Reviews

---

Review by Gassa all reviews by Gassa

The game starts with some lines of text coming very slowly into existence, which is just ugly when you expect some action. Fortunately, it can be skipped by pressing ESC key.

Then, you see a level with four small blue spheres, two of which occasionally shoot tiny bullets, producing a sound. At first, it is kind of difficult to get what is going on, since everything is so small.

However, after playing for a while or reading the readme.txt file, you realize that two other spheres can be controlled by two players, and that's when the game starts to be fun. Single player however is not much of a game since the AI players don't move, only shoot. On the other side, playing with a human opponent can be very entertaining.

What you can do in the game is move, aim, jump and shoot, causing damage to your opponents and destroying inner walls of the level. Sometimes you can move or jump through walls, and moving to vertical walls lifts you to the top. These physics twists make the game even more challenging.

On the downside, mastering the game is hard and not very convenient since everything is just so small, and understanding the physics also takes quite a bit of time. Some better and bigger visualization, as well as visualizing the recharge time, would have been nice. Faster terrain destruction depending on the level should also be considered.

Well, to the rating part.

Artistical: 4.
- There seem to be no insulting dialogs in the game. Just slowness of the introductory scrolling text, which is not bad enough, and the text for winning or losing the game.
+ However, this is more than compensated by an excellent readme file, with a storyline, playing instructions and FAQ.

Technical: 4.
+ atan2 is obviously useful for the AI players.
+ Five different levels bring more strategies to the game.
- However, the game characters, i.e. spheres, are just too small to get a good feeling of them.

Genre: 5.
+ Having picked the genre, which is a game in the spirit of Scorch or Tanks, the obvious destruction part is, of course, to make the terrain destructable. That is well implemented.
- That might seem a bit too simple and worn, but fits the game well.

Overall: 4.
+ The game is actually fun, playable and replayable with two players.
+ The physics twist is sufficient to make it an interesting variation of an old plot.
- On the other side, trying it in single player can get you bored quickly.
- Also, characters are too small to get the good feeling of them.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 4 Technical 4 Genre 5

---

Review by entheh all reviews by entheh

I don't have to review this to qualify, but I want to because amz is my friend and Codnik is a girl! Go girl coders!

Overall: 4. A good, fun game. It is a little too hard on the first attempt, and it lacks a main menu framework to encourage you to keep trying, but it has great music which helps to compensate for that!
Artistic: 5. The dialogue is included and fits perfectly. World domination is portrayed in a topical, entertaining way. The vector art style works very well and the colours are cool.
Technical: 4. It's smooth and it has beautiful particle explosions. The atan2() implementation is a little obvious but does fit well into the game. I do just have to withhold a point here because I couldn't work out what "Torrents" means and because the game is just a bit too hard.
Genre: 3. The destruction is obvious; I can't really give it more than average points.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 5 Technical 4 Genre 3

---

Review by stevenvi all reviews by stevenvi

This game did not run on my computer, and no instructions were provided to assist in the matter.

The game sets a video mode, then a Windows error message appears. Both the binary pack file as well as when I compile the source myself do this.

Scores: Overall - Artistical - Technical - Genre -

---

Review by Team Darkbits all reviews by Team Darkbits

In this game you control some sort of a water being fighting earth for world domination by drowning everything in your way.

At first the game is a bit tricky to understand, it's not obvious how the game play works, but after a while you realize you have to kill each earth being to advance to the next level. Killing is done by simply colliding with a being.

As the player strives for world domination the world domination rule has been covered, although I find the battle between water and earth a bit lame as a world domination theme. By killing earth beings, and covering earth with water, the destruction rule is covered, but you never really get the feeling of destroying stuff, more a feeling of painting a window with a blue palette. Between each level a text message is displayed insulting you as a water being which I guess covers the dialogue rule, although a simple text message isn't really a dialogue, it's a monologue as there is no reply from the player (automatic or by the actual player). The art and gfxs of the game are not very impressive but serves it's purpose.

One thing that bugs me with this game is that it doesn't seem to have a decent timer implemented, as it sometimes changes running speed from running very slow to running very fast for a short time, but most of the time it runs terribly slow. The game would have been much nicer with a faster pace.

