Java4K.com

This must be one of my favorite game in the competition. It is beautifully crafted, complete, visually astonishing and the gameplay fun and simple enough. It's finely tuned to make it a fully playable game starting easy and makes it perfectly difficult to complete. Nice balance.

There are so many things with this game that makes it a good candidate for the top. The author has clearly created a technically and also visually perfect game!

Just to mention a few things that I value in this game; tree generating algorithm, scrollable game world, parallax background, stylish and polished design, particle system, and collision detection with the trees and player.

WOW! PJE in 4K. Very nice. Physics feel great, motion is nice, particle effects good, etc. Only issue is that this games loses something without the audio and your "player" moves too fast compared to the other objects. Great job overall.

Very interesting and enjoyable game. This would be a great concept for a larger scale game.

This is a truly wonderful little 4k gem and I had a great time collecting all the crescents. One of the greatest strengths of 4bidden Fruit is its very calming atmosphere and simple gameplay. Despite the 4k file size, I really felt like I was playing in a fully fleshed out garden that hadn't been hampered by any such limitations. The crescents were just difficult enough to find that I was not bored or frustrated - instead I enjoyed climbing higher and higher in my attempts to find more. Some sort of radar would have aided the game, however, as towards the end it could get frustrating finding the last few crescents.

Your presentation gets a very high score - even though it wasn't 3D the calm waving of your trees, the sponge blotted background, and the hypnotically spinning white leaf all combined to make one of the most visually appealing games submitted this year. The only thing I found lacking here were the crescents; I was unsure exactly what they were supposed to be and why I was collecting them. You get a big bonus for having so many varieties of trees - I was expecting to see more of the same as I climbed higher, but instead was pleasantly surprised by majestic differences in every tree.

Technically the game is also quite impressive, mostly because of the multiple fractal generating algorithms you were able to pack into 4k. The control and gravity are fairly standard fare, however.

This was definitely one of the games I would want to play again.

Very well done, having played thru Eden I'm very impressed with this. Great job with the trees!

This is just astonishing. For a 4K game this is as visually perfect as it gets. The overall coloring, pixellation, the usage of shadows and lights makes it very much (darkishly) alive! The rotating 3D-ish algae adds to the depth immersion. The big map is nice!

I really like the implementation of the crayfish, they seem to be very smart, although they are not smart enough to find a way past the seafloor vegetation, and they seem to move realistically, have joints. I really like this.

The gameplay is simple, and players are quick to start playing. I do find the game lacking in replay value, and also it is difficult to find and collect all the white shimmering circles. I was not able to find the home circle (drop off point?), not while wandering nor on the map.

If this was not 4K I'd recommend doing multiple levels, smaller ones to begin with, and bigger ones as the player manages to find all the white circles.

Great atmosphere, again. Influences from flOw is apparent. A bit difficult to control from a collision POV. Love your design aesthetic. You should contact thatgamecompany for a job or call Jon Blow and work on Braid 2 :)

Reminded me a little bit of Spore. :)

I found this game fairly entertaining but it tired me out relatively quickly. The idea is sound enough, and certainly has potential, but it all just takes too long and is too easy. I was never bothered by any crawfish the whole time I went through - all I needed to do was click quickly and frequently. I also had a hard time getting very many of the "little ones," as they were scattered too sparsely. The final killer for this was the overwhelmingly large size of the map. To get the last few little ones, you've got to travel for at least 30 seconds with nothing really happening. If the crawfish were more aggressive and the whole thing was made much smaller, I think it would be much improved.

The presentation in 4bsolution is easily close to the absolute best this year. I really felt like a cool little critter swimming underwater gathering sentient little dots. Despite being dots, they seemed to fit exactly what they should have. The crawfish were large and imposing, and the swaying pseudo-3D grass was gorgeous.

Aside from all the elements you crammed into one little 4k game's map and the underwater grass, there was not too much that was technically impressive. The movement was straightforward mouse-based movement, and the enemy AI seemed pretty darn bad. It's definitely still on the high end of impressiveness, but it doesn't earn any awards.

I wanted to love this, but I just couldn't get into it. A very sound attempt, at the very least.

Beautiful! Fun game, well designed. Nice lighting.

Nice little maze game. Rather simple though, and seems to be nothing but a test of a maze generating algorithm.

It is somewhat confusing where the player rectangle starts at, making some games a instant failure. I'd suggest making the rectangle movable with the keys, and start always in a safe location.

It has little replay value. Once you've played this game for a minute that's all there is, and you have little reason to revisit it.

Nice try though!

Cute little game, but difficult to understand what to do at first. No exit indicator. East to trick the enemy AI.

Sort of like pac-man on steroids with square ghosts that show no mercy.

I stopped playing when I got to level 22. That's saying two things: (1) I played long enough to get to level 22, and (2) I quit not because it got too hard but because I so no point in going further. In fact, my only reason for playing that far was to shatter your record of 17. :-) Anyway, back to the review. The main strength this game has is its potential infinite playability - because it's all randomly generated and has scaling difficulty, you could technically go on forever. However, I don't think that after about level 10 it ever really becomes any more difficult than it was before. The number of red squares increase and there's always one green square. This might be a problem, but the red squares are very easy to predict and dodge, and they bunch up on top of each other, effectively reducing their number. In addition their hit box is very very small, so you really have to screw up to lose. I found that the only times I lost were because the control was going hokey on me. Why not add other ways it gets difficult? Like perhaps increasing their speed and size, making the maze larger, forcing the green square to spawn further away from you, etc. If you did that, I think the game would be much better.

Your presentation is basically as bare as you can get. Lines, squares, a number, and all of it drawn into a panel that doesn't even fit it. I think you could have done a lot better here. In fact, I think this presentation is basically as stark and boring as you can get.

You would have had a pretty high technical score for getting a working maze generation algorithm under 4k, but a lot of weirdness with the collision, movement, and controls lowered this number. I noticed blocks twitching around, suddenly jumping a few pixels at once. The goal was also directly on top of a wall a number of times, and the boxes can obviously all stack on top of one another. I think you could do a lot to fix this.

I think this was a great idea on how to turn a maze generation algorithm into a game, but I didn't feel that you put in all the effort you could have.

Works great and is fun... a bit too hard, and sometimes spawns bad guys on top of me drat!

In my opinion this is a great example of a 4K physics game. Although I don't fully appreciate the sensitivity of the acceleration and how easily the jeep can roll over, seems a bit jerky.

The visuals are very cartoonish and the overall design very stylish, which I like! I do find the gray hills confusing, it's not obvious that they are part of the green terrain.

Three tracks and also a score table! This can be fun when you're competing with yourself. It's fun to play around with the jeep, although it can be frustrating when it rolls over. A slightly better handling of the jeep and some more dynamic environment would make this a neat game!

Ah! Played this before :) Excellent playability and love it of course :) Now, get to making a shmup!

Pretty slick little game. It's a good thing landing on your top doesn't kill you or I wouldn't have made it more than about twenty feet.

This is quite a fun little ride through the levels, and has great physics for a 4k game. It has everything a great game needs - smart concept, good code, and a lot of love from the programmer. Unfortunately, something didn't work. I don't know if it was just me, but the controls were difficult for me and I found myself almost hopelessly stuck a few times. It mostly came down to the midair rotation which seemed sort of buggy to me. The gravity of falling backwards combined with my attempts at rotation would typically result in me being unable to get the car to do what I wanted. In the end I felt like I was just sort of banging away at it until the finish line came by.

You've got a very solid presentation; it's simple but it works very well. It would be detrimental for you to have had too much going on in the background, and you did well to have just enough so it was clear where you could drive and where you couldn't.

Your physics and collision definitely give you a very good technical score. I would have had a lot of trouble getting the car to sit just right over each hill and bump, and your levels pack in quite a lot of information for 4k. Your score was reduced, however, because of the weirdness of the rotation. It seemed more like a bug than an intentional choice.

Nice physics! and well done, simple presentation. very fun!

Impressive visuals, somewhat retro! I also like the animation effects, how the lines are drawn after each level and the interface is nicely done. The alienz look a bit more like cats though!

I do find this game difficult to understand though. I read the instructions but they were very complex, not a "hands on" type of a game. Think of Bubbles and how easy it is to understand, you shoot a colored bubble towards same colored bubbles.
You'd think that, e.g., that a green alien should be dropped onto green alienz. The numbers and the coloring confuses me, and also how you make the alienz vanish by matching some number in the column or row.

And when alienz disappear you don't know why they disappeared, in what order, etc.

I had much success just dropping alienz down randomly, so you don't really have to know the rules to play!

The game feels very complete, but it's difficult to grasp, and doesn't really live up to it's expectations as a "puzzle" kind of a game.

WOW! Really good puzzle game and a great twist on the drop and match genre. Really enjoyed this one!

Interesting game.

Very cool new puzzler idea, and well executed. I had a lot of fun and definitely ate up at a good amount of time playing through this unique game. It was interesting to play a new twist on something I expected to be more like Dr. Mario or Candy Crisis - that is, put like things together and they will disappear. Thinking this way messed me up more than once, realizing that my blocks were not actually going to go away just because they were all stacked together. The addition-based method of removing them is really very cool. There is a problem with it, however, which is that it is a little too difficult to play like a true twitch puzzler. I often had to sit there and think about how I was just going to get rid of the next block, and the very few number of combos I got were mostly luck. It just didn't all stack together for me because the math behind it could get too difficult. It became more like a game of chess than a game of Tetris.

Your presentation covers everything necessary with few extra bells and whistles. You do a good job of having cute blocks when using only AWT and no images.

Your game gets a pretty good technical score because it all works very well and I found no bugs at all. The actual doing of it, however, is pretty simple array-type stuff so I can't give a truly exceptional score here.

This is definitely one of those games worth coming back to.

hm, i don't totally get it but it is fun :)

Very impressive 3D implementation of ping pong! Nice audio effects too, both when the ball is hit with the bat and also when it hits the table.

Slightly difficult to hit the ball with the bat, but you can still play a game versus the computer.

Doesn't provide the best gameplay, it's very simple. Not something you'd like to play for a very long time.

But excellent job on the 3D and sound.

Very convincing 3D. A bit difficult to get the proper alignment of the paddles in 3D. Very serviceable ping pong game.

Great job. I love table tennis and apart from the AI seeming to give me points when it was winning very enjoyable. :)

A quaint little game whose most remarkable achievement is its AI. Although the concept of an AI that can play a good game of Table Tennis is not particularly novel, fitting one into 4k is. The problem here, however, is that the AI is almost too good - I rarely won unless I was just sticking my mouse right in front of where the ball would be and then just waiting forever for the AI to mess up. When I tried to curve the ball, hit the back corner, etc., I would either miss the ball or I would hit the net almost every time. I think the game should be a little bit more forgiving on what is a legal hit and the controls could be refined.

The game looks pretty good - it is what it is, but there's no problem with that. It's not particularly flashy nor does it stand out, but there's no lacking here either. The 3D effect is achieved well, although it's sometimes difficult to know exactly what depth the ball is in.

Technically your 3D and your AI are both fairly impressive. The rest is pretty straightforward. Being able to put spin on the ball is a nice touch, although it's pretty difficult to aim where you want.

good simple physics but a bit hard to control and play

Quite neat! Very straightforward shooter-type game with multiple weapons. Provides bit of fun and excitement as you try to evade and shoot the chasing baddies.

After just few levels the game becomes very much difficult as the baddies come too fast at you all at the same time. I'd recommend delaying some baddies, make some move slower.

The visual look of the game seems adequate and presents all the necessary information. Although it's graphically very crude and cartoonish.

With just minor tweaking of gameplay and graphical enhancement this could become a very good game!

Fun little game but did not keep my interest. Too repetitive. Controls were good and play was smooth.

