Contrast 2008 [5] >>1237

Contrast 2008 [5] >>1237
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Only then, at the Games Convention Asia 2008 at Suntec Convention Hall, the winners
of Contrast 2008 are announced. In the beginning it was decided that there will be
only 3 winner teams out of 24 participating teams.

- Best Overall
- Most Innovative
- Most Entertaining

However, at the last minute, the judges announced that there is one more winner,
he calls it Most Promising. So, in total there are 4 winner teams.

As I mentioned on >>1227, out of the 24 teams, 5 teams consist of (partly or entirely)
people that went to GAMBIT internship (http://gambit.mit.edu). My team was one of them.

During the winner announcement, the "Most" winners were announced first. The judge said
that the Best Overall team will be awarded with $800, sponsored by Ubisoft. I thought
there were no prizes at all, because they never mentioned it.

Half surprisingly, the winners are all from GAMBIT. They are:

- Most Promising: Human vs Nature

  A strategy game with "nature" on the left, "humans" on the right. Players can choose to build
  strength, defence, or attack the opponent. The party that can go to the other side win. No AI,
  just a 2 player game.
 

- Most Innovative: MotherFarmer

  Players need to farm by bringing clouds to the seed and the trees. But, to bring the cloud,
  they need to move the mouse slowly. After the cloud arrives at the target, to grow the seed,
  click the mouse button rapidly. It goes very well with the game theme Fast and Slow.
 

- Most Entertaining: Moopoot

  I didn't know before this contest that cows can expel methane gas when they fart. If I am not
  mistaken, the gas is dangerous to the ozone. So, in this game, the player acts as a person that
  brings a pump to collect the cows' gas before the cows become inflated and go to the sky and
  break the ozone layer. A thing that is good here is that the artwork looks funny and polished.

- *Best Overall: Solar: 24h*

  This came as a big surprise to me and my team! We didn't expect winning that high, especially
  that the previous 3 winners had been announced. I liked a game created by the other GAMBIT team,
  and I thought it would be the winner. (The game was about earthworms that you can choose
  whether to split them to produce more but harder to control, or leave them as is.)

Because there was no leader, medo and I as the ones sat on the side, went towards the stage,
but I took medo's photo instead. The judge had more or less commented that the game was
made until it is perfectly complete and polished. He liked the ideas of using solar energy to kill
mosquitoes, especially when Dengue is being talked about. He also liked the ending animation
where the protagonist sleeps in peace after eliminating all the mosquitoes.

Here, for the second time (the first time was when the competition ended), I felt what I learned
at GAMBIT proved very useful in developing games. We didn't plan to create a complicated game
that was impossible to finish perfectly in 24 hours, instead we planned to limit the game to be
simple, straightforward, while preventing addition of unneeded "bonus" or "patch" features.
We had a relaxed time during the 24 hours, we had time to chat relaxedly both inside and outside
the computer lab.

Of course, the entire thing that happened here was impossible without Lord Jesus, who has in
His discretion made us come out with the idea and planning ^^


Want to try our game? Download here (Solar24h-1.0.exe) http://www.kejut.com/download/384