The good thing about this game is that it's actually a finished game! There are a set of levels (I think it's four, I've always died on the fourth level so I'm not sure), there is a high score list so you can beat your records and the flow of the game works nicely. A complete game in TINS is always impressive!

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 3 Technical 2 Genre 2

---

Review by entheh all reviews by entheh

This game doesn't seem to work properly. I get to fire a slingshot a few times. The balls have a mind of their own, and I can't work out what effect I can have on them. After a while, the screen floods with boxes, and the game locks up.

Overall: 2. Looks as if it could be a nice idea, but it just doesn't work.
Artistic: 1. I saw no dialogue or world domination. The slingshot does look fairly nice, but the rest is very basic vector code and doesn't look polished at all.
Technical: 2. I haven't checked if atan2 was used and where, but I did like the way the slingshot adjusts to the mouse position. That said, since nothing works properly, I can't give more than 2.
Genre: 1. I couldn't see any destruction.

In the future, I would recommend packaging the game up with a readme explaining what it's supposed to do and what any known issues are. Given such documentation, we can award points on merit if we think it was darn ambitious and deserves points anyway, and we'll have a better idea of whether it's broken everywhere or whether it might be some portability issue or cosmic ray influence that's stopping it working.

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 1 Technical 2 Genre 1

---

Review by entheh all reviews by entheh

I was unable to run this entry initially, but the author kindly directed me to:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9b2da534-3e03-4391-8a4d-074b9f2bc1bf&displaylang=en

Overall: 4. As always, the whole thing is tied together and made into a polished game, complete with a main menu and a map to link the levels together. Sadly I found the 'jumping off walls' action to be just too unreliable. Did I have to press the keys at exactly the same time (which is impossible to do reliably)? Was I doing something else wrong? This stopped me proceeding beyond the second level, so I had to give up. It's unfair to mark a game down simply for one playability issue, and given the overall polish and the number of levels that seem to exist, I feel this game deserves a 4.

Artistic: 3. The graphics aren't bad, although they do seem a little loud somehow. What I saw of the dialogue was interesting, until it played on every attempt at each level and didn't seem to be skippable.

Technical: 3. There was an attempt at an interesting control mechanism, although as described above it proved to have a flaw. The GUI engine hasn't quite been used to perfection: for example, the Credits screen can only be exited with 'Esc', and the words in the dialogue can start to form on one line and then move to the next when they get too long. Finally, I couldn't find any reference to atan2() in the source code, so I can only really award 3 points here.

Genre: 5. The imminent world destruction is a creative choice (not the obvious "player has to destroy everything" that I went for) and is implemented to great effect, complete with camera shake which increases over time. I immediately knew I had a time limit, even if the timer readout itself wasn't massively obvious.

I have a feeling there is a version floating around with the playability bug fixed, but sadly I have a busy weekend coming up and am out of time - but I'll play it and enjoy it at some point after the voting is over!

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 3 Technical 3 Genre 5

---

Review by Alvren all reviews by Alvren

Not played either, no binary :(

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 1 Technical 1 Genre 1

---

Review by entheh all reviews by entheh

'Zerog' is an entertaining little timekiller. It pits you, an odd purple blob creature with teeth resembling the cutter on a clingfilm dispenser, as a trainee hopeful hoping to join a mysterious clan who appear to be planning underworld domination - a nice twist on the rules.

You are presented with three courses, each differently themed and of very different layouts, all of which test your ability to reach a target teleporter without falling through any unsafe platforms. At the start of each course, a blue member of your species hovers into view, tells you a little more about who you are and what you're doing, insults you, and then glides away and leaves you to it.

I found a few small issues with the game. The Instructions and Story pages stated that I could press any key to return to the main menu, but some keys (e.g. Space) didn't work, and the arrow keys operated the main menu as if I was already there. In-game, there was no clear indication of how picky the collision detection was, making me a little too nervous to try moving between two diagonally connected squares when the opportunity came up. When I completed the final course, the game displayed a final screen of text and then exited as I continued pressing arrow keys, so I didn't get a chance to read it.