[Judge wrote no review]

Pretty cool game! I was surprised to see what is basically a 4k Smash TV clone, but you did a very good job with it. Even though the gameplay was very simple and there wasn't much scaling to it, I definitely played for a good length of time and was having fun as I did so. There remains a lot that can be improved here - it would have been cool if you gained ammo/new weapons from enemy drops, if the enemies came out in streams rather than in a single wave (as it stands, it is pretty easy to avoid them no matter how many there are), make the weapons a little more interesting and varied, give the enemies a bit of randomness in their movement, etc. Plus you have basically infinite room to improve your graphics.

Speaking of the graphics... they're passable, at best. There are no sprites and your shape-based items are as simple as can be. You've got a few nice effects like the blood fading away and being splatted in the direction of the bullet, and your UI is good, but it would be great to see a few sprites in here or more complicated characters. What about different types of blood spatters and/or enemies?

The different weapon types and the smooth movement and pacing of everything is pretty cool, but otherwise there is nothing remarkable at all technically.

[Judge wrote no review]

I've personally tried to implement a similar space shooting 3D game, although only with a real 3D API, models, textures and stuff. So I speak of experience when I say that this is very challenging! To manage to implement a game like this in only 4K and using pseudo 3D graphics is just awesome!

However I must admit that I find the gameplay lacks fun and excitement. When you start playing it is somewhat difficult to adjust your space ship in order to destroy the asteroids. But once you start to get the handle of the space ship the only thing left is to shoot down asteroids, which can become boring as nothing else happens... except the occasional "Earth in danger!!" which does strike fear to my little heart :)

I really like how you've managed to texture planet Earth, making it recognizable, and add dust particles on the moving asteroids.

Nice job on the technical side, although the graphics seem pixellated. Gameplay lacks the most though.

WOW! Really good game! 3D felt believable, inertia was good, particles were serviceable. Great little game!

Great job. Very nice game for 4k.

Woohoo, I saved the day! Great work putting quite a lot into a small package. Everything felt almost 3D and once I got used to the Elite-style controls it felt pretty good to be playing it as well. My only gripe is that the game got pretty repetitive pretty quickly - because it takes so long for the asteroids to reach the planet and because the ship is so slow at navigating around the rather large universe, you spend more time painstakingly approaching each asteroid than you do having any challenge in the aiming. Increasing the speed and decreasing the distance would help a lot here, I think.

This is a great achievement in terms of presentation - it really feels like you're flying around in a 3 dimensional environment even though you've used only simple 2D sprites. When you got too close to a planet or asteroid the illusion wold be reduced, however, and the particles exploding in a square seemed very odd to me. Still, the rush of stars past the screen was done very well.

You've done a great job here technically. The strength of the 3D stands out for itself, and the radar, controls, and more are just really well executed. The only issue I noticed is that increasing or reducing your speed seemed to do almost nothing, and you also turned more slowly when you were traveling forward slowly (or so it appeared).

This has a lot of potential to be really fun, it just needs to be a bit faster paced.

hard to play without yaw control but pretty fun! love the elite-style 3D map at the bottom.

I like the simplicity and clear originality of this game. Bees, flowers, honey, hive, caterpillars and a guy with a gun. A perfect combo! :)

It's graphically pleasing, although a black night background seems strange for a game containing flowers and bees. Bees sleep during night right? I'd recommend some blue gradient to represent daytime. Not a big problem though ;)

The game is however too easy and simple. The caterpillars always come from the same direction, and it's easy to shoot straight up (45 degrees up) at full power to simply kill all caterpillars. You could do this with your eyes closed!

Making the caterpillars coming from random directions (left or right) at different speeds would fix this problem.

Nice game, but too easy to be considered a good game.

Cute game but objects are too small. The strength of the shots by moving the mouse is an ineffective method for this action. More refinement and you will have a good game on your hands. Perhaps mobile!

The game has an initial challenge of figuring out controls and lobbing distance, but after that is done it's pretty easy to kill those caterpillars consistently.

This is a really cool idea, it made me smile to see it and I enjoyed the overall feel. The idea of throwing rocks at giant centipedes was fun and although the guy was just a stick figure his arm movement looked really smooth and unusually interesting. The gameplay, although with a lot of potential and depth, is unfortunately wasted because you don't really have to do anything to win. As someone mentioned, with java.awt.Robot you could win this game flawlessly. This is because the centipedes always come in at the exact same location and are always slow enough that simply throwing the rocks from the same point will always win. The whole framing of this game and the idea of filling up the bee hive is very refreshing, though, so you get big points for that.

The presentation is lovely. You really pulled off a lot with the AWT shapesand the whole scene really feels smooth and fun.

Technically there's not much to write home about, but your physics are good and the bees seem to move around naturally. I'm also impressed you got so much shape information in under 4k.

If you just improve the gameplay a bit, this could be really fun.

Those bees really need to develop bombs ;) works well but i could basically just keep targeting the same location over and over. Fun tho!

Hard to make up my mind on this game. It's a sufficient scroller shooter game, although rather simple. You fly forward, shoot baddies, but I appreciate it has bosses and also weapon upgrades!

I do like the overall look of the game, very retro, especially the different shapes and structure of the ships, gives them a alienish cryptic look.

Beside that I don't think I will look this game up again for a game of fun, possibly only to take a look at unique shape of the ships.

so, I love shmups, so this one was good for me! Multiple levels, powerups, parallax scrolling, bosses, etc. You packed everything in here. Love the use of lines to make multiple enemies. Very well done!

Great job. Nice retro space shooter.

The biggest strength of your game was definitely the cool fractal creatures that were flying around. It definitely made it all feel pretty unique and different from the typical space invaders clone. However, the game play was almost immediately pretty stale and the collision was quite messy. There were also a few other things, like form changing zapping you back to the bottom of the screen and everything being not quite random enough which really limited the potential of your game. Even so, you managed to put in some very cool boss battles, weapon, upgrades, and more, all a great achievement for 4k.

As I said previously, your game's strongest suit is how it is presented. The fractals are quite cool and being able to choose from a whole host of different creatures is very cool. The UI was perhaps a little stark, but overall you did well here.

Technically your fractals are what are most impressive. They are pretty complicated and endlessly varied, which is quite nice to see. Otherwise, your poor collision algorithm and overall simpleness to your design hurt you here.

I'd love to see where this could go if you devoted more memory to it. You could make an entire universe full of crazy bio creatures and battle with them in all sorts of ways.

a little peculiar, but fun that you have both powerups and bosses!

Something like a blend between Space Invaders and Break Out, good mix.

A bit lacking in graphics, the colors are very plain and dull. With a simple gameplay and simple implementation like this I would have expected more effort being put into the visuals to make up for it.

A good idea that turns out to be rather action-less with lacking visuals.

Simple game that needs work. Very basic but solid control. Also locked up when quitting game.

Enjoyable game. Could be addictive.

It was an interesting take on the Space Invaders / Centipede idea of approaching enemies and gun shooting, but it was a little too simple for my tastes - even when there were 10 or so balls flying around at once it was very easy to predict where they would land and therefore avoid all damage. The only moment that there was any chance of being hit was right when a new spawn would come, and that was purely because I wouldn't know where the balls would land. Adding some randomness to their bouncing, as well as powerups and things like that could really improve everything here. The one really interesting part of this game was the fact that the balls' bounce heights produced a sort of natural time limit. When they became too low, you would lose no matter what.

The presentation here was bare and not interesting. Red circles, a green square, and a gray / blue background really didn't come down to much. Because there wasn't anything else to it, your presentation score is rather low.

Your acceleration-based movement was pretty accurate for the most part, but otherwise there isn't much to comment on technically.

As it stands, BlisterBall is just too simple and repetitive to be very fun. Add more elements and it will be much more enjoyable.

Works great on PC!

Nicely polished blocks, smooth movement, and shadowing of the blocks.

It's very well playable, and provides some enjoyment. However it seriously lacks in strategy and gameplay depth. You simply continue to click as much as possible in order to make blocks disappear as they come up, not very enjoyable in the long run.

Tetris is a great game where you have to strategically place your blocks, in order to make them disappear. But this game does not provide anywhere a level of strategy similar to that, in my opinion. It's simply click and pray.

However, it's very well implemented.

Really good game! Great twist on the Tetris/Sega Swirl kind of game. Fast paced, and smooth. Would love to see other elements added (solid blocks, bombs, multipliers, etc.) Great job!

Fun and complete game.

Very cool idea, I was quite surprised! I had a lot of fun clicking like mad in the attempt to get the blocks to go away, and the feedback here was quite pretty despite not actually having any busting in the 4k version. I could definitely see a game like this being a runaway hit on the iPhone or Android if you ever felt like porting it. To be really great, though, I think it needs a bit more depth. Eventually I felt like I was just clicking wildly on things until I won or lost, and it seemed like most levels could just be beaten with java.awt.Robot. Even so, you get big points for having a truly pleasant game with a very unique and well executed idea.

Even though you've just got blocks here, you made the blocks look pretty much as good as they possible ever could. They had nice shadows, incredibly smooth dropping effects, really cool combine and shift transitions, and the areas you could destroy were nice and glowy. I really think you did everything you possibly could with such simple squares, and for that you actually get a very good score.

Although I could figure out pretty easily how to code all the stuff in here, the simple fact that it was all executed flawlessly and with immense polish gives you a great technical score. Not quite as good as if you had particle effects and 3D and parallax lighting and psychedelic craziness, but you definitely achieved. :-)

This is great, really. One of the few games that really felt complete that I've played so far.

Really nicely done! It is a simple concept and I enjoyed it a lot.

I must punish the game creator for making such a fantastically addictive and time-wasting game!

No in all seriousness, what better way to make a great game but to remake a great game!? And this is a very good implementation too!

Not the most beautiful graphics, but it's abstract enough and very clear and understandable.

It has multiple levels, great physics and stress testing of the bridge.

Although not original, it's a great achievement for a 4K game. Well done!

Brain buster! Like these kinds of games. Cross between World of Goo & Fantastic Contraption style games. Really enjoyed this game, but difficult!

Game would not play (Vista 64-bit)

This was one of the first 4k games I played this year when it was originally posted in the JGO forums. I liked it then, and improvement since then (namely multiple levels) make it better. It's a really cool idea and the physics are very impressive for 4k. I definitely lost quite a few minutes trying to get bridges that worked, then I wasted more trying to get as minimal a bridge as I possibly could. The level progression didn't seem to do much, even though it was a welcome addition. I ended up forming more or less the same bridge in every single level - extra grab points and weaker bridge joints typically did little to change my strategy. Still, it was some variety and progression.

Your presentation is great. The grid is clear and easy to see, with subdivisions to make it easier to count. The coloration of the bridge made it clear which pieces were having trouble and which weren't, making it a much easier task to reinforce places that were lacking. Everything moved fluidly and all fit a minimalist theme that nonetheless conveyed all the information I needed to know.

Your technical expertise is really where this game stands out. The joint physics are just great, bouncing incredibly fluidly and getting pulled exactly as I would expect them to. You really did an extraordinary job here for 4k, better than I ever would have thought possible.

I really enjoyed this take on the bridge-building genre. Fun even though 4K, and good physics and info about tensions.

I'm impressed by the graphics. The cups are beautifully rendered in 3D, with perfect lighting. The background is very nice too.

The green circle on the right is not distinctive enough, but sufficient once you read the game description.

It's a little game with a straightforward gameplay, that is to solve the puzzle.

I also like how intuitive it is to move the cups, simply click and move. So, even a child can understand how to play this game once the goal of the puzzle is described.

Fun puzzle, but not really a game. Once it's figured out, there is really no reason to replay. Fun but not really a game.

Interesting take on the tower game, made more difficult by having to remember the position of the cups.

