For a full review and the judges comments on each game, I have prepared “The Judges Report” Click to download:
I will contact the winners to organise prizes later today.
JudgesCommentsV2.pdf (1.48 MB)
(Version two of the judges report includes note on the 5% penalty. Without the penalty, undertow scored 4.5, with the penalty it scored 4.3.)
Nice! CONGRATULATIONS to Thatmster and Grenzer.
The fact that I got only 0.1 points more than horsey adventure is insulting.
That was a close one. I’m curious if the 5% penalty that were mentioned voting documentation is included. Is it? Because it’s not mentioned in the final documents and that it probably swap a few places.
(If not, its 4.3 would reslut in 4.05 and drop to the second place.)
I agree, and wasn’t Undertow supposed to get 5% reduction of points, I think Ecclesia got the same amount of points as I was winning with the vote, but I don’t feel like you should have lost, I think your game was better developed.
Horsey Adventure was a complete game, well executed and with no bugs. There are many areas in game design where it’s possible to make mistakes, one is to have too big an area with too few objectives so that the pacing of the game feels too slow (the only bad point of brave pig IMHO) another is to have no direction or hints on what to do next so that you feel lost, or that you might be missing something.
Horsey adventure managed to avoid all these problems and more.
Remember that there were 11 games to play, most people could only devote a short time to platesting each one (I set myself 5 minutes for each). All the people playing Horsey adventure reported a positive experience, and feedback was generally good.
I think every developer here could learn something from that game.
I think every developer here could learn something from that game.
I may take this to heart and try to make a more basic game that is fast paced and easy to understand.
I am excited to do more of these challenges, because I feel like I am getting somewhere more advance in my design skill.
Thanks sdfgeoff for the great competition, and I am sorry that you were the one to deal with any drama.
Fredstash
This was a very close BGMC, thanks to sdfgeoff for organizing the judges and feedback!
I’m also curious whether the penalty is included…although having no cons as game feedback hopefully meant it was.
No prizes have been accepted yet (although being able to host a bgmc would be awesome :D), so there shouldn’t be much of a problem there in regards to transition.
Your calculations are not correct though, 5% = 0.25, so this must be taken from all judges feedback and averaged out.
This is what the equation should look like:
(judge1_score +judge2_score + judge3_score -0.75 ) / 3
I was quite amazed at how much you had improved since the last BGMC! Its cool to see people improving and getting better over time.
Lemme clarify what I was saying, I agree with Nichola_A because of how far ahead he was, and then to only be brought down, when he was leading by a lot to some other games, that is insulting.
I got the same rating that I was getting in the vote, so I feel good about my rating, but for those who were winning, I feel like that is wrong, I really don’t think Undertow did well enough to have won be comfortable margins compared to EMS.
Horsey Adventure wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t leading in the vote, and it is discouraging to see your score go down so much when going from voting to judging.
The win is inclusive of the 5% penalty. Without the penalty they scored 4.5
I will update the Judges report shortly
edit: Updated
Let me tell you why it was insulting (not the fact that I lost). Horsey adventure was complete. It did have a mission. However, I don’t know how much effort the developer put into the game but if I had made it, I could have completed it in 2 days. I worked on my game for about 4-5 hours every day, sometimes more than that, for the entire week. I put in way more effort into my game only to get just 0.1 points more. In my opinion, Horsey adventure should have been down there by snowflakes. “although the games lowest score was on it’sgraphics.” (Every Man’s Sky comments). I really have to disagree with that statement. I have never seen anybody going around and telling Pig Art that his models are ugly.
Adrian, your game was also better than Horsey adventure. So was Cave miner as well.
Congrats everyone! Had a lot of fun doing this, I’m a bit guilty of not playing everyone’s games yet, so I can’t really agree/disagree with what people are saying about the results. But since people couldn’t vote respectively, having the judges vote was the only safe option. I would also like to thank them for hosting bgmc because it got me off my lazy game making ass to create something lol
The judges results are final.
