2008 Competition Results: (4:A Game For Helen)

8th Place – Letter Blaster – Total: 115

Ian:

Here we have a game created for the “Game For Helen” category of the Retro Remakes competition. This category was specifically designed to provide games for people who are less abled gamers, many of which require specialised input and controls for the games they play. This game does not cater for these people.

This game is apparently a remake of an Apple II game that according to the accompanying ReadMe “was designed to help kids learn” Learn what, I’m not sure. I’m presuming keyboard skills, but I can’t be certain…

The aim of the game is to use the keyboard to shoot down numbers and letters from the sky before they fall onto the city below. The idea is a nice simple one, but implementation is incredibly poor in all areas.

For starters the game crashes often (and I mean often) with “Illegal Memory Address” errors. Secondly, the game requires multiple keys – including the whole keyboard depending on the mode selected; for a game entered into a category for less abled gamers, this was an incredibly shit choice. Thirdly, the numbers/letters fall at an incredible rate on the initial setting (admittedly this can be slowed down significantly). However the worst aspect is that the images representing the keys are incredibly hard to see for the most part – although they’re bright red, the (g)rainy effect and their close proximity to each other causes them to become indistinguishable.

A totally pointless game that couldn’t possibly have been worse suited for the competition category that it’s in. The author seems proud to admit that the game was coded so quickly – I feel that more time and thought should have been given to the intended users and the game adjusted accordingly to the aims of the category. No matter how quickly this game was programmed, it was a total waste of time. Truly awful.

19%

Geekay:

Hmm Mavis Beacon versus Space Invaders is this GFH remake.  It’s been made to look quite serious and gritty like David Fincher doing a B-Movie. As interesting as the visual style looks, I’d have much preferred this to be charming and cartoony.  The concept isn’t lost on me, I still prefer Typing of the Dead to the light gun version.  It’s just that this game is Typing Makes Me Want to Be Dead.

Where’s the fun man?  A thousand and one ideas pop in to my mind if I was making a game  orientated around this concept.  It could range from something fun for kids to something amusing for adults.  All we have here is a something that makes me feel visually impaired.  You know with capcha authentication on sites? Well the lettering reminds me of this and I’m busy typing in the number 7 when it’s a 1 etc. And don’t get me started on the motion sickness inducing screen shake.
This is not fun.  I’d rather play epileptic Scrabble.

To add to this, where within the game are the accessibility options?  This is a Game for Helen is it not?  You have to work to win in your chosen category.  It’s not Field of Dreams – “Build it and they will come!”

19%

Spray:

No – Please no. I’m duty bound to judge this and write a short snippet as to how it played and how good I felt it was, but even I have limits.

I guess for every good game created out there, there’s a turd being flushed down someone else’s lavvy. Welcome to that turd.

I’m sorry, I’m not an overly harsh critic. I can’t be, I mean, have you played any of my games? But No – PLEASE NO! I can’t do it!

22%

Oogy:

Letters raining from the sky, and it’s up to me to save the innocent people wandering the streets. Whoever appointed me as the saviour of these people should have their head examined anyway.

The game is simple enough, it doesn’t require alot of speed, and even that can be adjusted from the game’s main menu. Pressing the required key of the actual letter falling disables it and scores you points. At least it should, except that I am getting memory-access violations at random times when pressing keys. That can’t be good.

I like the idea of this game, and I can see it working well as a one-switch game with an on-screen keyboard, but bugs that crashes the program should’ve been ironed out before submitting the game to the competition.

55%

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