Having done the Tower of Hanoi puzzle like a bazillion times, this was a cake walk for me, but it was a nice and pretty rendition of the classic puzzle. It would have been cool to have move tracking, present the least possible number of moves you could make, and the like, because otherwise this is totally bare (aside from the pretty cups). It also would have been cool to see the cups drop fluidly into place, rather than have them jump there.

Your graphics and the rest of your presentation are great, except for the text which is in too big of a font and goes off the screen (maybe just on my machine?). You did a great job achieving a beautiful pseudo-3D look, either way.

The 3D rendering is pretty impressive, but the game logic is very easy to program and doesn't stand out to me as anything special. Regardless, you generate all the 3D on the fly rather than just using a background image, so that's worth noting.

A nice rendition of this puzzle.

A pretty take on a classic puzzle.

This is one of my favorite game in the contest. I've always been a big fan or Risk games, and can vividly remember playing countless hours of WinRisk.

This is a realtime type Risk game, somewhat like a RTS/Risk hybrid. It's very challenging, and fun to play. It surely keeps you occupied trying to conquer the planets!

The darts should have been of the same color as the player though, sometimes there are so many flying across it's hard to make sense who's attacking whom!

Also, I'm not quite sure if it's a pro or con if darts can travel such long distances. Maybe each planet should have more of a limited and visible range, e.g. bigger planets with longer range, smaller planets with less.

This game gives me lots of ideas what can be done better and bigger, which is good, as it means I like the idea and I'm thinking how this could be expanded beyond a 4K game.

Visuals are crude though, but they are enough for this game, the gameplay makes up for that.

Great job!

Very deep for a 4K game, good use of limited visuals, but difficult to understand at first.

Fun game with nice strategy elements.

Very cool game idea! I love games like this, and you definitely made it a cool mix of turn-based strategy and real-time action. Really cool idea and overall well executed. It could have really benefitted from some small improvements like rally planets (so all recruited units immediately head there) or being able to select everything on a planet except a specific amount, etc., but overall I had a good time with it. Actually, by far the most limiting factor here for me was the clicking. There was something messed up about it so sometimes it simply wouldn't click at the correct time. Still, good work!

I really enjoyed this! It is similar to Dyson, one of the IGF games, but simpler. Works great!

Somewhat crude implementation of tower defense, both visually and technically. Although I do like tower defense games, I find this one to be rather one dimensional in nature.

When I say one dimensional I mean that the baddies move along one static path all the game, towers are not upgradable, hard to distinguish between the towers.

The visuals, coloring, font and everything is really lacking. This is really a perfect example of what not to do graphically with your game, especially what colors not to pick.

I also notice that the game stutters, goes fast sometimes and slow quite a lot.

There are many things that could have been done better without much effort and no code increase.

I do appreciate the game as a tower defense game, and I can play it with some enjoyment.

Played before, but would not start when I went to judge this. Will score from memory.

Fast paced game.

It's nice to see a good tower defense game implemented in 4k. I had a pretty good time with it and definitely played it longer than most other 4k games, but it ended up being semi-uneventful for me. Aside from the very early levels, I was never even close at all to taking any damage, and it took so long to have enough money to buy myself some more towers that most of the time I was just sitting around waiting. I guess this is kind of what happens in a tower defense game, but I'm typically a fan of them. More ways to spend money and enemies giving more than just 1 gold would have been a great addition.

A simplified take on a classic - all the features are there except for upgrading, the only thing simplified seems to be the UI. Great job!

I quite like this game. It's fun to shoot the beasts, the chasing, splattering and and flamethrower add a level of excitement into it.

The visuals are colorful, but too rough pixelation. The color of the beasts and the blood splatter are too similar, making it hard to spot beasts when things get messy.

The player can travel off screen which should not be allowed in my opinion. It is also not possible to know when the level is complete, how many you have to kill to advance a level.

Also, since you're using your right hand on the mouse it feels awkward to use your left hand on the arrow keys, the WASD keys should rather have been used for movement as it feels more natural.

The ammo and health bars are too small, only one pixel in height it's very hard to keep track on your health and ammo whilst playing.

Other than that, nice job.

Graphics were really pixelated and hard to see what was happening when the screen filled up. Leaving the edge of the playfield was also a design flaw. Kind of fun, but other games in this competition executed on this theme better.

Decent old-school arcade shooter.

This is a very fun little game, very well balanced. It really got frantic pretty quickly but remained within the boundaries of what was possible. The graphics were very cool, although the mix of giant pixels for the enemies/player and small pixels for the blood/gore seemed a bit weird. There wasn't much here that could have been improved, except perhaps pausing if the user clicks out of the window. This happened to me 3 times and the third time caused me to lose. Restarting again at level 1 wasn't an option for me, so I quit. The flamethrower is a very cool item, I especially liked the feeling of torching the nests. The blaster seemed a little too weak, almost being a complete waste of my time to use at all. When you ran off screen it would have been nice to have some sort of indicator of where you were, other than where your shots were flying.

Couldn't get this to work :-/

Wow. You managed to do something I simply gave up on doing. I tried to implement a fully functional Desktop Tower Defense game but was struck down by failure whilst squeezing it below those perky 4096 bytes :( So, I can really understand the effort that was put into this game.

There are many things that could have been done better visually, especially regarding the color theme, which is not very tasteful. However the interface has all the information required for the player.

Also you don't know what type of critters are coming next by looking at the level indicator. I mean, what is the level indicator for if it's not to inform the player about the coming types of critters? You do tell the player about the boss though! I also couldn't figure out what the two numbers to the left are.

Some critters travel very fast, and some are very hard to kill, even very early in the game. I do feel that there is a lack of balance in the game.

Other than some balancing and visual issues this game is excellent, although not original, but still awesome that you managed to implement a fully functional DTT clone.

Good TD game. Good yet simple graphics, good gameplay mechanics, buy/sell, etc. Good foundation for a bigger game.

Fun and enjoyable tower defense game.

This caught my attention for a long time - I played all the way to level 50, which is where I finally lost. I was impressed that you got a pathfinding algorithm into a 4k game - that's no small (no pun intended) feat. It was a lot of fun being able to maze with the towers, but after about level 15 or 20 I had already mazed in the entire level and so the rest of my time was simply spent upgrading my towers. The upgrades are very cool, but the lack of multiple tower types removed most of the strategy that tower defense games have. I couldn't really do anything aside from maybe have a few anti-air towers well placed, and then just get as much damage in as I possibly could. And even after doing that I don't think it was possible to avoid being unscathed by the really fast balls, mostly because there was no such thing as a slow tower. Still, you did a great job here.

It's fun! I played it as much as I play other games of this type. Simplified interface still works quite well...

Rather simplish. There are 3 types of environments which is plus, ice, night and day, although the gameplay is entirely the same between the levels. I would have gone with more motorbikes to increase difficulty.

I also don't understand the role of the helicopter. I tried to chase it down and shoot, but no luck. Anything special about it?

But I like the graphics, very clean, retro and the pseudo-3D works great!

Nicely done. Could use a bit more variety and there is really little difference between the day/weather modes outside of the look of the environment. Like the feel, just feels like a demo, not a game.

Impressive for a 4k game.

I thought the idea of going through a forest to kill evil bicyclists was pretty funny, but overall I found the game a little dull. The variety came from the different types of terrain, which was a cool addition, but even though I couldn't really turn at all in the snow level it remained the same task as the first level. Two motorcycles driving in front of me, me shooting at them while I avoid trees, and not much beyond that. One particularly unique and nice point to note is that if I lost on level 1, it didn't take lives away, it just restarted. I really appreciated that, because I wasn't exactly sure the extent of the gameplay at the beginning. I'm also assuming I could probably shoot the helicopter for tons of points, but I never really got a chance to and it seemed far in the background so the whole concept of shooting a helicopter that's two miles away and hovering over the ground was just kinda odd.

Reminds me of old Atari games :)

Alright! First when I played this game I seriously wondered if I should reject it, being a "pointless animation". But once I figured out the story about this game I realized it might be fun, and just look at those download numbers!

I never realized that a "pointless animation" would make you laugh. Well, guess what, it did, and good games are supposed to be fun.

Good job, not much else to say.

Ok....so you get 10 extra points because you were able to pull this ridiculous gem out of my past :) I have played DB on the SegaCD, image of course from Lost Levels, but never completed. Fun diversion but not much of a game really.

When I got to mile 50 I got hit by a bus...

What's to say about this? I think I was supposed to laugh at the absurdity but I didn't even get that far, for whatever reason. It's a big long road meant to be ridiculous. Har har. I will admit that your description of the game made me laugh, but that's unfortunately not what I'm supposed to be scoring.

Your presentation is okay. The road looks pretty nice, and definitely appears to disappear off into the horizon. But obviously there's nothing else to it.

You did a good job making a nice pseudo-3D effect, but otherwise there is absolutely nothing technical to talk about. There's even a bug, where going backwards gives the same mileage as going forwards.

I don't even know if I'd call this a game. I don't know why it's the #1 downloaded game of 2009, but I don't think it deserves it.

Excellent emulation of a classic ;)

Original, challenging, fun and very impressive physics demonstration!

I do think the first level is too difficult, but it's simple and the player understands quickly how to play this.

Lacks a restart button though, if you can't balance your doodle character at start. Also, it seems that gravity pulls the character to the right?

I can imagine myself playing this sometime again! Thumbs up!

WOAH! Abstract and unique gameplay! Physics are awesome and I love the way the doodle man flops around. Media Molecule would love to see this game :) Very unique and challenging!

Nice rag doll effect.

You've done an awesome job getting a decent ragdoll into 4k. However, I'm guessing your original thought was "I want to put a ragdoll into 4k" rather than "I have this idea for a game..." and that shows. The game seems less imagined than the ragdoll physics are, and as a result it suffers a bit. The idea of moving something past obstacles to a goal is very tried and true and can always work wonderfully well, but this simple gameplay mechanic didn't really work in your game because the ragdoll got in the way. I played a racing game recently with a similar problem - it seemed the developers said, "let's make a racing game with really great physics that's totally realistic." They did so, but the actual controlling of the game is tremendously difficult thanks to always bouncing up above tiny bumps like you would in a real car. In your game, the ragdoll bounces above the goal too much and is too difficult to have stand exactly correctly, especially given the very very short time limit you have to hold him. Larger levels with less time limit and less reliance on a ragdoll would help out a lot here.

I think Doodle Man has some bugs - after the first play, stick dude started freaking out. cool idea though!

This game annoyed me from start. The windowless game is stuck on the middle of my screen and I can't move it to a more convenient place on my desktop!

Reading the instructions got my head turning, I need to learn all those key combos to play? Forget it. And why does that text appear to tell me what to do?

I try to be fair in my review, but this seems like a dead-end game to me, there's not much I can review here.

I do like some of the graphics, the boxers, and appreciate the effort made by the programmer. But no luck.

Good graphics, and complex controls, which also added to the difficulty level. I appreciated the complexity of your fighting system in such a limited space, with serviceable AI, but that complexity is what made this difficult to the point of frustrating.

Nostalgic fighting game.

Sweet, a fighting game in 4k! The amount of graphics you got into this is really commendable. The 3 different moves, the 3 different blocks, then getting hit, being dead, etc. etc. And the different shades of the enemies are more bonuses to comment on. Not to mention that you fit an entire full-fledged tutorial in here; that's pretty amazing on its own. Unfortunately, I found the actual gameplay a little bland slightly too complicated at the same time. I was often fumbling to press the right button unless I really focused, in which case it was pretty formulaic. I also discovered a few bugs, like when you move backwards you constantly get pummeled no matter what, and you can always press an attack move in order to block or attack. As such, I just pressed X and up/right/down every single time until the opponent was dead.

[Judge wrote no review]

Nice one! I really like the visual effects, looks like candy!! The bouncing is fun and is something new for a 4K race car game!

