Competition 4: The Winners
Finally, here are the result for the fourth YoYo Games competition with as a theme: Save the Planet. The judging was difficult as always. Not only were there 230 entries to choose from, but the quality of the top entries was very similar, which made it very hard for us to determine the winners. But we finally made our selection:
1st Place, [$1000] : Greentech by Mr Chubigans
Geentech
MrChubigan has been around for a very long time. He was one of the early users of Game Maker. Greentech is a game with a very distinct (green) style that looks as if it is being played on a very old TV. The goal of the game is to control the wind to bring the clouds of pollution towards the cleaning facilities. An easy game play concept but much harder than it may sound. The game is polished and includes a tutorial to teach you how to play. Original and fun to play.
2nd Place, [$500] : EcoRush by andywiltshirenz
EcoRush
EcoRush is a game in which one species tries to invade the region of another, by capturing all the other species. This is turned into a relatively simple but intriguing turn-based board game that required considerable thinking. The game is beautifully polished with wonderful graphics and descriptions of the different areas on earth where the game can be played. You can play both against the computer and against other human players. (You can even let the computer play against itself, which is good to learn the tactics.)
3rd Place, [$250] : Incoming: Battle for the Planet Earth by hcs89
Incoming: Battle for the Planet Earth
This is the first contribution of hcs89 to YoYo Games, and immediately a winner. Incoming: Battle for the Planet Earth is a space shooting game in which you must save the planet from enemies from outer space. It has some elements from Tower Defense as you must carefully place the weapon systems to hit the approaching enemies. But you must also decide where to shoot to and which weapons to use. The graphics is nice and the game play is fast and interesting (although at some stage it suddenly becomes much more difficult).
Runners-Up (in no particular order)
Teka Teki – A puzzle game with elements of Tetris.
Jake Skill and the Crystal Quest – A platform game that might look simple but is very challenging.
Gray and Green – Another platform game in which you must bring the color back to the gray world.
Mars Conflict – A space-invader style shooter game.
Planet Earth Crusaders – A top-view battlefield action game.
Agent Bunn-e – A simple, addictive action game that requires quick reactions.
Earth vs. Mars – A strategic space game in which you must wisely use the energy you collect.
And you can find all the other great entries here: All Competition Entries.
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February 15th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Aww… I didn’t even get “Best of the rest” this time around. Well next time I’m definetely winning! I’m very ambitious for the next comp.
I wish you could atleast announce the next theme. Since I can’t wait to start working.
February 15th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Big congratulations to Mr Chubigans and the other winners. Chubigans especially – he’s done some amazing work lately and it’s good to see him rewarded for it.
February 15th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Wow. I REALLY didn’t like Greentech. It was boring… Definitely not how I expected the turnout.
February 15th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Congrats to the winners and runner-ups!
I’m wondering if there is any way to see some feedback. After working on a game for 2-3 months, it would be great to see as to why a game didn’t make it.
Cheers!
February 15th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
This was a great competition, and unlike the last two, I agree with the results. Congratulations to the winners!
February 15th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
[...] today Mark Overmars announced the winners of YoYo Game’s fourth [...]
February 15th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Heheheh, you spelled Jake wrong on the Runners-Up list.
Huh, I gotta start entering some of these competitions or at the very least I should play more games……
February 15th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
aww… all that work and not even a featured. Oh well next time.
February 15th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
how come there was only 7 runner ups this time, with no “best of the rest”?
February 15th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
We decided this time to go for the best 10 games. So three winners and seven runner-ups.
We might make a few other games featured the coming weeks but we did not want to do all of them at once because otherwise they won’t show up on the home page.
February 15th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
[...] Yes, the announcement today that greenTech has taken home first place is incredibly awesome. I’m totally shocked, amazed, excited, and…well, I’m just [...]
February 15th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
If you plan on having more runner-ups why did you not announce them all at the same time, and then display them over a period of time ?…
Glad there will (hopefully) be some more, though.
