Ectocomp "final thoughts" (SPOILERS within)

[Merk]

Yeah, the month is still young, but I know I’m not alone in having already finished all the entries and submitted my scores. So I thought it would be fun to post my (and read other) final thoughts on the batch of Ectocomp entries.

I figured I’d eschew the need for spoiler tags and just mark the whole thread as a spoiler. Unlike the review thread, this one kind of assumes the discussion is from those who already finished them all and voted – or don’t plan to.

My top five favorites, shuffled to a random order, were:

Headless, Hapless
The Horrible Pyramid
The Argument-Winner’s Ghost
Dead Pavane for a Princess
Faithful Companion

And here’s a bit from the “afterword” I wrote up (the rest of which I’m saving for post-comp):

This was a lot of fun. It was cool to see how different people chose to spend their three hours. There were entries that were so short they must have been conceived and created in that amount of time, and others (like mine) that made use of the “loophole” that allows for offline planning outside the three-hour limit. Some went for larger games by giving up detail, and others went for detail but ended up with very short games.

I’d like to see more themed mini-comps, more often. But I’d like a full day for development, at least. I know the focus is probably to just get people creating, but I think a little more time would keep the spirit of things yet allow for games with a little more polish.

(Edit) Sorry – just to clarify, this doesn’t have to be a “top 5 games” thread or anything. Just curious about what others took away from the competition. High points? Low points? Spoilerrific game analysis? Surprises? Disappointments? Unfulfilled hopes?

[Merk]

Oh, and something I meant to comment on before. As far as I’m aware, I’m unrelated to Jonathan Snyder of The Cenric Family Curse. We just both happen to have a cool name. I am, however, Adelynn Snyder’s dad, which most here probably saw already.

[inurashii]

Ok so my top 5 games are, in no particular order:

Hill of Souls
The Profile
The Tale of the Cursed Eagle
Ice House of Horrors
The Horrible Pyramid

But what I’m more excited to talk about are 5 games (in no particular order) that I am most looking forward to seeing expanded post-comp releases of:
The Argument-Winner’s Ghost
The Voodoo You Do
Jack
Crater Creek
The Profile

[cvaneseltine]

Even if you didn’t mean it to be a top 5 list, I’m kind of entertained by putting up my top 5 (also shuffled to a random order).

The Horrible Pyramid
Dead Pavane for a Princess
Boogle
A Slight Problem with Zombies
Jack

Biggest surprise: SO MANY ENTRIES. This was huge for Ectocomp! Really neat seeing everyone go, “Sure, I’ve got three hours available!” and pitch in like this.

General observation: It’s been fascinating reading the reviews. There are several games that I gave up on where other people slugged on through, and because they slugged through, they saw some really cool stuff that I missed. It’s neat hearing about much depth there was in games where I got stuck right away and gave up.

Suggestion for the future: I would love to see WALKTHROUGH implemented in more speedIF games.

[maga (Sam Kabo Ashwell)]

I guess the main thing that I took away from this competition was that the allowance for planning before the three hours really showed: a lot of games had clearly had some careful thinking-out beforehand, and were able to do things that would just not have been possible in that time with seat-of-the-pants coding. Moral: yay for planning.

[MTW (Marshal Tenner Winter)]

Click here to listen to the song that helped inspire my entry, The Voodoo You Do. I thought this might be the appropriate thread to mention this song for those who may be interested. Great comp, everybody! [emote]:P[/emote]