However, the game has a lot going for it too. The very existence of the short, concise Instructions and Story pages adds a lot of approachability. The changing themes and layouts expertly get the most enjoyment out of the engine. The first course shows you which tiles will disappear, and warns you (concisely again) that it won't last - a good mechanism to ease a new player into the game. The death sound effects are a nice touch (if a little lonely without any other sound or music), and are exactly the right place to put the comedy, since that's when players most need it.

All in all, a good entry, although I question the name 'Zerog' if you can fall in!

Overall: 4. While not perfect, it's pretty good and certainly above average.
Artistic: 4. The dialogue is well integrated, and the art creates good atmosphere and variety. The world domination is a little tacked on, but does have the 'underworld' twist.
Technical: 4. The atan2() is used in a rather original way, to create the game logo on the title screen. I would never have guessed without checking the code.
Genre: 4. The map undergoes destruction as you proceed through it, which is subtle and well integrated.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 4 Technical 4 Genre 4

---

Review by Alvren all reviews by Alvren

Didn't play it. How the hell do you play it? What is a CSV?

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 1 Technical 1 Genre 1

---

Review by FalseMasterJ all reviews by FalseMasterJ

Aliens on Fire is one of the few games that I can compile and run on my mac, so I'm glad that I'm assigned to review this game.

In this game you strategically plan where to shoot the missile on each of the randomly generated planets. The goal of the game is to get as much score as possible on these 7 (plus 1) planets.

Overall this is a great game, nothing is laking or unnecessarily added on.

The theme of destruction is played out well, especially when you plant a few mines on the planet. The world-domination artistical requirement kind of goes along with this main theme. I fail to see the logic of the insulting NPC's plan (destroying worlds to dominate them makes "perfect" sense), which make him even more irritating. A plus for that.

I'm still mind boggled on how entheh made 3-d rotating planets (I still wish I can see Sos' or stevenvi's Entry in action). The games engine is very solid. Though at first I thought that the whole 3-d system was done with atan2 (shows what I know) it was only used for the final cut scene. The explosions uses quite a few tricks to get it the way it's looking.

I still think that a mouse click would have been a more intuitive missile luncher button, and maybe an different way of instructing of how to plant mines (via insults maybe).

Aliens on Fire is one of the top three games for me, and it's replay value is about medium (unless your trying to get the highest score then it's replay value is quite high).

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 4 Technical 4 Genre 5

---

Review by stevenvi all reviews by stevenvi

Hmm, what is this? The readme file did not explain how to play. As far as I can tell this is not a game.

From what I can gather about the game, this is how it works: you press Spacebar to drop bombs. You want to blow up all the things. Once you blow up all the things you have nothing else to do.

This game needs more work. :)

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 2 Technical 1 Genre 2

---

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

Given how incomplete this entry is, the screenshot looks kinda slick.

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 1 Technical 1 Genre 1

---

Review by stevenvi all reviews by stevenvi

The Life and Times of the Sexy Panda:
Journey to the Center of the Death Core

This is a cute little game, though the concept is a bit simple. It begins with the "cuddlegators" explaining how the game works. You walk around a room and collect the alligators, while viruses move around and destroy floor tiles. If one hits you, you must start the level over. Some of the alligators will babel about "The Doctor" and other things. They also will occasionally insult you. I personally ignored these messages, because they didn't really affect the game one way or another.

After a few levels, you will encounter a new type of character, the repair droids. These replace the tiles that the viruses remove. Waiting around for them can be a nightmare, and really isn't particularly fun. It is very common that you will get trapped by the viruses either by isolating you from the rest of the level, or isolating an alligator, rendering the level unbeatable. Pressing Tab will restart the level if this happens.

Eventually you will come to a level which requires ten alligators be rescued. I could not beat this level no matter how many times I tried. Then I accidentally hit Esc and it closed the game without confirmation. Doh.


Artistically, I thought this game was cute. The panda's eyes were a little strange, but I suppose that can be overlooked. The art isn't just scribbles made with mspaint, so that's always a plus. There was definitely some insulting going on, though I didn't really get any feeling of world domination. There was something about "The Doctor", but since no readme file was provided I didn't understand the story.