February 15th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Did no one else get addicted to Garbage Galactica? GreenTech was slow and quite boring. I quit very soon (maybe i didn’t give it enough chance) after starting.
I hadn’t played Ecorush but i hear that one is a bit the same.
Haven’t played Incoming either but it looks good.
Out of the Runners up GG also beat the two i played in their, Gray and Green and Agent Bunn-e
I guess it’d just my opinion but i’m shocked to see such a great game get no recognition.
Oh well i guess you guys have your reasons for picking those games. It was a good comp anyway ^_^
February 15th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
I can see why you guys choose those winners, but I really can’t see how that Jake Skill game got a runner up, because its full of glitches and it’s not really that interesting.
February 15th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Congratulations to Mr Chubigans! One of the legends in Game Maker. One of the best game makers.
February 16th, 2009 at 2:31 am
Congratulations especially to Mr Chubigans. After so many years making some really great (and inspiring) games it’s good to know you’ve been rewarded for one of them, err, monetary reward.
Wasn’t a great fan of Incoming: Battle for the Planet Earth but that’s just my opinion – all very good games and very worthy winners!
February 16th, 2009 at 2:40 am
Miracle. As well as usually. Unfairly.
February 16th, 2009 at 6:00 am
Great stuff! I’m incredibly glad to see greenTech in first place. Rightfully deserved if you ask me.
February 16th, 2009 at 7:35 am
Aww, not even mentioned again, I’m glad you liked it at least, MT =). Time to fix stuff and resubmit it again I guess, feels shameful to have a game with a rating of 2.7 :p.
I can’t say I agree much with the results, but at least there weren’t as clear who would win this time =). Also, the ratings in the competition were a joke this time, you ought to fix it.
February 16th, 2009 at 9:27 am
congrats to all the winners, especially Mr Chubigans.
but doesn’t the winner usually get a star next to his name, and shouldn’t the game say first place not featured?
February 16th, 2009 at 9:49 am
We will work on fixing some more ratings for competition entries but this is a lot of work.
It is unfortunately that the community cannot handle the rating of competition games in a mature way.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Not when ratings are completely anonymous and duplicate accounts are created by the bucket-load with no consequences.
I also think honest raters find it a little hard to rate. 5/5 in standard game reviews implies a game that is nearly perfect. 5/5 the way Netflix does it means “I Loved It”. It may not have been a perfect game, but it strongly appealed to the rater.
I think if there were tooltips for each star rating showing the emotional response of the rater (hated it, liked it, loved it), honest ratings would be easier.
February 16th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
These games only from the first raitings page. Judges did not look at all other games.Each time games is worse and results are unfair. Please delete my account. I do not wish to dishonour the name being here. The best wishes to this rotting site.
February 16th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Congrats to all the winners!
Just one question to ask, if the judges know there is unfair rating going on, then why do the rules clearly state:
“They will however take the play count and ratings of the games on the site into account”?
February 16th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
We look more at the play counts than the ratings. But in the end these are our favorites. They definitely where not the games with the top ratings. (They are now as we corrected the bad ratings that these competition games always seem to get.)
February 16th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
it took so much to decide winners it would be nice to see some words about every game in comp and why its won or not. there was better games then mines (Mars Conflict) but they are not even in runner-ups.
February 16th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
btw yoyogames should put ratings by IP not by COOKIES and fake ratings will be 90% solved. becouse now you only need to delete cookies and you can vote again. everyone can easly delete cookies and vote again but not everyone can easly change IP addres and not everyone knows what the hell IP adress is…
February 16th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
I thought my game was a very good platform game, but other “normal” platform games got runner ups. After working on my game for months I want to know why It didn’t get featured.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
While a comment about each game from the judges would be good, most competition entries get some professional comments on their profile without the judges help – not everyone is willing to wait an extra few weeks for judges to write a comment about *every* entry.