The formula for calculating the 5% loss is:
overall_score = average(judges_overall_votes)
graphics_score = average(judges_graphics_votes)
sound_score = average(judges_sound_votes)
theme_score = average(judges_theme_votes)
combined_score = overal_score * 0.5 + graphics_score * 0.25 + sound_score * 0.15 + theme_score * 0.1
#Everyone else's score goes up to here
#UnderTow also has the following
final_score = combined_score * 0.95
The numbers were then rounded to one decimal place.
5% = 0.25
I have no idea where you got this from. 5% is 0.05
Horsey adventure had a complete story, a beginning, a middle and an end. After 5 minutes, you got the satisfaction of ‘finishing’ the game. This made it enjoyable. It’s graphics were simple, but consistent. Overall it was a fun game to play. I think it deserves the 3.6 stars it got. Games don’t have to be complex to be fun, and the most fun games are often the simple ones. Horsey Adventure had a lot of simple ‘charm.’ to it.
Every Mans Sky suffered from the same issue it’s counterpart did: after exploring a couple of worlds, you felt like you’d seen all there was to see. As such, when you close the game, you leave wondering what you have achieved. It is worth noting that the “lowest score was on graphics” (which was still a 3.0) is likely a result of visual disparity. A high poly spaceship, low poly planets. Highly detailed skyboxes and stars, but simple shaded terrain and flora. Thus, which certain aspects of the graphics were better than Horsey adventure, the half-way between detailed and low-poly made it appear unfinished.
One thing I have noticed between the (previous) community vote and the judge vote is the way they rank half-finished games. The games were ranked by the judges basd on the completeness of the experience - was it actually fun to play and pretty to look at.
But the community ranked the games based how impressive it was with respect to BGE. So for Every Mans Sky and Cave Miner, they are technically impressive but lacking in terms of player experience.
I think this is just a result of a different approach. The community is here to make games. The judges are here to play them.
I don’t know how much effort the developer put into the game but if I had made it, I could have completed it in 2 days. I worked on my game for about 4-5 hours every day, sometimes more than that, for the entire week. I put in way more effort into my game only to get just 0.1 points more.
Games aren’t reviewed based on how much effort went into the development. All the player cares about is how fun they are to play.
I really don’t think Undertow did well enough to have won be comfortable margins compared to EMS.
Look at them as a game. If nothing else, look at the gameplay length in Kendrick’s Let’s Play videos. He played EMS for ~6 minutes, and Undertow for ~20 (he said his first run was ~40?). If you had to pay the same money for EMS and for Undertow, which was better value for money? Which one did he look like he was having more fun playing?
I know I had fun in Undertow, but in EMS? Eh, kind-of.
Ah, well f*ck you too mate.
Thanks to all for their efforts. Especially to sdfgeoff for hosting this which was for sure a lot of work and to the judges who had an ungrateful job. Remember they all do it voluntary and i think they did a good job.
Even if not participating at the BGMC it was overall a good and entertaining thing to watch.
Ive got nothing against you or your game. Congrats on getting the score that you did.
I don’t think Nichola_A was speaking out against you or your game. I will say however, that Graphical Quality is important in a game, and his was quite good. Also, “Exploration” obviously was not clearly defined, because some people had many mission based exploration and others(Like EMS) has EXPLORE-type exploration. I don’t think traveling around delivering letters or whatever fits the description of “exploration” as well as fly to 70+ planets and seeing the different types of unique properties of each.
Look, few got further away from bringing an absolute objective to their game than me, but even fewer got nearly as close to the theme of Exploration as Nicholas_A.
how do you delete a post?
Well you focist mosly on scripeding and he mosly focist on Story, wall the Winner UnderTow was a poor rip off a an existing AAA game. I was hoping the winner would of been a game that had a new take on it’s design atmosphere and story, maybe next BGMC winner will be more inspiring to keep making games.
Congrats on everyone Hard work, we all had to take shortcuts to make the deadline, maybe no-one more then me having only found out about the contest 6 hours before the closing of entrys. And my score suffered becuse of it.
Despite being in dead last every contest I am ready to start on the next One. 
Add me to a Email List Title it “BGMC Starting” my @ is [email protected]