I must be really bad at this game though, I never able to keep up with the other vehicles, kept bouncing into the sides which eventually destroyed me. Maybe a minimap would be helpful.

But I like it, the visuals really give it a character and make it look quite original for a 4K race car game.

Amazing game! You nailed most of the mechanics from the original FZ for the SNES. Scaling looks fantastic, speed and control feels just right. Very well done!

Great attempt at F-Zero in 4k.

I'm a huge fan of F-Zero. I unlocked almost everything on F-Zero GX back on the Gamecube, even though it was brutally difficult. I think you did a great job capturing all the different elements of F-Zero into this little 4k game (except boost power), which is definitely an achievement. In addition, the dynamic 3D flat-down Mario Kart style level looks great, and the cars are very detailed for 4k. However, I didn't feel that you really captured the sprit of F-Zero, nor was the gameplay particularly exciting. I think F-Zero should inspire a sense of extreme speed and craziness, but your game felt more like I should be driving a kart. If you had made longer straightaways and much faster scrolling, I think it would have really helped. Plus, steering was way too precise. There was no challenge in getting the car to move where I wanted it to, despite how fast I may have been moving. If there were enemy cars around me, it was stupidly difficult because if they even touched me all my health would go down and I'd lose a bunch of speed, but once I was behind them it was stupidly easy. The heath recharge didn't bring back nearly enough health, and I didn't really feel much like I was interacting with the other cars - it was more that they were dynamic obstacles. I think if you just increase the intensity factor of this, it could be much better!

this is awesome! Except I'm bummed I can never catch up with the other cars once I screw up :-/

This is a great game, I'm really really impressed by it. One of my top three maybe!

It has everything that makes up a great game, and I'm stunned that this all fits in 4KB. Explosions, cannons, turrets, laser grids, helicopter, scientists, bullets, blocks to shoot, even bullet collide adding to the strategy!

The maze is all good. The map is well designed, and doesn't seem to be some random nonsense.

The graphics are a bit jerky when scrolling the screen, especially the minimap, but otherwise the visuals are nice enough. The helicopter handles fine.

Great job!

Whoo! Physics, explosions, clever design, challenging control, force fields, enemy placement. Add sound and push this o ne out right now. Excellent job!

Interesting game.

It's amazing how smooth and playable this game is for 4k. The controls are absolutely spot on, and really are the biggest achievement of your game. Although I didn't necessarily like how the cannon's direction was chosen (I'd have rather used the mouse or something), logically it made more sense and it worked. The buoyancy of the helicopter and the ease I had moving it around were wonderful. I was worried I was going to be playing yet another helicopter clone (or at least be using the same physics), but you proved me wrong with some really smooth flying. The actual gameplay was a little light for me, with not much happening and the turrets being rather easy to best. The boxes also just take too long to shoot away - I typically died only because I was bored with waiting and flew too fast.

I keep playing this game over and over - it's old school and yet not a simple game. Nice job!

No mic!! If you got no mic you can't play, and most people don't have a mic!

I'm torn on how to judge this game. I was able to insert headphones, but they didn't work, tried to enable them on my PC, plugged them out, then something happened on the screen!

I think I understand the concept. The graphics seem to look nice enough.

But, generally, all games should be hazzle-free. Take my rating with a grain of salt.

Really clever and have not seen a Java game that used sound in this manner! Interesting to play around with and enjoyed it. Very simple from a gameplay perspective, but unique twist with voice controlled movements.

Doesn't detect microphone. Was excited to play, but cannot.

This is like the coolest idea ever, and I'm absolutely amazed you pulled it off in a 4k game. I (honestly) wouldn't even know how exactly to do this in any Java game. That being said, I couldn't get the hang of it. What clearly seemed to be a low note to me would usually spaz the thing out, making it go up/down/up/down, and high notes would often do the same. Maybe I was singing out of its allotted range, but I couldn't help but to think that even a real singer would have trouble with this. Even so, the amount I did manage to get through was pretty fun. The movement was a little herky jerky - the ship moved in like 20 pixel intervals rather than smoothly, which I think could have been easily adjusted. Also the visuals are pretty bland.

Couldn't get this to work :-/

Nice cartoonish graphics, very simple hands-on gameplay but still strangely challenging with a slice of addictiveness :)

I really like how the car moves, very natural. You think you got everything figured out when you've gone over few hills, thinking you could do this with your eyes closed, but occasional sneaky hills can turn your car on it's top without much effort. Maybe more smaller hills would have be a fun addition.

Smooth, clear visuals. The font could have been larger of the timer, and no need to count milliseconds.

What is the bar for? I wondered if it was for health, but maybe it was to show the distance traveled. You should have just said "nnn meters to finish line".

Good job.

Very nice little game. Great physics, good control, and challenging! Like the way the car bounces coming off hills and the mechanics of all the parts working together. Would like to see ghost racing or AI racers.

Simplistic game.

The game was very pretty, the levels looked great, and the physics were spot on. The bounciness of the car was fun and I loved how simple it was. However, most of its potential was ruined by the fact that the levels were incredibly long and the only way not to "die" was to go annoyingly slow off of hills. I wanted to see some big jumps and launch myself all over the place. I would have rather had a button just to flip the car over instead of a restart, making a flip a penalty rather than a game breaker. Really, if you had made the game about jumping as fast and as far as you could, I think it would have been a lot more fun.

that's just a lot of fun :)

Pretty neat. I like it!

I did encounter some problems when shooting the missile, it did not want to shoot in some directions.

Too bad there wasn't a computer AI you could play against, but understandable. I had to simulate 2 player mode by playing against myself, it was OK, but not something I would enjoy often.

But a good implementation of a Scorcher like game, only with gravity and a different theme.

I like the blue background. The gray balls could have been nicer if they are supposed to be planets.

Interesting twist on shattered earth kind of gameplay. Needs a variety of weapons to make more interesting, changes in velocity, etc. Good start, but could not hold my interest.

Should be compatible with the latest version of Java.

Pretty cool, but a little bit bland. I wanted a little more substance to this other than shooting missiles, because I felt I had very little control over how the missiles would fly. This is because, with so many gravitational forces acting on each missile, I really couldn't predict exactly what was going to happen. So it was largely guesswork in that regard, matches ending just as often with me shooting myself as the enemy. The match was also pretty unbalanced due to being randomly generated - typically one person could shoot the other but not the other way around. The actual physics work well, but other than that the game is a little basic.

Couldn't get this to work :-/

I like this puzzle game, although the controls feel a bit awkward at first. I wish I could have used the mouse.

Not sure about the time limit, as I would have liked to continue and try to finish the puzzle. But I realize it's not really a puzzle you can finish, so a time limit is in order.

Not possible to close window except by using ESC.

Graphics look OK, although I would recommend enabling anti-aliasing.

Fine game otherwise.

Good variation on the match 3+ kind of game. Also added some interesting twists on the logic. Very addictive and well done!

Fun puzzle game.

Great puzzler idea, but I found it a little bit difficult to coordinate and could never really plan combos in any fashion. I also thought that the timer was unnecessary - the game didn't seem like it was one where you should be rushed in any fashion. I would have rather been able to simply focus on where I could make the best move and then try to make it. The dissolving effects for the pieces, as well as the restructuring of the honeycomb after removing parts was very well executed and looked great. In the end I think there are just a few too many conflicting ideas here - it has the elements of a twitch puzzler like Tetris but also of of a thought-provoking game like a rubik's cube. Instead of counting down, it would be better if it counted up, so you could try to beat your own record instead of having needless pressure.

the up/down/left/right/a/s is a little confusing... mouse control might have been easier. Nice simple puzzle game though!

Strange but original game. Although I don't like the gameplay, which doesn't seem to have been very thought out. Why so many controls and HUD information for such a simple game?

I used the cigar but I'm not sure what good it did. I'd also like to be able to erase ladders, and also build brick walls to make the honey keeper from traveling forth and back every time. Second level is impossible to complete, the honey increases too rapidly.

Perhaps there are too many controls for such a simple game, 7 keys and 1 mouse button. The controls felt somewhat awkward. What is Psiv? The text information needs to be more descriptive and fewer information fields.

Graphics are alright, somewhat retro, but they do a fairly understandable picture of what the programmer wants to show. The 3D-ish ladder is nice.

Clever and tricky gameplay. Very much like a pipeworks kind of game and like the way it pushes you to think about placement, balance and hive growth. Cute graphics. Very well done!

Odd but clever.

The graphics here were absolutely darling, and the concept is truly novel. I felt like I was playing something akin to A Boy And His Blob - I had this interesting challenge ahead and some wacky ways to get me there. Cigars, magically built ladders, and more - it all was a very cool combination. However, similarly to ABAHB, I had no idea how I was supposed to win and had a lot of difficulty grasping how the gameplay was working. Cigars seemed to do nothing and or couldn't fly anywhere at all, and getting my guy to move around like I wanted was incredibly difficult and frustrating. Sometimes he'd climb the ladder, sometimes not, and no matter what I did the very tiny amount of honey I was getting seemed depressing. I also didn't get why the hive was growing, but it just sort of panicked me. All in all this could be really great but I just couldn't get it.

Unique concept! fun to play, doesn't seem to get much harder over time

Pretty nice. I like this game. It's impossible to play this game without thinking of another game similar to this one in the same contest and comparing them ;)

At first glance I do think you should have enabled anti-aliasing. Maybe a minimap would have been useful.

I like the powerups that give you increased visibility, health, freeze the white bread, etc.

The kill-bar and the health-bar should have text, I couldn't figure out what the blue one was for until I started shooting at the white bread.

Felt it was sometimes too difficult to evade the white bread.

Great game otherwise and a funny theme.

Wow! Fantastic Gauntlet style gameplay. Fast, power-ups, FOW, etc. More levels please!!

I'll never look at bread the same way again.

I successfully defeated all those misfit pieces of bread! This is a hilarious little game (mostly because of the idea), but the good news is that it also plays very well. The only real issue I discovered is that I kept pressing out of the screen, thus completely losing from not being able to defend myself anymore. The lighting effects were great, especially after getting the torch powerup and then watching your lighting area dwindle. The huge amount of powerups, the different floor tile types, the big variety in the levels - it all added up to make a very solid and well-built 4k game. I enjoyed playing it and was sad when I lost because of clicking off the window. The bread could have moved a little less predictably and a little enemy variety would have been a welcome addition, but you've packed a lot into this little gem.

fun game, very unique concept and love your use of light and shadows!

Don't know why it's a signed jar, I'm scared of clicking Yes, but alright, I'll take the chance :)

It's a nice game. Although it runs a bit too fast for easy playing. I must suck at this game because I don't think I lasted more than 30 seconds, ever. I feel that the chopper drops down too fast, ending most of my games quickly.

The graphics and visuals are simple but sufficient. Maybe the yellow color is too, hm, yellow for eye comfort.

Alright game, but a bit too difficult to play it longer than a few seconds.

Good idea, WAY too difficult. Functional graphics, but too frustrating to play for long.

Nice idea. A little too sensitive.

The level generation here and keeping it dynamic is definitely an achievement, as well as some nice velocity-based movement. Helicopter is a great idea for a game to put into a Java 4k contest. However, I think your execution of the game left quite a lot to be desired. I could never last longer than 5 seconds and was not at all interested in trying more. basically, the plane accelerated and dropped way too quickly, had too large of a collision radius, and moved to the right too fast. I just felt like it was a blitzkrieg of flying environment and that I had very little to no control over what was happening. The point of helicopter, in my mind, is not for the actual ascent and descent of the helicopter to require too much precision, but more that it eventually gets next to impossible to squeeze through a tiny tunnel. Here, I just felt all the control in general was difficult, which really spoiled it for me.

I think it's more like a hummingbird simulator :)

Took a long time for the game to start on my computer, lots of pre-processing going on I guess. Perhaps you should have had a "Loading..." screen, because I thought something was broken.

