The Mailowl Scrolls

The winners of the Game.Dev Competition 15, sponsored by Mindset Learn, have been announced on the community forum; and below you can find a link to all of the games entered as well as the final comments on the winning games by the community leader Danny “dislekcia” Day who did the judging.  The objective was to produce an entertaining and meaningful educational game and it’s inspiring to see how many entries there were. I highly encourage you to download the winning games to see how much fun they are and to get an insight as to the potential South African game developers have.

Warning: Some of the games are at various stages of polish, and while most of the developers are continuing to work on and improve their games these competition entries might have some bugs in them. 

First Place (winning R5,000) Cartesian Chaos by Evil_Toaster

“Evil_Toaster kept lobbing ideas at his friends until he hit upon the core idea behind Cartesian Chaos (originally named Monster Maths, but given a much cooler moniker by the forums) – that’s what producers call focus testing. ET’s long term goal is to make a living off his games and that shows in his attention to detail and his dedication to making everything he produces as polished as possible… On top of all that, Cartesian Chaos is an educational dream: It’s fun, it’s about a decidedly useful concept and it’s got a learning curve that pulls players from “Uh – there, I think – *click*” to “Hah, I’m doing linear substitution in my head 5 times a second!” “

“Slick. Polished. Great learning material. Fun game… Those are just some of the phrases that describe Cartesian Chaos. ET really has worked hard on the game and it shows. He deservedly takes first place with a game that hopefully will soon make many people’s mathematical understanding slightly better!”

Second Place (R2,500) Rockets! by Gazza_N

“Build rockets. Fire them into the sky. Learn physics! Literally, that’s exactly what Rockets! is about. The learning aspects aren’t in your face, they’re simply integrated completely into the gameplay: If you want to see how well your rocket is going to do at a glance, you’ll quickly grasp the interplay of forces in a vector diagram. The design values are also very well thought out, with a tutorial level that has you almost-but-not-quite reaching your goal several times until you get the gist of the game. Smart. This is another game that Mindset was very keen on expanding, adding more information about how rockets (and the propulsion systems in the game) work and cleaning up the interface a little… Small touches like placing a schematic of your current rocket configuration in the top right of the screen, etc.”

“Again, with guerrilla learning being the prime judging criteria, Rockets! quickly established exactly what it was there to do: Make things make sense. No complexities, no frills and no seperation between gameplay, fun and understanding. Exactly what the competition was set up to create.”

Third Place (R1,500) Math Attack by Squid

“What happens when you take a solid puzzle mechanic, add in a little maths and rapidly prototype the idea? If you go by Squid’s resultant Math Attack, the answer is 100% pure potential. From a learning angle, splitting maths into single digit operations – while maintaining the importance of positioning in a larger number – is apparently a truly momentous feat. To hear Mindset’s resident maths curriculum person, teachers routinely try and fail to achieve this conceptual understanding in their students. Who would have thought that it would be so easily achieved in a game? There was a lot of interest in helping Squid turn this into a cellphone game ”

“For a prototype to so elegantly capture a game idea isn’t rare. But for a prototype to wow as many people as Math Attack did, that’s special. In terms of potential I’m sure Squid will be able to create new puzzle mechanics to flesh out a fuller version of the game – And Mindset is keen to see that happen.”

Best New Entrant (R1,000) Typing Tower by ShadowMaster

“The second of our two typing games, Typing Tower adds a sense of urgency and motivation to the standard typing mix by asking you to avoid inexorably rising water: Jumping from platform to platform by typing the word on each platform. Typing Tower received a lot of forum ideas and polish suggestions, but we can only wish that Mindset’s suggestions had been around from the beginning: Take the gameplay and instead of focusing on typing, reproduce english “drill and practice” exercises that are typically boring or uninspiring for learners. Or even make the game about spelling and reward players for correcting spelling mistakes on the platforms with even bigger jumps (higher platforms have more errors in the words, which get reduced as they come closer to the player).”

“With a slightly changed focus, Typing Tower could have claimed a podium spot. As it stands it’s not hard to award it the best new entrant award for focusing its gameplay so tightly around the core objective of the game. All the other work that went into it: menus, sounds and the like did not go unnoticed and bode well for ShadowMaster’s future games.”

Other Entries (to view the comments on these games check out Danny’s post on the community forum):

Angle Racer by edg3

Cloudy Day by UpsiDownQuestionMark

CyberJam by Tr00jg

Elkwood High by CiNiMoD & Darth_Penguin

Extreme Elements by UntouchableOne

Epidemic by herman.tulleken and Chris

K.I.S.S. by Kimau

PartyType by cairnswm

Projectile 169 by Aikur

The Journey by Thaumaturge

Treasure Hunter by Emerican