Welcome to the the complete fourth round of the People’s Champion Tournament! (See here for details and ground rules.)
This post is for matchups to determine the winner of each division. All matches are based on the competition ladder and previous wins. The four winners of these matches will go on to the tournament semi-finals.
Vote in the matchups above, and cheer like crazy for your selections on this thread. Voting will close and Round 5, the tournament semi-finals, will begin in one week.
This segment’s contestants were nominated by the following people (in alphabetical order):
BadParser (x2)
Denk
dfranke
Hellzon
Joey
mathbrush
Morningstar
simpsong00
… along with others who submitted their candidates anonymously (but can claim them publicly if they like). We’re down to just 8 competing games – the ones that make it through this round will be champions of their divisions – and go on to the tournament semi-finals!
Six and Augmented Fourth are both light-hearted parser games with fun puzzles. Six is more character-focused and uses multimedia while also being shorter. Augmented Fourth focuses more on the overall storyline and spell system.
A Change in the Weather and Sand-dancer are both more serious parser games, and you could call both of them ‘literary’ for a certain definition of literary (my definition would be that they don’t rely on tropes of any genre like sci fi or fantasy and both try to tease out something about the human condition). A Change in the Weather is harder than Sand-Dancer but both feel like they have similar overall amounts of content to me, and Sand-Dancer has more endings.
I’m in the third match, so won’t say much except to point out that both games are long parser sci-fi games that allow you to visit multiple areas (or time periods).
Babel and Metamorphoses are both moody parser puzzle games. Babel focuses more on the overall story and individual puzzles while Metamorphoses focuses on a detailed setting and consistent mechanics.
I haven’t voted yet between Babel and Metamorphoses because they’re pretty close to equally good in my eyes. Babel was in my top 10 list at one point and is probably in my top 20 now, mainly for its great use of well-worn tropes for all the reasons they’re well-worn. Metamorphoses on the other hand is one of my favorite Emily Short games due to its cool physics system (like making things metal or wood and large or small and hangable or not hangable). So I’m going to have to think for a while before voting.
Other than what Brian said, Never Gives Up Her Dead is much larger and expansive than its competitor, as well as having more distinct locations, whereas First Things First is specific to time travel centered around a specific location rather than being able to change place (so more interesting with a set of mechanics). In my opinion, NGUHD is also more sad and emotional whereas FTF takes a more lighthearted approach, although the former does enjoy its humour at times.
(It’s been over a year since I played First Things First, so I could be confusing it with another game…)
As you will recall, there were 41 games that were nominated but did not make it through the lottery to become contestants in this inaugural People’s Champion Tournament. Although they were passed over by the hand of fate, it’s sometimes fun to play “What if?”
A quick poll (in the form of three polls because a single poll can have only up to 20 options; please choose all that apply over all three individual poll widgets):
Which games passed over by the lottery would you most like to have seen in the tournament?
A Day for Fresh Sushi
A Matter of Heist Urgency
A Sugared Pill
Ataraxia
Barcarolle in Yellow
Bigfoot Bluff
Bureau of Strange Happenings
Crystal and Stone, Beetle and Bone
Darkiss! Wrath of the Vampire – Chapter 1: The Awakening
DOL-OS
Fair
Filthy Aunt Mildred
Guess the Verb!
Guttersnipe: Carnival of Regrets
0voters
(poll continued)
Hana Feels
How to Be a Blackbird
Hunger Daemon
I Am Prey
I Contain Multitudes
LAKE Adventure
Large Machine
Light My Way Home
The Lookout
Map
The Master of the Land
Messages from the Universe Graveyard
Mirror and Queen
Moondrop Isle
0voters
(poll continued again)
PataNoir
The Play
The Prairie House
Present Quest
Quotient, the Game
Risorgimento Represso
Robin & Orchid
Sunset Over Savannah
Ugly Chapter
Vespers
The Wand
Who Kidnapped Mother Goose?
You Are a Chef!
0voters
I had originally planned to limit each person to five votes in a single poll (listing all 41 games), but since there’s no way to cap the votes for a set of polls this is a free-for-all situation. Go nuts!
A factoid about how the various contestants in the tournament stack up with respect to the XYZZY Awards…
The first section is the list of those that are still in the running. Games marked with an asterisk predate the introduction of the awards in 1996, while games marked with double asterisks were released in years for which no nominations have been announced.
+----------------------------------------+--------+------+
| game_title | wins | noms |
+----------------------------------------+--------+------+
| Babel | 1.0000 | 5 |
| Six | 1.0000 | 5 |
| Metamorphoses | 1.0000 | 4 |
| First Things First | 1.0000 | 3 |
| Sand-dancer | 1.0000 | 1 |
| Augmented Fourth | 0.0000 | 2 |
| A Change in the Weather* | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Never Gives Up Her Dead** | 0.0000 | 0 |
+----------------------------------------+--------+------+
| The Dreamhold | 2.0000 | 7 |
| Bogeyman | 3.5000 | 6 |
| Heretic's Hope | 1.5000 | 6 |
| Everybody Dies | 1.0000 | 6 |
| Delightful Wallpaper | 4.0000 | 5 |
| Nightfall | 2.0000 | 5 |
| What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed | 2.0000 | 5 |
| Once and Future | 1.0000 | 5 |
| To Hell in a Hamper | 0.0000 | 5 |
| Hunter, in Darkness | 2.0000 | 4 |
| The Edifice | 2.0000 | 4 |
| Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! | 1.0000 | 4 |
| For a Change | 1.0000 | 4 |
| Alabaster | 2.0000 | 3 |
| Aisle | 1.0000 | 3 |
| All Things Devours | 1.0000 | 3 |
| Galatea | 1.0000 | 3 |
| The Moonlit Tower | 1.0000 | 3 |
| Taco Fiction | 0.0000 | 3 |
| The Legend of Horse Girl | 0.0000 | 3 |
| Tapestry | 1.0000 | 2 |
| Eidolon | 0.0000 | 2 |
| Illuminismo Iniziato | 0.0000 | 2 |
| The Bible Retold: Following a Star | 0.0000 | 2 |
| The Golden Heist | 0.0000 | 2 |
| The Weapon | 0.0000 | 2 |
| Inevitable | 0.0000 | 1 |
| Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle | 0.0000 | 1 |
| Scents & Semiosis | 0.0000 | 1 |
| Scroll Thief | 0.0000 | 1 |
| The End Means Escape | 0.0000 | 1 |
| Winter Storm Draco | 0.0000 | 1 |
| Winter Wonderland | 0.0000 | 1 |
| Word of the Day | 0.0000 | 1 |
| A Dark Room | 0.0000 | 0 |
| A Trial | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Buggy | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Captain Cutter's Treasure | 0.0000 | 0 |
| CC's Road to Stardom | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Christminster* | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Dr. Dumont's Wild P.A.R.T.I. | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Lime Ergot | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Over Here! | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Perdition's Flames* | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Please Answer Carefully | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Pogoman GO! | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Search for the Lost Ark** | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Submarine Sabotage** | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Tales from Castle Balderstone | 0.0000 | 0 |
| The Little Match Girl... | 0.0000 | 0 |
| The Lost Labyrinth of Lazaitch | 0.0000 | 0 |
| The Mystery of Winchester High** | 0.0000 | 0 |
| The Abbey* | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Thin Walls | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Things That Happened in Houghtonbridge | 0.0000 | 0 |
| Yes, Another Game with a Dragon! | 0.0000 | 0 |
+----------------------------------------+--------+------+