But WOW! It surely is worth the wait. What an impressive full-fledged 3D FPS game! Amazing, and the floor reflection is very cool. Even bullets, baddies and objects reflect! And you got power-ups too! And you can strafe along the walls!

Graphically it's very nice. I think the wall texture isn't all that great, maybe a seamless brick texture would be better.

Maybe a minimap would be useful, easy to get lost. And I'm not entirely satisfied with the controls, FPS games are hard to play without a mouse nowadays.

Great job on this, I'm very impressed by your effort on this game and deserve a good score accordingly.

Fantastic! Reflections, good map layout, functional gameplay. Good job!

Nice job.

You've done an excellent job bringing an FPS to Java 4k. It feels a lot like Doom or Wolfenstein and for the most part plays rather smoothly. At first I wasn't exactly sure what was going on, because the orbs seemed to be just sitting there - I thought they were powerups. Then I was naturally quite surprised when I was damaged instead of gaining super awesome armor or something. My main point there is that (yes I know there is a 4k limit) the orbs are pretty weird and uninteresting opponents. One of the big appeals of Wolfenstein was the atmosphere, and I feel that the aforementioned is the main lacking in your game. It's certainly rock solid in terms of playability, but I was pretty bored relatively quickly because I didn't feel a real incentive to play. There wasn't a franticness, there wasn't a high score, and I didn't see the point in "beating" it. Why? I'm not sure. That's why I left it to something as vague as atmosphere.

that was fun, reminded me of old-school gaming on the Apple :) I'm glad you included strafing!

Not much gameplay in this. Just go forward, jump, and avoid the things. Well, it's a game with some gameplay, but I didn't enjoy it. Quickly stopped playing since I had experienced all there was to this game after only half a minute.

Perhaps a decent 4K effort, but still lacking the gameplay. E.g. what's the goal? Where does it end? Do I kill a boss? Nothing, well, except some high score.

The players character could have bee larger, it's to tiny compared to the floor tiles.

Could not launch game.

Nice work.

This is a cute little game, I definitely got a laugh from it. Few people have done platformers in 4k, so that makes yours different and interesting. But what makes it especially stand out is the randomly generated level. That's a great idea, and although the algorithm is pretty simple, it definitely worked well and I never found a situation where I simply couldn't continue. However, like I said the algorithm was simple, and therefore things got pretty routine and repetitive fairly quickly. In the end that's really the only thing negative about your game, although it's a pretty big concern. After I had killed probably 5 jesters I was already getting a little bit bored. Find the next platform, jump to it, jump on a jester, repeat. It was also quite easy, although I wasn't able to tell if perhaps the difficulty ramped up as it went on. Either way, I think with some more dynamism this could be a really great game.

pretty simple but works well!

Very impressive game. There are lots of items in the game, keys, diamonds, TNT, power ups etc. So this game provides an excellent gameplay. I actually played it for a while and enjoyed it! I would definitely play this again.

It plays very smoothly and the controls are fine. The textures and sprites are very nice.
Although the doors being a white rectangle leaves me somewhat baffled since everything else makes sense graphics wise. I had to figure out how to use the keys, wasn't that obvious that I had to have a key to make that white rectangle disappear. Also I didn't know how many keys I had picked up, that's information missing from the HUD.

A very complete and fun game with nice graphics. One of my favorites to play!

Gauntlet! Generators, powerups, shields, heatlh, etc. Loved this game!

Reminds me of Gauntlet. If you could have just added "Green Wizard is about to die!" it would have been perfect. :)

I almost feel like I should copy/paste my review of Hunt 4k Bread in here, because the games are almost exactly they same, aside from some very slight changes in gameplay and different graphics. As such, I'm really not sure what to say about this... I suppose I'll compare it to Hunt 4k Bread, because that will probably be the most useful thing I can do for you. The lack of lighting like there is in Bread really reduced the coolness factor here for me, and the addition of spawners actually made it worse in terms of gameplay. The reason for that is because the spawners pretty much didn't work right. As soon as you killed an enemy, another would appear. As such, there was no possible way to get to the spawner aside from running through the hordes and taking a bunch of damage. I thought the shield powerup was pretty nifty, and picking up crystals rather than killing all the enemies was better probably. Overall, I liked this one less, and that's largely a stylistic problem.

nice job! i love that there are destructable walls. i was a little dismayed to be able to shoot between invaders, but overall this is great!

Wow. I like these kind of games, and was a great fan of your Squarius game. This one is very similar though, although not entirely.

The graphics are as simple as possible, very colorful, although a bit rough on the edges. No way to make the edges smooth?

A perfect game to just play, with little other worry than just to avoid colliding with something. A perfect game to play with a cup of coffee (or tea) in your hand. Oh yea, the gameplay is nice enough.

Good one!

Nice and a good attempt at recreating a side shmup. Would have loved to have seen details in the sprites, but nice seeing the core mechanics in this one.

Enjoyable game.

Very cool game! I really enjoyed the interesting blend of weird colors and shapes and simple shooter gameplay. The autoshot was an excellent idea - it really improved the overall feel of the game and allowed me to focus a lot more on the dodging that the game required. The first level I found semi-boring, but the second level was very cool. I really enjoyed the swinging obstacles and having so many more bullets flying around made it much more interesting. It would have been nice to have the addition of lives rather than needing to restart the entire level when I messed up, because that could get frustrating. Also, it was weird that enemies were able to fly through the terrain, but I was not. Many times I would absentmindedly try to fly into places so I could shoot one, only to blow myself up. And the boss after level 1 was also weird in that he could fly behind you, and you couldn't shoot backwards. Overall, though, very fun.

Fun game, nice amount of variability between levels!

Ahh.. this brings back many good old memories from my Sinclair Spectrum days :)

Tricky to play, it seems easy but those baddies do hit you quite often. The gameplay is very basic, the same level again and again which can get a bit dull, but with different type of baddies.

Nice work getting all that art work in there, I'm very impressed that you were able to recreate the Jetpak game, although it's not quite the full version.

Fun game! Very challenging and felt like more of a "complete" game than several others in the competition. Reminds me of a Speccy game. Good job!

Very retro feel, and in a good way.

I never played the original, but this certainly feels totally old school, which is a very good thing. It had just the right balance of interesting platforming, simple enemies, and an easy goal to make it really interesting and playable. The variety of enemies you have is definitely where your game shines - as the levels increase, so does the difficulty, and it does so at a very reasonable pace. Not too hard, not too easy. I guess my only gripe with this game is that it all felt just a little too simple to me, probably because it's a remake of such an old game. If you had given it a couple extra bells and whistles gameplay-wise that probably would have really helped my overall impression of it.

old school in the house! That's a fun, simple game

Easy to play, original and quite fun! I love the sound, and the graphics are very nice, looks very polished. Although I'm not sure if having the HUD information in the background is a good idea, it can be hard to read if the background color is dark.

The sound really gives this game it's depth, without it I'm not sure if it would be as much fun.

A very good game that's good to play, nice job.

Very interesting and very relaxing to play. One of the only games with audio. Good job! Very minimalist. Liked it!

Unusual, but enjoyable game.

Boomshine is a great game to clone. I've actually never played the original, just a lot of clones, but I felt there was one unfortunate design choice that really reduced the fun factor of your game - the retry count. I wanted to just keep playing and see how many points I could get, but I could never just give it a whirl and see what would happen, because I only had 3 retries. Naturally having as many retries as you want reduces the challenge, but it's silly to have to tread through a bunch of super easy levels in order to get to the difficult ones. Why not just give infinite lives and then just make the later levels incredibly difficult (like getting 15/15 of them or something). Seems like it leaves a lot more potential for gameplay. In other areas, the graphics and the sounds were great, perfectly suited. It left a nice atmosphere with which I had a lot of fun enjoying.

yay a game with sound! And it's fun and simple, well done :)

Very nice graphics and visuals, looks fluid. I also like the controls, and I love that zoom in and out. I dislike the look of the HUD which seem out of place with it's blue DOS background color, white borders and text.

Nicely done, I like this game, original, although it can get a bit dull when it's hard to find blue bubbles to eat. Maybe the game needs some more gameplay like a goal, other than just get bigger.

Great graphics, great physics, zooming, etc. Love the fl0w vibe of it. Audio would make this an awesome game.

Nice spore clone.

This game is super pretty, and is a fun idea! The little amoebas were very cool looking and it definitely gave the impression of being in a cool little cell pool. However, the gameplay just didn't work for me. The ball was too sluggish to get started moving and then too slow too change direction when it was important. In addition, I usually lost size too quickly to ever actually gain any, simply because there weren't enough smaller particles around. I might see one, but by the time my slow particle reached them I would be smaller and they would be bigger, game over. It actually doesn't seem like too logical of a gameplay choice to make the particle reduce in size. At the very least, difficult 1 should have no degeneration and 9 should have lots, rather than the increased blob sizes that the difficulty creates, which didn't actually make it any easier or harder, in my opinion.

This is a lot like one of this year's IGF games. Really well done, fun to play.

Nice race car game. Simple, and standard. Three courses and computer opponents. The 3D graphics are very good, the terrain a bit pixellated but that's fine.

The only thing missing is perhaps a timer to show your time, but I can't think of anything else to comment about except that maybe some more balancing on the driver controls, e.g. brakes, sliding.

A very fine game that gives you some fun racing against your computer opponents.

Good scaling, good physics, collision detection, mini map. Still felt a bit barebones compared to other racers in the competition.

Great work. All that's need now is some turtle shells and stars. :)

This is a great kart game. It moves very smoothly, the gameplay is solid, and best of all the difficulty levels 1,2 and 3 are definitely easy, medium, and hard. You did an excellent job creating a very solid balance here, which is very important in a racing game. I found 3 the most fun because I actually had to focus on hitting the curves correctly in order to stay in the running. I think the game could have benefitted from having less laps (probably 2 would be good) and more levels. Just this one level gets pretty boring and there wasn't a whole lot of room here for having difficulty in the track itself. Typically if I took my finger off the accelerator for a second or so I'd be just fine around all the curves because most of them are so gradual. The game's graphics are also slightly bland - a random cactus or something spotting the landscape would have been great, and tinting the carts would have really helped for variety's sake.

Hilarious to see a 4k version of Mario Kart :) Nice job!

Fun game. Good physics.

Never played Peggle, but this seems to be fun, lots of things happening, bonuses, multiballs, free balls, etc. Although I think this game is more about luck than skill :)

The graphics are fine, although I'm not quite sure if the color theme is the best there is. I actually quite like the turret's gray color theme.

Perhaps one of the top 10 games.

As I am playing Peggle Dual Shot right now, this one was front in my mind. This was a FANTASTIC attempt at Peggle in 4K. Physics do a great job of mimicking the Peggle "feel" and was fun to play. Would like to see you advance this beyond the 4K and do it in 16K to see what can be done with graphics and audio

Great job. I can't explain it, but it seems like it's missing a unicorn to make the game better. :-p

I never really liked Peggle, but this is worth commending for being such a great clone of it. The physics of the ball bouncing are spot on and the difficulty ramping is smooth, just hard enough that it's fun but not so much that it was frustrating. Still, what I view as the principal problem of Peggle transfers down to Keggle - that is that the game seems to be mostly luck to me. I can hit a few pegs and there are no random numbers involved in terms of how it bounces, but it just doesn't seem possible to truly predict exactly how the ball will behave several bounces later. Thus, even though getting big combos was intensely satisfying, I could never claim that I had really caused them (it's like it pool when a ball just happens to go into a pocket: great, but I couldn't do it again). So, no matter how difficult a level was I could win it eventually, and no matter how easy it was I could lose it. I got bored pretty quickly as an unfortunate result. Regardless, you've got a beautiful presentation and the game is technically very sound.

