed 306th out of 306 games, when in reality you probably placed in the top 10 of the available games. There were a lot of CRAP games in the list.

^{EDIT: Forgot about the forum netiquette not to quote the last post in the thread.}

Yes... I think games that "get to the point" quickly are favoured in all kinds of competitions, and not just IGF. I took my judging task very seriously, so I made sure that I had plenty of time to play the games. Especially considering that I had two AGS games to evaluate (I made sure I had a whole evening for each).

I tried to measure how much time I spent on the games. It ranged from 5 minutes to 3 hours, with the median somewhere around 30 minutes. I'll admit that the 5-minute game was http://www.atc-sim.com/ ... sorry, but I was afraid that if I played that game any longer I would suffer from some kind of mental disease.

Hey

Congrats on the triforce nomination! 

Anybody else than me who is worried about the weather? 

I'm going to Edinburgh on monday, and then the train south next thursday... I know how much trouble snow can cause in Sweden, and we're supposed to be used to snow...

Guillaume,jeb, Thank you for metioning mon & bot.
I know well why mon & bot didn't make it. It was a natural result sadly.
I sould have had more time to design levels.

jeb, Did I have any hope?

Hehe, I was maybe too harsh, I was just speculating in why Mon & Bot didn't reach the finals... One thing you could think of is not to repeat the same puzzle too many times. Once the player has figured out how to raise/lower a bridge, it isn't very much fun to do it again.

Also, at some locations, there were misleading dead-end paths. For example, at one place there were some platforms you had to jump across. If you fell down, you would come to a path that went back to the start so you could try again. The problem was that at the start, both the upper and lower paths looked like reasonable options, so if you choose the lower path first you would have to go back again.

I'm really off-topic now... but to summarize: remove repetition and decrease travel time.

EDIT: And to answer your question, sure there was hope! Especially in the visual art category. I doubt you were far off from the top 5.

So I'm kind of sad Mon&Bot didn't make it, but I'm really excited by Super Meat Boy, Monaco and as everyone else, Limbo. And all the rest as well 

Congrats and good lucks to all the finalists on TIGS!

Mon & Bot was actually quite similar to Limbo in how it felt and how it played. The huge difference was in puzzle/level design. Limbo was a blast, while Mon & Bot was not. (Neither of the games were on my judging list, so I didn't score them.)

I'm surprised that Mon & Bot didn't end up as a finalist in visual art, because it was extremely atmospheric. However, like I said, the game was tedious and uninteresting, and suffered from bad level design.

I think the reason why Limbo didn't reach the grand prize category was because the version they submitted to IGF was pretty short. But that's just speculation.

I guess God didn't invent sarcasm.

... or it's time to read the Bible in a new light.

Aaanyways... It's interesting to see that one game that I gave a 100 to, didn't end up as a finalist. Otherwise I'm pretty happy with the nominations.

Limbo being nominated for the Technical Excellence Award intrigues me. Is there any public information about this game other than the teaser video and the concept art?

The game plays exactly like the trailer. That's quite impressive I must say... especially the part with the rotating world.