THEME: Control a tower shooting at other towers.
BONUS: Upgradeable towers and / or weapons!

Youhou, our first challenge of 2010.

Interesting. The upgrade system will be tricky... hmmm....

Wow, this one was much more difficult then the first one. I had to scrap everything on friday, because I didn't really like what I had so far. It took me the better part of saturday to make this version. Sadly, I didn't have time to add the upgrade system or an enemy tower You do shoot at stuff tho.

Oh well, here we go!

Download:
towerlords_game.zip: Ze game!
towerlords_source.zip: The source file (GameMaker 8.0 Pro)

Please, take 2 seconds to read the official instructions:
Point your mouse cursor and press the left mouse button to shoot at the enemies.

Too bad I didn't get to work on this sooner, it was going well.

cheers,

Smon

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I proudly present my first official Game Maker game:

Download:
bombastic_game.zip: The game file.

This took me near 25 hours to complete, mostly cause I had no clue what I was doing throughout most of the project. And that trying to use Photoshop instead of Paint ended up taking a few hours and getting me no results whatsoever.

All in all, an interesting experience, but not one I'll do again right, as I really need to get a better grasp on my tools. I'm prolly most proud about how I built the 'level builder' part, and that it can take me less than 1 minute to build a new level and attach it to the rest of the game.

Enjoy folks.

xJayce

We had a small problem with the file upload stuff... I'll update Jayce's post properly tonight, sorry for the delay.

Cheers,

Well, after Avionik, I was looking forward to S!mon's latest release, as I thought the subject matter offered much more in the way of game play. Let's get to it:

TOWER LORDS

Criteria	Score	Comments
Theme (5)	2.5	Well, there was a tower, and some barbarians. Unfortunately, the theme clearly stated that there should be towers (plural). Half points.
Controls (1)	0.25	Once again, I had issues with the controls on a slarouche game. Part of it was that the targets were so small, aligning them with the cross hairs was fairly difficult. On top of that, you had to look at the reload bar, which, when doing so, took your eyes away from the barbarians. I give it a 'meh' for effort.
Graphics (1)	0.50	I'm not sure if he was going for retro, or half-assed. Little in the way of graphics, especially from the barbarian and sheep. He had a perfectly good sprite for sheep from Avionik!
Sound (1)	0	Ok, the function is Code: sound_play(your_sound); Just in case you weren't familiar with it.
Fun (2)	0.25	Next to no content. I'm giving a quarter of a point because of the idea that townsfolk would rather protect their sheep than their women when facing ravaging hordes of Barbarians.
Bonus (1)	0	Didn't really see any upgrades anywhere... I'm thinking they might have been lost in the mail.
Total (10)	3.5	Well, after a series of 1 excellent minigame, the Dev team will need to go back to the drawing board.

And now, I will review my own attempt at making a game.

BOMBASTIC

Criteria	Score	Comments
Theme (5)	5	There were two towers shooting at each other! DING DING DING! 5 points.
Controls (1)	1	Simple and effective controls, easy to target, and takes skill to get a series of shots.
Graphics (1)	0.50	I had much prettier cannons than what are actually in the game. Unfortunately, I could not make them 'fit', and as such, well, you get what you see. The towers look decent, and the sky is pretty.
Sound (1)	0.75	You know, the first time I heard the cannon firing sound, I thought it was pretty cool. And the cannon ball hitting the tower makes an effective sound. However, after a couple of games, it gets annoying.
Fun (2)	1.5	There are 5 levels of increasing difficulty, which is nice. However, no clear indicator that either tower is taking damage leaves the player confused. A health bar would have gone a long way to helping solve that. Also, not being able to chose your upgrades isn't the best way of doing things. Also, giving an indication of performance (as upgrades are based on performance) would have been nice.
Bonus (1)	1	THERE ARE UPGRADES!! WOOO!! They are performance based, and stuffed down your throat.
Total (10)	9.75	This is the best game this site has ever produced!!

[quote="xJayce"]Well, after Avionik, I was looking forward to S!mon's latest release, as I thought the subject matter offered much more in the way of game play. Let's get to it:
TOWER LORDS
[quote]

Ahaha ouch!
I knew I missed a few things, but if I had a hearth, you would have hurt it. But ya, I did have timing issues and it shows. But, I have to say, I really like my retro graphics... Too bad the judging panel didnt share this view.

* EDIT *
Oh... looks like I need to fix the "Quote" BBcode...

So, now its my turn to review Jayce's game and my own.

First, I will review Jayce's Opus:

BOMBASTIC

Criteria	Score	Comments
Theme (5)	5	He did really respect his OWN theme to the letter, so its difficult to remove points here. Ill give him that.
Controls (1)	0.5	My biggest problem with the controls was that I had no "power meter" to base my shots on. So, I had to actually count how long I was holding the Space Bar in between shots. I think that actually hurts the game a lot. Other than that, moving the cannons up/down was simple enough.
Graphics (1)	0.75	The graphics are very simple, but they get the job done. They don't "wow" you but they get the game going.
Sound (1)	0.9	Its difficult to fault Jayce here, since I never had any sound so far in my games. My only problem was the sound master volume. Even with my computer sound pretty low, it was still quite loud.
Fun (2)	1	The first level was pretty fun, but you don't have any idea whats the upgrade you get in-between levels and the lack of "power meter" and "health bar" for the towers really makes it difficult to know whats going on, removing half-a-chunk of fun.
Bonus (1)	1	Well, even tho you have no idea what bonus you get, your Cannon does seem to improve, so i'll give it to him .
Total (10)	9.15	It's still the best WEEKLY CHALLENGE game that was produce so far, so congrats to him

Now with the review of my own game. I know it was kinda weak compared to last week, but... well... I am a good person?

TOWER LORDS

Criteria	Score	Comments
Theme (5)	2.5	Well, I did respect half of the challenge rule, so I'll give myself 50% of the points.
Controls (1)	0.75	My area of effect was kinda small, but it did work properly if you actually plan your shots, so for me, its good enough.
Graphics (1)	0.75	I did the graphic with a 8-bit style in mind. I am actually fond of them.
Sound (1)	0	Well, again, I didnt have time to add any sound. So... Fail.
Fun (2)	0.75	I think my game show some fun. Planning your shot, waiting for the reload and shooting at moving targets. Its not Game of the Year content, but you can see something fun... somewhere in there. But I do remove a lot of points for the lack of content.
Bonus (1)	0	Well, I didnt have any upgrade...
Total (10)	4.75	So, not something awesome but I do like my graphics and the idea behind the game. Maybe when I am dead, people will pay a fortune for this awesome game!