I kept waiting for the big slow-motion finish :) nice!
Thanks for the audio!

No matter where you move around you're always kept busy trying to stay alive. A superb game that honestly gives me a fun scare! Nicely balanced too, never too many, but still very many to keep you frightened and running!

The film grain effect gives a nice finish, the lighting is simply amazing and the blurring between light and darkness is very nice.

The bullets are simply amazing, very detailed, and they give off light (explosion) if they hit the wall.

The blood splattering of the zombies is the best kill effect I've seen in a 4K game. It spreads in a right angle and isn't just a red filled oval.

Great maze, different terrain, multiple levels, a very nice HUD, fine controls, and you're punished for reloading which is realistic.

The only thing I can comment on is that is probably lacks text to describe what information is being displayed on the HUD.

Is there any way to make a more perfect 4K game? I don't think so! There is so much in this game, it's a great game and I'm pretty sure this will be my #1 pick for this year.

A game well deserving of my first and probably only 100%.

WHOOO!! KICK ASS!!! Sooooo much fun to play and amazed that this is a 4K game. Fast paced, tense, great pacing, weapons, lighting, the works! Extraordinary!

Slightly less scary than Left 4 Dead, but well done none the less. :)

Ah, the famous Left 4k Dead. Everyone on JGO has played it, including me. I've showed it to many people saying, "can you believe this guy got all this into 4k?" Great balance, good zombie shooting fun, and interesting level complexity. But even though this game is a super awesome achievement, I would actually put its true cake winning award under the technical, but not necessarily overall. I think there is a lot that could be improved in terms of gameplay. Levels can get monotonous, and the player and zombies move slowly enough that it never feels as frantic as it could. I had a hard time getting hit unless I really tried to do so. Ramping up the difficulty and adding more elements could really make this game a lot better. Also, it would be great to move faster. Whether you can do all this in 4k, I don't know, but I'd say sacrifice some of the cool technical stuff for a bit more gameplay.

But your presentation and your technical implementations? Unbeatable. The game looks absolutely stunning for 4k and you've managed to cram in many elements that full sized games don't get. The zombies don't just edge towards you, they actually seem to move like zombies. The shadow around you is eerie and well cast. The blood spatters look gorgeous. Bravo, well done.

There is no doubt that this is one of 2009's winners.

OMG awesome.. i can't believe I can shoot the little dude's arms off :) well done!
Nice lighting/shadows too.

Grrrrrrr... I spent so much time and lives trying to finish it, but no luck :( Time to move on, gotta finish these reviews.

So, this is frustratingly addictive game :) I'm so in awe, how on earth were you able to squeeze all that into mere 4096 bytes?

This is a great game, probably the closest anyone has come to implement a full platform game in 4K.

The only drawback I can think of is that the graphics are borrowed, but that's fine.

DAMN DAMN DAMN! MegaMan in 4K. How the hell did you do this? Retains the feeling of the series, just a lot faster and much more difficult, if that's possible. Great game!

Fun game. I need power-ups. :)

I think I had the same problem with this as I had with the original Megaman (and is that a good thing, in a clone?), which is that it's just too difficult for me. The gravity seems kind of weird, it's difficult to really dodge anything through the ginormous spread of projectiles flying all over the place, and hokey collision algorithms often lead to instant death on spikes that don't look like they're touching Megaman. Now, all that considered, you really did a wonderful job with the game, despite me having no fun with it. You fit such a monstrous amount of level information in here, tons of enemies, physics, shooting bullets, etc etc... There really is very little you could have improved. Too hard? Yes. But a great game? Absolutely.

nice!

Excellent fun. Not the most complex gameplay, very easy, great for kids, and I quite enjoyed it.

I really like the visuals of this game, the 3D-ish rings, parallax background, the colors are superb and all the graphics are just superb! Nicely done! The background gradient could look more smoother though, but it still looks good with the type of graphics you've created for this game.

I did not quite understand what the rings were all about, sure it makes sense I have to go through them, but I could have just skipped them? For me it was very difficult stay on the path going through the rings beyond dream 1.

A great game worthy of a good score.

Ok OT, you got me a bit on this one. NiGHTS is one of my most favorite all time games. I still play it to this day, frequently. This was a cute approximation of the game and I give you extra props for the attempt. Good scaling, simple but effective graphics, basic mechanics in tact. Good job!

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Beautiful game, and definitely not expected in a 4k app. Really, it's prettier and has more graphical detail than almost any other 4k game I've ever seen. You managed to execute a really unique style with very little memory, and that's really worth commending. NiGHTS himself (if that's what the flying thing is called) looks potentially a little bit strange in his movements, but that's the only detail that really stood out to me at all. The gameplay here was pretty good, but not as exceptional as the graphics. I found it rather easy and didn't really understand what "different routes" I could take to get a bigger chain. I just flew along through the rings a bunch of times until I got some points. Couldn't really see much else to it. Despite there being multiple paths in the later dreams, I still typically just ended up flying in a more or less linear way around the level. Even so, it was fun, it just seemed like it could have potentially been more fun.

Couldn't get it to start at first, but worked great from webpage. I like the animation style on the character.

Ok, I wasn't able to get beyond screen 3 despite repeated attempts. So, I have to judge the game based on those 3 screens.

It's given that clearly there is some balance lacking, the first 2 screens are easy as pie, but for me the 3rd screen was impossible.

This looks very fine, the visuals, graphics and colors are nicely done. It looks very simple, but sufficient. I'm not quite sure about the semi 3D perspective, it's not coming through well enough, perhaps the bytes would have been better spent on something else. Also not quite sure about the Pacman character, but that's the game theme.

I'm impressed by the fact that you have a multiple screen platformer here, and being able to go between 2 floors using stairs.

But, easy to control, easy to understand, and it looks like a good game, except I can't get past screen 1 :(

Game would not start.

Unusual game.

You managed to cram a whole bunch of elements into a very small game - great job with that. Getting in all the different kinds of enemies, the alligators, the ropes, holes in the ground, and more, is really a great achievement. In the end, though, I didn't have too much fun with it. The jumping seemed a little bit weird and it wasn't clear what was an enemy and what wasn't (at least at first). Plus when I finally lost it was because there was something wrong with the rope - my guy wouldn't jump off it, so I eventually mashed the space bar / down arrow until he finally jumped off, but did so into the lake. Also, going down a ladder led to losing life, which is probably a bug. Even so, your graphical and technical achievement definitely make this game high up there in the list for me.

hahaahha :) a little too simplified, but good job

Wow, I really like this. Very original, fun, easy to play and addictive! :)

You must have some nice algorithms under that hood, very clever use of them!

I must admit, at first when I stared at the screen I wasn't quite sure what to do, but after clicking with the mouse button it became obvious though!

Full game, multiple levels, understandable interface and good enough graphics.

One of the most original puzzle games in the 4K. Excellent craftsmanship!

Fun game! Reminds me a lot of cleaning up milk from a kitchen floor :) Challenging, simple, easy to understand and surprisingly addictive. Good job!

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This is a great idea - I could see this concept moving into a multitude of other platforms, like Flash and the iPhone. Your number one achievement here is graphical, perhaps tied with your technical achievement. The smoothness of the shockwaves, the movement of the goo, its ability to squish together and bunch up with a certain density - you've definitely proven a very solid ability to grasp physics in complex systems. I'm not really sure whether this or Bridge 4k are the best technically, but they're both tied for my number one spot. Your particle manipulation and interaction is great. The game for me was fun too, like Bridge 4k, which is definitely important. You didn't just have an interesting technical idea, you also had a great gameplay idea. Great work.

That's just cool. Really nice design, I'd love to see this fleshed out into something even bigger.

Excellent and clever little game. Reminds me of Sokoban, which I enjoy a lot.

This game might even rival Sokoban, it's so easy to play, easy to understand, and the interface and interaction is dead simple.

Good use of colors, nice animations, a perfect example of a great puzzle 4K game. Nice job!

Kev, Kev, Kev....you always make the most addictive little toys :) Sokoban games are on of my favorite kinds and you managed to add an addictive new twist. Loved it! Easy to understand the gameplay mechanics, challenge ramp is gradual and feels right. Great job!

Very clever puzzle idea.

You might remember that I loved Putty Puzzle, having made a few levels for it, so unsurprisingly I loved Putty Shuffle as well. The gameplay in this one was actually more intuitive, I would argue, and this is my favorite of your three 4k entries this year. It had me playing as long as or longer than I played any of the other 4k games, and I definitely had a lot of fun the whole time I did. Having packed so many levels in here is a great testament to how simple the game is, and how much variety it can have. I have no criticisms for this, just praise. Well done.

Good game, wish I could restart from in the game!

Ah, nice implementation of Qbert. I like it.

I've rarely played Qbert, honestly I don't think it's a fun game, so I'm a little biased here.

But it did bring back many old memories from the days I first saw computers and started playing on them.

The controls did confuse me, e.g. do I jump North-West or North-East when I press the up arrow? But perhaps that's just how Qbert is.

Good clone, I can appreciate the effort put into this.

Could not start!

I've missed playing a good game of q-bert.

Awesome Q*Bert clone, complete with sound! It was a lot of fun, and reminds me of games like Q*Bert became classics so quickly. Simple, easy to grasp, and fun. I had so trouble getting him to move where I wanted (the keys never seemed to correspond with how my brain told me he should be moving) but I nonetheless could get it working if I really focused on remembering exactly which way he would jump when I pressed an arrow key. I also had a bit of difficulty being able to tell exactly where each ball was, and sometimes I jumped on those floating saucers when it didn't appear as if I should have. Regardless, great work overall - this was a lot of fun.

Nice Qbert! A little hard to get used to the controls, I kept jumping off :(

Game is buggy, I tried holding in the shoot-key and rotate, and after a few seconds the game kept restarting.

But from what I was able to play it seems like a decent Asteroids-like clone. It does seem to play a bit too fast, and also might be too difficult at start. So, there is some balance lacking there.

The graphics are nothing to be impressed about, simple polygon outlines, and not even anti-aliased.

Not exactly my Asteroids-clone of choice to play, but still OK for a 4K.

Simple and minimal asteroid clone. Very fast. Functional but not much else.

Application would not run.

Well, it's asteroids. I can't say that there's much more to it, in fact there may even be a bit less. The movement of the ship felt a little too fast for me, as well as the number of shots allowed and the overall pace of the game. It seemed my best course of action was just to spin about and fire bullets in an arc, holding the space bar down. Because everything floated about so fast and it all wrapped around the screen, I just couldn't watch all angles in any way, nor could I easily enough control my ship to dodge anything. Still, you did a good job having a pretty retro feel and it was pretty fun to play, all in all. It just lost a lot of its potential due to the speed, I think.

Not quite what I expected, but it works well!

Pretty good looking game, the visuals are just fantastic, and the effects, clouds, particles and the shockwaves, are very cool. Physics and maneuvering of the air planes feels very good, and I do like the gameplay.

Too bad it's a team-game, nowadays people don't play together on a single keyboard. Adding some AI opponent would make this a great game.

Good job.

So much goodness here, definitely the best looking game here. Lots of graphics, effects, particles, physics on the planes, etc. SOOO playable, has a bit of the "Looping" game mechanics to it. Only thing that would have made it better would have been computer controlled planes for single player. Fantastic!

Very interesting game.

This is a really awesome game, here. In fact, aside from the frequently mentioned gripe of having no AI opponents, I can't think of anything negative to say. The plane controls are INCREDIBLY well done, smooth, perfect, complete with engines that turn off if you fly too much straight up and some really freaking great graphics, for 4k or otherwise. Even though I had nobody to play against I was suitably impressed with the small amount of gameplay I was able to tap just shooting at myself. The way the screen shakes when you die, the pretty particles that fly up when you get hit, the dust flying behind the planes... the level of detail you managed to fit into 4k is almost staggering. This really is a superb job and is one of the best I've been able to play so far.