Technically, the game works. The check for interaction with an alligator is a little strange in some places, so perhaps that could be fixed. Was atan2 used? This is rather hard to tell from just playing a game. After glancing, my suspicion was correct: the enemies use atan2 for an angle, to make them point towards a "target". Unfortunately, the target is completely random, thus the use of atan2 is also just a mostly random angle. Kind of against the spirit of the rule in my opinion.

I wish that there were jumping in the game. That would have made it much easier to avoid the empty tiles. This is the game's major technical flaw. As was stated above, you can get trapped and must start the levels over. That really isn't fun to me.

Genre. Well, tiles are destroyed. They talk about "The Doctor" wanting to destroy the world or something... I think. So the theme is at least present. However, it is not particularly at the forefront of the game. The game is more of a race against time to get the alligators, and destruction is the reasoning used to collect them. Since it isn't really explained, at least not as far as I was able to get, I didn't see much of any of the TINS themes expressed.

Overall, the game is cute. It is not interesting to play more than once, however, because you must play through every level to get back to where you left off last time. This was common in games many years ago, but the feeling of this game is different. It isn't like advancing through the stages in Pacman, where you try for the highest score each time. It's collecting the same alligators for the sole purpose of advancing to the next level.

With some touch-ups, this game could turn into a fun little pastime, however in it's TINS state it still needs a bit of work.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 3 Technical 3 Genre 2

---

Review by stevenvi all reviews by stevenvi

This game is also cute. I have just finished reviewing Jeff Bernard's Sexy Panda game, and must say that Beetzkrieg is even cuter. The artwork is adorable in this game, and I can tell that the author put some good effort in that.

In the game, you control a bee and must collect pollen from the flowers and bring it back to your hive. You can play against up to three of your friends. You fly down to the flowers at the ground, collect the pollen, return to your hive, drop off the pollen, and repeat. The player who collects the set quantity of pollen first wins!

While the concept is novel, it isn't particularly fun, which is unfortunate. I really like the look of the game, so I was hoping that it would stand out as one of the top entries. I tried to play with my fiancee, but we got bored of it very quickly and did not play again.


As I have said already, this game looks great. The art is wonderfully drawn and is pleasant to look at. There is no insulting that I am aware of in the game, however that does not mean this is not a part of the game. In my experience, most multiplayer games where you compete against others will always involve insulting dialog between the players. So were someone to play the game in the proper situation, they certainly would experience insulting dialog.

As for world domination, that's kind of in here, too. It is your goal to compete against the other bees and dominate your world: the flowers. So that's in there as well, and is key to the purpose of the game.

Technically, the game works. Colliding with the hives feels natural. But that's about it. There isn't much to the game. I do not see anything which would imply the use of atan2 in the game. Based on the readme file, I do not expect to find this anywhere in the source code.

This is one of the few games which has a menu. A menu is an excellent thing for any game, and I find it improves the playability of the game greatly. It gives it a more polished feeling than some of the other TINS entries.

The biggest technical problem I saw was the split-screen part. The screen splits just fine, but the viewports are not scaled. So you can see much more of the screen playing solo than you can with four. This should be altered in future versions; you cannot see much with four players.

Genre-wise, there is only a very minimal amount of destruction. You can destroy hive tiles by running into them then holding away, making you thrust your stinger at it. (Shh, that wouldn't really work for a real bee.) Other than that though, I didn't see destruction going on, but instead competition with the other bees.

Overall, the game was a disappointment. It is a unique concept, but it isn't quite working yet. Hopefully with time the author can improve on the game idea and produce a fun multiplayer game. Network support would be a good place to start.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 4 Technical 2 Genre 2

---

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

It's often true in TINS that simple gameplay leads to best result and this is a good example. In this game you man an anti-aircraft turret and you must fend off a barrage of incoming bombers as long as you can. You get a clear 3D view over your city which has a set number of buildings. If the main building gets destroyed you lose. The bombers pick a random building to bomb, presumably as your buildings are turned to rubble one by one, the chances get higher and higher that a bomber targets your main building and ends the game.

To help you there is a radar overlay with blue dots representing bullets or bombs and red dots representing bombers. You can shoot and destroy everything (even your own buildings) and all that goes with a satisfying noise from your speakers.

