Pascal Game Development - 1st PGD Challenge: Final Results

First off I just would like to again say thank you very much to all of you who have participated in this competition. It's your continued feedback and very visual dialog that shows people what you can do with a Pascal-based programming language and the great things you can do with it. So that said, here are your results for the 1st PGD Challenge Mini Game Developer's Competition...

Scores

(Click on image for full view)

1st Place := Tower by Sascha Pathe
2nd Place := Vectored! by Paul Nicholls
3rd Place := 2-Bit Racer by Ingemar Ragnemalm

Judges' Comments
(in order of final submission)

Dragon Knight

Jason	Johannes
Good great attention to level design level of difficulty can be adjusted nice visual effects	Good Retro feeling Fun and exciting game experience
Bad glitches in graphics crashed on first loading runs slow on slightly older hardware	Bad Some elements in game (such as you can't hit some dragons) could have been explained better A bit short

Ascii3D

Jason	Johannes
Good very responsive controls simple control scheme has title screen and menu with instructions	Good Nice ASCII art style Easy control scheme
Bad console graphics in fixed window mode cause way too much flickering repetitive gameplay gets boring over time no way to save high scores	Bad Horrible flickering Game speed depends on CPU speed Some minimap indicating how the race track looks like would have been nice

Moving Maze

Jason	Johannes
Good innovative game mechanics adjustable difficulty and size of game has a title screen and menu with instructions	Good Graphics and music fit quite well Compelling game concept Multiple difficulty settings
Bad hard to wrap head around what needs shifting where at such a high pace doesn't take full advantage of the full screen size cannot get back to main menu from game over screen	Bad I would have loved a bit more of control when choosing which row/column to change I think being real-time harms the flow of the game as you don't get enough time to think which move would be the best one before one of the AI players gets their move The locking of the player was not quite clear to me at first; a timer which indicates how long the player is still locked could help in that regard

Knight Fever

Jason	Johannes
Good creatively designed levels and monsters nice use of sound and visual effects level selection is a nice touch	Good Excellent use of music and sounds... ...as well as nice graphics especially the player sprite
Bad player control is difficult on platforms and obstacles and object collision is glitchy game can only be closed after it reaches game over screen game can get overly repetitive after a while (found a way to cheat in the castle)	Bad Too many goblins spawn too quickly making it almost impossible to kill all of them The wall of fire seems a bit too overpowered

2-Bit Racer

Jason	Johannes
Good creative game concept nice graphics with detail full menu and title screen w/ instructions	Good Challenging race Basic physics and collision
Bad poor controls many glitches glitchy AI	Bad Controls take a bit getting used to Repetitive sounds Camera angle is sometimes weird when you try to take the same shortcuts the AI does

Castle of Thorns

Jason	Johannes
Good very innovative puzzle game mechanic easy to control full title screen and menu with instructions	Good Interesting mix between a sliding puzzle and match 3 Pretty sprites
Bad game over screen auto-exits program without going back to title screen or menu one of the letters (C) went missing on me part way through the game on a level moving your letters through moving columns of falling symbols is a tad confusing	Bad Switching between A, B, C and D is not really necessary gameplay-wise, you can succeed by using just one of the spawn points Animations are a tad too slow on the lower rows and pretty much non-existent on the top row No sound or music

Golden Labyrinth

Jason	Johannes
Good good attention to detail in UI (well polished) nice looking & easy to use menu and title screen fun twist on a classic game	Good Beautiful graphics The game gets slowly but increasingly harder the longer you play as more robots spawn Nice use of powerups: It adds some variety to the classic gameplay mechanic
Bad AI would get stuck robots would spawn in the middle of walls controls	Bad Some music would have been nice as the sounds get a bit repetitive after a while

Duke of Dragonfear: Deathland

Jason	Johannes
Good simple and easy to use controls very stable great enemy and combat sound effects	Good Has a lot of potential Neat art style Dark and eerie atmosphere
Bad no goal / not finished size characters on screen make it really hard to see far enough ahead lack of features, got boring quick	Bad Fighting is a bit too monotonous There is not much to do except for killing monsters (Adding some power-ups or some kind of quests would surely benefit the gameplay)

Vectored!

Jason	Johannes
Good great sound effects & music nice graphics simple but neat gameplay	Good Abstract graphic style Female voice adds to the atmosphere of the game
Bad no title screen or menu cannot replay after game over couldn't tell when secondary weapon was ready to fire	Bad Replaying the game without restarting the application is not possible

Mr. Snugglekins and the Giant Sack of Catnip

Jason	Johannes
Good great graphics, music and sound effects lots of features, enemies and weapons (very replay-able) great menus, end game screen and title screen	Good Fantastic graphics Brilliant sound & music Simple but fun concept
Bad objects (the sack) will obstruct your view if you stand in front of them difficulty picks up and turns into utter chaos a bit too quickly when close to a turret and want to shoot it takes you to the upgrade menu instead	Bad Gets quite hectic really quickly

Tower

Jason	Johannes
Good nice title screen & simple menu w/ instructions simple, but creative single button gameplay nice graphics and sound (well polished)	Good Good graphics Music and sounds
Bad popup errors when set to full screen not much in way of variety no way to save your score	Bad The game is missing some variety The game can get frustrating as timing and executing the jump can get difficult because you don't know exactly how far the character can jump, it's much pretty much trial and error (Adding some kind of special move such as a wall jump could maybe counter-effect that frustration)

22 Comments

paul_nicholls - 17-08-2011, 04:54 AM
- Reply
yeah, thanks so much Stoney!!

cheers,
Paul

jxs - 26-08-2011, 06:43 AM
- Reply
I'm maybe a bit late, but still congratulations to everybody who finished a game.
I think the entries were really great for such a small competition.
And also many thanks to the judges for their efforts.
It was a very fun competition for me (looking forward to the PDG Annual), especially since
I haven't used Pascal in a long time (They 'force' us to use C,C++ at university )
I wonder, if there's still a showroom planned with links to all games?