Couldn't get this to work :-/

Excellent game, fun puzzle game with some involving character movement, collecting items, multiple levels. Good implementation and the graphics are good.

The first levels seem a bit difficult though, perhaps having smaller maps for the first few levels, and as the player advances in the game the levels become more difficult.

Other than that, I'm very impressed!

Sokoban meets Chips Challenge kind of puzzle. Very nicely done! The controls were good but I hit the wrong rotation a few times and had to re-think my game. Good graphics, rotation effects, smooth. Fun game!

Great game. Very good concept with very simple controls.

This is a brilliant idea and was very well executed, even though I have no idea what that blob guy is supposed to be ;-). I got rather far in this and found the difficulty curve almost perfect. I needed to think to figure out how to get the coins and yet I wasn't overly challenged by it either. I was most impressed by how well you were able to synchronize and pull off the rotation of the level graphically with the change in gravity it created. Seeing as I couldn't control him while he was falling and there was a time limit, however, it seems like it would have made a lot more sense to make him fall a lot faster. Oftentimes I'd be waiting for him to make his way down the screen. Also, an increasing timer would have been better than a limit, I think - let people get high scores rather than putting unneeded pressure on what's more a puzzle game than an action game.

Nice spinny puzzle game in 4K...

Last time I tried something like this was Guitar Hero at a party a year ago, and I got laughed out of the house, I sucked! :(

So, I was absolutely incapable of playing this game. Ghha... something must be wrong with me.

But the times I were able to hit the keys it gave a nice sound :) If I were able to play it I'd think it's a nice game.

I like the visuals, and the use of audio is very cool.

Cute rhythm game and 'Still Alive" was a surprising plus! Pretty simple but it worked. Nothing else to really add other than an explanation of the game and the different color circles would have been nice on an instruction screen.

Was a lot more fun after I turned the volume up. Odd, but really made me want to play Portal when I was finished. :)

Hey there, Shannon. How's GPS software? Anyway. I thought this was fun, and it was impressive that you managed to get a music game in under 4k, even though you only had one tune (it was a good tune). There isn't a whole lot to say about this other than enjoying the use of sound and being impressed with you getting note timings in there correctly too, but I think a few things could have been improved a bit. Basically, the little rain drops or whatever the note indicators were weren't clear when they should be pressed. Was it when it hit the circle? Or when it would get to the center? Or perhaps just as it was about to hit the circle? I had a difficult time understanding exactly when it should be pressed, and it seemed like no matter what the philosophy I chose I wouldn't be exactly correct with it. I also didn't necessarily understand the purpose of the bouncing ball other than to add a bit of spice. But if that's all it was then cool, good for the bouncing ball!

Yay, nice to have audio :) Something a little off about the drips/circles though, I could never get it timed quite right... not sure why!

I like it. It's very retro like, the color theme and the pixellation puts you 20+ years back easily.

The "pods" look like part of the terrain, some flower. So it's not easy to figure out the goal of them unless you read the instructions and try to pick up that blueish flowerish thingy.

Fine game, I like the orbital laser, it's something new, you didn't just give the robot some bean gun which would probably have been the standard way to implement it. Reminds me of the ION cannon in Command and Conquer.

Second level was too difficult for me, I tried a few times, but gave up on it.

Missing is also an indicator how many pods are left, and perhaps a minimap.

Good game!

Liked this one a lot! Great graphics, easy to understand objectives, good play mechanics, etc. Just needs some kick ass sounds! Great job!

I find it quite gratifying being able to shoot lasers from the sky to kill robots. Nice work.

You get huge points for style - this game stands out more than almost any other. The graphics are lovingly crafted and retro - and so is the gameplay. It's small, simple, and sweet, the epitome of what a 4k game should be. You've even included a storyline (despite the fact that it was in your description) which also impresses me. I loved the explosion particle effects for the robots, and the subtle change from the red on their faces to green. Unfortunately, the game overall remained a little bit boring for me before I could even finish a level. The pods were too far scattered and the robot character walked too slowly. There was very little chance of me ever losing a life - instead I was more or less just looking for a few tiny pods in a giant map. A minimap or an arrow directing me to the nearest pod could have helped your game hugely; also having different sorts of robots (say one kind that moves in short rushes, and another that hops) could really eliminate monotony. These comments are picking at a very well put together game, however. This is definitely one of my favorites.

hahhahhaha fun robotronesque game, nice retro styling

I really love the 3D, it's great, and the fade into black adds some nice depth into it.

The game description is nice :) although that's not what I'm rating. I was not able to find any scientists, and drove around in this Chevy Nova and must have slaughtered thousands, without finding any scientists. Are they in different color? How can I find them? I find it strange that I wasn't able to locate even one!

The gameplay seems to lack because of the problem of locating the scientists. All I could do was driving around, admiring the graphics, and driving over the zombies which gave me some weird satisfaction seeing those red splatters on the windshield... oh nevermind! :)

Good looking game, but lacking in gameplay.

Good 3D engine! However, this felt more like a tech demo than a game. One suggestion would be to change the location of the scientist from a radar circle to an arrow at the top of the view field. I kept expecting to see dots pop up on the radar.

Very interesting mix of violence and undead. :)

I really like how your "screenshot" is nothing at all like your game. It almost seems to emphasize the fact that your game is in fact exceptionally above the mark for visuals - you've not only got 3D working very well, you've also got simple lighting effects thrown in. If that's not impressive in a 4k game, I don't know what is. Coupled with this is very fun gameplay, too. I played one of your earlier versions of this and didn't like it very much - I'm glad to see that tweaks have greatly increased my opinion. There isn't much challenge here, but I thought that was just fine because the blood being repeatedly splattered on my virtual windshield was just so pretty. The city is just small enough, there are just few enough scientists, and the radar is just accurate enough that I never found the gameplay tedious. Well done.

it's death race 2000! are there actually scientists anywhere? :)
Has a few near clip problems... and makes it challenging in rare instances that walls are same colors as zombies.

Nice game. Simple in nature, easy to play and understand. I found the words to be rather difficult, and not too obvious, I had to cheat on most of the words :( Perhaps a collection of more natural words would have been a better approach, like "CAT", "HOUSE", "AIRPLANE" etc.

Nice enough, simple and clean visuals. Good idea extracting words from Java language, but that also kills the joy.

very basic word scramble game. Nicely done, but not very interesting. Not much else to say.

Not bad.

I'm a very big fan of the Flash game Anagrammatic, which is very similar to your game. In it, you are given a big list of letters and your task is to find the longest word with those letters as you possibly can. Now that I've said I'm a big fan of that game, I've got the bad news... I think that in its current incarnation your game is missing a ton of its potential. The words are too long, and always being the same length makes them lack in variety. You can type out any letter whatsoever, even if it was never in the letter bank to begin with. Following this, the letters that you have selected are not grayed out or anything else useful like that - so dynamically eliminating letters from the list is not possible (which can really help for word guessing). Perhaps I'm being too harsh - your game does a great job having lots of words and everything it does it does well - I just think you could have done so much more.

good simple game, some issues when words can have multiple unscrambles, and ENTER to cheat is not as intuitive - i kept hitting it accidentally :(

I like this game. It's easy and handy to play, using only two buttons.

The visuals are also very nice, and clear that some effort went into programming the terrain-generation.

But there is something missing in the gameplay, I don't exactly know what, but sailing around at a constant speed does get a bit dull after a few levels, that all seemed to be rather easy, until World 7-8. Perhaps more interaction with the baddies is missing, being able to shoot at them, or they at you. I never collided with the baddies.

Minimap probably missing too, easy to get lost on those larger maps that seem to go on forever.

Good graphics and nice gameplay!
Good 4K addition.

Fun little game with a decent amount of challenge. Good and effective use of graphics. Would be nice to see multiplayer or AI racing opponent included.

Simple, but fun. Probably a little more fun if you were zoomed in further.

This is a neat game, and certainly a clever adaptation of the "collect stuff" idea. Your best accomplishment here is having managed to create the feeling of being at sea - a very busy sea, at that. It sort of seemed like sailing at a crowded marina. The other boats zipping around all over the place was really cool and well done, especially because they add a little bit to the gameplay as well. Having the whole intertia-based world, being sort of space-like, was interesting. I wasn't sure if I completely liked it (I would have enjoyed being able to reduce my speed, or potentially come to a complete stop) but it certainly made for a different play experience. The collision with the dots was maybe a little too difficult, too - sometimes I'd have to go in a circle 4 or 5 times to get one. Still, I thought overall you did a great job. Some more tweaks and you'll have something really special here.

pretty take on an item grabbing game... i kept hitting boats. argh.
:)

Good idea and concept. The waves-effect is quite nice. However, it seems there is only one level? Too bad! I would have liked to see more challenging levels.

Nice idea that I wish you'd taken further.

This is a REALLY neat concept that seems more tech demo than game yet. Put some time and refinement into this and you could have a killer game on your hands. As it stands for this comp, this is just not enough of a game to compete with other more fully formed games here. More time into it and you will have yourself a winner!

Clever and fun game.

The waves in this were very beautiful and impressive, and the scene looks great overall. I also liked the game concept a lot - moving a ship by creating waves is pretty cool! Unfortunately, I found the gameplay quite difficult to get the hang of and so was rather frustrating for me. Because the waves took so long to travel, actions from 10 seconds ago would be moving the ship. Therefore if I saw that it was about to crash, I could do nothing except restart. As such you start needing to plan too many times ahead to ever really know what's going to happen, or you can very very slowly move your ship along in order to be safe. Even if the gameplay was a bit lacking, technically this game is very impressive. The image distortion caused by the waves looks wonderful and the interference and wave cancellation caused by the objects in the water worked very very well. With some sort of adjustment in gameplay, this would be really cool.

Fun concept, pretty hard first level - and crashed on completion as already mentioned

Wow, pretty nice tank game.

The visuals are retro-nice.

Feels a bit sour to be killed by one shot, but it's fun to kill the baddies with one shot. Perhaps give the player tank a bit more armor?

The controls seem OK, although I'm sure there are better controls for rotating the turret than C and V, like the mouse?

New game does not restart wave count. What is the wave count for anyway? Is there a goal? Or is it just to roam around and shoot baddies? In that respect there is something missing that gives the player a sense of accomplishment.

Great game and nice retro-visuals. Clever enough AI. I know all too well how difficult it can be to make tank games like this, so I take my hat off for you!

Decent tank game, complex controls, and TRON theme?!? That gets you a percentage point or two alone ;) Fun to play and easy to pick up. Good job!

Nice 4k reminder of Tron. :)

This game was a nightmare to get running. Your webhost is totally broken so after trying like a million different ways of getting your app running I couldn't. Then I decided to see if I could find it on JGO and did, but then I had to unzip the app, tried running it in the console, couldn't, and finally had to make an applet to run it. Yeesh.

That aside, I finally did get it working, hopefully the other judges went through the same effort for you. I was very impressed by the complicated controls, pretty graphics, and multiple types of enemies. You really did capture the big floating staple from Tron quite well. However, the whole one-hit-kill thing really didn't work out for me. I never even could beat the first level, because I didn't know if the approaching enemy was a tank (strafe sideways and shoot it first) or the big floating staple (shoot shoot shoot before it gets to me), so it was often blind luck, and by the time I was aiming I was already dead. If you had added in hit points that really would have improved things. Your visuals are quite pretty and I'm impressed with how much you squeezed into this.

nice Tron emulation... but game is toooo hard :)

Great game and very original idea! I quite like this, the gameplay, the feeling of it and everything!

Multiple colors of the paint balls and painting, intuitive usage of the paint sling, nice splattering effect and usage of physics.