Simple gameplay doesn't mean a simple engine. I think the 3D engine for this game is really a nice technical achievement. Having said that, I found a number of glitches. Making the game download music at runtime is a nice way to get around the 400k limit, however the music system has a glitch that makes the game crash, so unfortunately I had to review this with music turned off. I also noticed that the rectangular transparent area of all sprites shows up, presumably this is a glitch that depends on settings on my computer because I don't see this in the provided screenshots.

Another unfortunate point is that the artistic rule is not implemented. There is some attempted self depreciation, but it doesn't really go all that far...

Destruction is a strong point of this game. It's very satisfying to shoot around and litter the sky with explosions. All in all a great entry with a few minor negative points.

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 3 Technical 4 Genre 5

---

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

In this game you control a population of little beings in a small but fertile meteorite floating all alone in the vast empty space. You can build up a society with farms, lumberjacks, defenders and healers while you have to stand back and watch how your island is destroyed bit by bit, slowly at first but then at an alarming rate.

When I first saw the screenshots of this game I had to think of Easter island. You know it is said that Easter island once housed a large population until the islanders cut down their last tree? Unlike the Easter islanders, the inhabitants of this game are not the cause of their own destruction. This comes at hand of something that looks like evil purple space mana. This mana drops down from space and seems harmless at first, but after a while it literally punches holes in your island, and destroys your buildings and inhabitants.

You can build defenders to defend, but housing the defenders costs a lot of wood. You can get wood by attracting woodcutters, but cutting down trees makes your land more exposed to the evil mana. Construction takes time as well, you can add an extra constructor if you're willing to gamble that you can make up this lost time. The purple infection spreads at an alarming rate and usually one defender is not enough to cope.

Most of the time you don't have enough time or wood or people to do all these things and your land is quickly turned into swiss cheese by the purple menace. Only one time, probably by luck, I succeeded in building an extra constructor, two lumberjacks and two defenders before I got a single infection spot. As long as there is little purple spots around the defenders can cope easily and this was sustainable for a while, until that moment that for some reason both my lumberjacks got stuck near a construction site and before I noticed I ran out of wood, both my defenders were struck down by a descending piece of evil and I was back in swiss cheese mode again.

For the sake of the competition I have to note that this entry lacks atan2. Hence, low score for the technical part.

But other than that this entry is great. The game has cute graphics. I especially like the way the land slowly corrodes and black space appears through the gaps, it really makes you feel concerned. This game is too difficult as it is but all the tunables are there: if there were a little grace period without purple falling from the sky while you build up, if the infection would spread a little slower and if the defenders were a little quicker this could really work. I haven't seen an RTS game in TINS or speedhack yet, they are technically really hard to pull off in a weekend so the fact that this game is so close to complete is a real stunt. Please Allefant, tune this up a bit and release again, I would really love to play more!

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 5 Technical 3 Genre 5

---

Review by Sos all reviews by Sos

In this game you are to protect the world from evil Dr.F. You are in control of a tank, a helicopter, or both with the ability to switch between these. As you take your actions you are attacked by numerous static and mobile enemies. The goal of each level is to destroy the bunker, which is heavily reinforced.

The game is of infinite length, for if you beat the last level, it appears that the Dr. F (Princess F?) is "in another castle" :P Apart from that game seems quite complete though. Marking is as follows:

Artistic: 3
Graphics are well done, yet most of the levels seem empty, and you can simply wander off to a desert with nothing around. The cutscenes are ncie however.

Technical: 2
The game is playable, yet unbeatable. The enemies aim well (using atan2) however if you simply follow the green arrow (which shows bunker's location) and shoot mad at the bunker you can beat the game in about 3 minutes or so.
There is also no player - building collision detection

Rules: 4
One by one:
World domination: Dr F is said to have plans to dominate the world, so it's a-ok
Destruction: Destruction is an essential part of the game, but buildings are invincible (:/) that's why 4, not 5
Dialogues: There are insulting dialogues (and hilarious ones either)
atan2: Used for bunker arrow and enemy aiming.

Overall it's a good game, yet too easy to play, and impossible to beat.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 3 Technical 2 Genre 4