My only comment is probably more of a suggestion, and that is to limit the number of paint balls, so instead of finishing the levels with minimum number of balls, the player gets a define number of balls and his goal is to paint at least some percentage of the walls. Higher difficulty setting could increase the minimum painted wall percentage required to complete a level.

Good game, I enjoyed it. You just need to the idea a bit further, improve the gameplay just slightly, add more levels, etc. and you'll have a instant hit!

Fun to play with for a bit, the gameplay became too repetitive, too quickly. I appreciate the style and the splatter effect was nice, but the physics were too simple for this kind of game.

Very unusual, but interesting none the less.

Wow. Really, this game has earned a wow. You managed to make it incredibly beautiful, simple, and fun, all great things. You can't tell by the screenshot, but there really is a gorgeous atmosphere in this game. I really felt like I was in a darkened room and needed to shoot fluorescent paint-filled globs at the walls in order to see. If you had taken this concept further so that you perhaps had to platform and needed to shoot these in order to move around, that would have been even another level to it. As it stands, the gameplay is more of a play around with no real goal type thing, which is fine. Eventually, however, it got a little frustrating to hit certain walls from my fixed position, and I wished I would have been able to move around a bit.

I'd love to see this concept fleshed out further, I really enjoyed playing it! The use of darkness is very effective, and the splashing paint is also a nice effect...

Nice looking 3D space shooter, although the gameplay is not good. I was frustrated not being able to hit the baddies, my aim was always off, even at a close range!

The controls were fine, but I was not able to position the ship correctly to shoot straight at the baddies.

But, doing 3D always impresses me, and a space shooter with bullets, baddies capable of shooting, starfield etc. It's impressive, but as usual with 3D games the gameplay seems to be forgotten.

Really impressive engine for a 4K game! Polygons, particle effects, enemy/timer, starfield, etc. Biggest problem was being able to tell where you were shooting which increased the difficulty level a bit. Very nice!

Game would not launch.

This is an impressive display of 3D in a 4k environment, but the gameplay is pretty simple and unexceptional. It seems like your priority here was to get a 3D spaceship game running - and you accomplished that beautifully - but not to have a fun game. I found the shot firing mechanism hokey (because I was trying to press the space bar each time to shoot a bullet, rather than holding the space bar, your timing mechanism in that regard is messed up), it was often very difficult to judge where my bullets were going to go, it was near impossible to dodge bullets, and I frequently needed to fly offscreen to hit anything. Upping the speed of it all (mostly the plane's maneuverability) and having enemies fly around the screen could have really helped things. Because the gameplay has so many issues, overall your score isn't very high, but your technical and presentation scores are very good.

A little hard to tell where I am shooting - need a reticle or something. Also seems to be missing my fire button presses... two things together which are driving me bananas :)

Too much reading for a game that's supposed to be easy to start playing. I did not understand how to play it, and I got turned off by the high learning-curve. Unless players know exactly what to expect from this game I'm not sure many are willing to study the game manual to play it.

It seems like a well implemented game that you put a lot of thought and effort into, so I feel bad about shooting you down here.

Next time, make it make sense easier.

Love PuzzleQuest/Galactrix and this one is a really good clone. AI bot, +3 and +4 matches, additional turns, etc. wondering how all fit in 4K!

Nice job.

You managed to get so much complexity into 4k that it's even more than I could ever handle in a 4,000,000,000k game. That's pretty damn awesome, but I also had very little idea what was going on plus I kept losing. "Bejewled? Okay! Wait? Huh?" Was sort of my reaction to this. Why was I selecting an island? I didn't know. I still don't. But one thing can be said - you had a damn smart AI. It always found the best moves and thoroughly kicked by butt all over the place. The island selector also looked really cool and you somehow managed to make this feel like a nifty little treasure or navigation gizmo. But then I was playing a game that made my brain explode (yes, I read the instructions). High marks for technical merit because of complexity and AI, but overall not so high because the game was so cryptic.

Nice take on a match three game, with an AI

Nice. I actually quite like this Mario clone. The strange looking sphere seemed weird at start, but I eventually got used to it. Perhaps a little physics touch to the spheres might have been a good idea.

Easy to start playing, and does provide the player with a challenge in avoiding getting killed.

Multiple worlds, nice visuals, multiple levels, movement of baddies, the flag pole at the end, it's all very good.

I myself would probably have gone for a different look, but same gameplay. But that's just to be unique :)

Good job, I like it quite a lot.

Mario type gameplay with marbles. Good and challenging, scrolling engine is nicely done, good difficulty curve. Just too simplistic overall.

Reminds me of a game...just can't quite place my finger on it. :-p

This game makes me laugh in a very good way. I was truly pleased to see such a faithful clone of Mario somehow crammed into the constraints of Java 4k. Clearly, your biggest strength here is how you managed to get the actual feeling of Mario mimicked, despite using balls for all the enemies. And having 8 levels or so is a huge feat, too! I sometimes got a bit frustrated with this because I would die from a 2-pixel misestimation (I believe Mario would actually fudge bouncing on enemies to your favor) and not being able to see enough of the playing area at one time. Your collisions and gravity and the like were nonetheless spot-on, I especially liked rolling up the slanted tiles. This is definitely a praiseworthy submission, even though it's just a battle against a bunch of multi-colored balls. At least you didn't have blue ones, right? :-)

fun! a little unforgiving but I really enjoyed it :)

Smarty and tricky game :) I played this first when it was published, and I then thought it was a good game, as I still do now.

Graphics and visuals are fine, somewhat brown though, but that's just fine.

Fun little puzzle game that reminds me of a combination of Netwalk and Sokoban... (maybe far fetched!). I'd definitely play this one again some day.

Whooo! Great game! Brain busting, with throwbacks to Chu Chu Rocket. Easy to understand controls, play mechanics make this fun to play. Had to really think about a few levels. Excellent job!

Clever puzzle game.

I remember playing this way back when you entered it for LD13, and I thought it was just as fun then as I do now. Your very simple concept is very well executed, moves smoothly and is brain-tweaking. Even though your game is only 4k it did better than mine did in LD, and that's entirely due to its ingenuity. This game could have sucked without good level design, but it's got it in spades. I needed to think a lot more than I expected here, as well as act quickly to move blocks around in adjustment; but I never needed to act too quickly. Your balance in all realms is great, although the game is a tad simple to be truly exceptional. Despite great design, it can become a little boring after a few levels.

Original idea, and fun! Well executed...

Interesting game. The visuals are quite nice, the treasure hunting character, the bats, and the map all seem to look very good! I'm not sure about those green blobs, what they are supposed to be, they don't fit into the environment you've created.

I really like the maze/level generating algorithm. Although some levels are noticeably easier than others, where the treasure is close to the exit.

Smooth and easy to play, I really like the graphics and the treasure hunting atmosphere it creates.

The gameplay is not that superb, but still OK for a 4K. It's more of a game of moving slowly than fast, as the bats will eat you up quickly if you try to explore too fast.

Good game with nice visuals!

Fun game! Like the random maze generation and interesting variety of monsters and different attacks. Fun!

Those bats are fast and mean!!!

Aaaugh, I got bats in my hair! Cool game, I agree with the comment that this sort of felt like Ski Run with the abominable snowman. I was just running as fast as I could hoping to get away from all those vicious bats. The gameplay itself was fairly simple, but worked very well. The one problem with this is that I didn't get enough visual feedback from picking up treasure, getting to a new level (aka dropping down a hole), and the like. I just sort of felt like I was futzing around and running away from crazy bats. Do those little globules even do anything to you? I just saw them twitching around in the corner and decided to avoid them. Anyway, fun game.

fun and simple, reminded me of Venture in the arcade :)

Nice! I really like this game, it's fun to play, quite addictive, but maybe a bit difficult to beat the computer :(

The spheres are nicely rendered, they even reflect off each other! Wow! And the board has a nice touch too.

Only problem I could find was that I couldn't figure out swap "seats" with the computer.

Good game, and a good choice for a 4K game, not too complicated gameplay, but still a good gameplay.

Simple and effective. Not much to say.

Now I remember why I always hated tic-tac-toe. :-p

Well, there's not much to say about this. It's very slightly larger tic-tac-toe. The enemy AI is very strong (not bad for a solved game), to the point where I either tied or I lost. The balls reflecting each other looks really great... really, what else can I say about this?

wow the computer is much better at this than i am :) nice rendering!

Arghh.. the controls!! I'm sorry, but I could not enjoy this game because of the controls. It just felt very unnatural how I'm supposed to shoot my weapons, and all those combos were just impossible. Perhaps the mouse would have been a better substitute, I don't know, but this felt awkward.

The AI bot moves too fast, and unpredictably, for me to hit it.

The colors seem to be Java's standard, which I really dislike. No anti-aliasing which this game would need to make the filled shapes look better. IMO you could have put a better visual finish on this game with little effort or code.

I do appreciate the technical work put into this game, but beyond that I'm little impressed by the gameplay and visuals, but the technical part seems in good order.

Very basic game, not really Virtual On ;) Simplistic game play and not much to it. Needs more refinement.

Why does red always have to be so abusive?

I've never played the original Virtual On so I can't comment on how true your adaptation is, but I can say that your gameplay was pretty fun but overall was too difficult for me. I had a lot of trouble coordinating my shooting and my running around - a lot of the time I needed to do one or the other. I wanted W to always go up, S, to always go down, and A and D to always go left and right. Then my mouse could determine where I was shooting. Maybe I've played too many games of that type before (because I know that this isn't typically how mech games work), but it was just too difficult for me as is. Still, all the different weapon types and the pretty intelligent enemy AI are both great achievements.

[Judge wrote no review]

I really got stuck on this game, couldn't figure this one out, never played Text Twist. I'm also very bad at these word puzzle games (Hang Man is OK) but anything else and I'm just lost.

Seems to be missing something like "Next Round" button, or "Skip Word". If I can't figure out the word, why bother with the game if I can't continue by skipping? At least I felt compulsed to close the game to restart.

Seems like a fine game, although I was not able to enjoy it.

GOOOOD! Simple yet effective. Some things to consider adding would be no time limit option, hint option after a period of time (a-la Puzzle Quest DS), adding your own words. Would love to see you expand this, perhaps into 16-32K, add network play, some audio and graphics and you would have a killer game. Your version would actually make a good mobile game. Not much else to say!

Nice work.

Great fun! Definitely a worthy clone of the classic game. I had a lot of fun with it even though I didn't do amazingly well. I typically got the long word, though, so that's good, right? There isn't too much to say about this other than the fact that it's a faithful remake in 4k. You haven't done anything different, but that's fine. It all works well and is pleasantly presented. There was one bug I encountered (perhaps intentional?) where I pressed delete a few times and suddenly I was back at the start window.

works great! how'd you fit all the words in there? :)

Ah... a small entertaining race car game :) I like it. Good looking graphics, grass and mud road, desert environment, and snowy. The car and the tire tracks look very nice. The visuals are very good. And I believe you have a different grip on the road depending on the map? (Not sure of this though).

Only thing missing are opponents. But the best-time gameplay is alright for this game. The tracks are also fun to drive on.

Fine game.

Love this game! Multiple levels, different physics for each, high scores, etc. Very very impressive!

Basic racing game. Nice idea, but limited in scope.

This game is great. You really got the racing mechanics, along with drift, down perfectly. For a 4k game, this is an absolute marvel. Although most of the replay value was in the high score list, the ghost cars and the almost infinite possibility for improvement really stood out. I played this over and over again, trying to get that one turn just right so I could finally beat my score. It also got sort of maddening at times because I would mess up one tiny part of the track, but that's just the way these things go! The game is also great to look at and goes very smoothly. And did I mention that the ghost cars are very impressive? They match what you did exactly. And the tire skids are great, although eventually there are way too many to tell what you're doing.

wow, is that really 4K? Soo much fun, well done! Love that you have a high score table too.