I like the idea of rating by emoticon instead of stars – this won’t stop intentional downraters, but I think moderating or disabling duplicate account creation by IP would help. Perhaps you could disallow new accounts to rate until a certain level of activity has been undertaken (though not something like number of comments, because this will support spam).
@CRYSTALL_M
Judges look at every game. I never actually saw EcoRush myself, and I went through the first 3 pages of highest rated entries. Some of these games were far down the ladder and received honourable mentions. The results don’t need to be “fair”, the judges don’t have to award 1st prize to some mediocre tutorial remake because the creator hasn’t won a prize yet. It’s just about who creates the best casual games, and its up to the judges to decide.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
I truly believe that those who are complaining about the results should keep it under their hats. I’m not saying that I’m agreeing with you or not, but I believe that people who have made the list would not appreciate what is being said in public. If you don’t agree with the results talk about it in private.
Once again, congrats to all the winners
February 17th, 2009 at 12:44 am
“but not everyone can easly change IP addres” – I just have to switch my router off then back on again.
February 17th, 2009 at 12:45 am
Oh, and congrats to all concerned!
February 17th, 2009 at 1:02 am
I agree with shroomz120, it would be great to get some feedback of some sort.
If you play through all the games, you must have some kind of rating on them, or something.
February 17th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
2RhysAndrews
Judges did not look further the first page. My game the first time too was on the first page. Was. But this have been attacked by downraters. Jumper Tree undoubtedly it is better than the majority of games of this competition. And it is exact more CASUAL. I am assured that judges at all have not noticed my game because this on the 4 or 5 page now. Recently win games of dear authors instead of those who has made better.
Continue as further and your site will really turn to crowd of children which are capable to make only modified Street Race.
Sorry for bad english. I am from Russia. Certainly it is one more reason that me to hate, considering what comments I have written in the previous competition.
One game to which have fairly given a prize is INCOMING.
And why my account still is not removed? I do not want that my name has been dishonoured by this site. All the same I the professional programmer, instead of the schoolboy slobbering of Mario.
Probably it is time to study more demanded language, such as Action Script. Recently Game Maker has no future.
February 17th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
I digged out my password to log in and reply to some peoples comments.
There were 230 entries listed, only three can win and only a select few can be classed as ‘Best of the rest’, ‘Honourable Mention’ or ‘Runners-up’. If they deemed your game wasn’t good enough to take their top prizes or make the list, it isn’t because they are wrong but because that is their opinion.
@CRYSTALL_m – You claim they didn’t look past the first page just because ‘Jumper Tree’ wasn’t on the list. We all have different opinions; it is one of the reasons why judging competition entries take a long time. For you to come out and just call them liars because a game YOU liked didn’t win THEIR competition is just rude. Their competition, their winners. This isn’t a public vote like the GMC Cage Match or Chronic’s Simulation & Sports Contest, it is closed voting by the judges elected to judge the games at YYG.
$1000, $500 and $250 is up for grabs every few months and if you don’t want a piece of the action then fine, but don’t come complaining and accusing people of telling lies with absolutely no proof to support such claims.
February 17th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
I think the rating system should be changed from stars to thumbs ups/thumbs downs. There wouldn’t be a limit to high or low your game could get rated and while that would give downraters a small advantage, in the long run it would really start separating the good games from the bad games. I mean, a peice of crap tutorial rip can have a three star rating from a few idiots while a really good game can also have a 3 star rating from people who like it and downraters. If we had a thumbsup/down system, the site could judge popularity by how many uprates the game gets as well as plays.
Back to the competition, I can’t really say who I think should’ve won or not since I havn’t been playing many games here. But congradulations to all of those who won and get an honorable mention!
February 18th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Awesome. Any news on Comp05?
February 18th, 2009 at 11:39 am
I give my congratulations to the winners!
February 18th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
heum…. its just me or all those games are a little bit… heum… boring… i mean..I totally agree with you bbgaming… game maker can do so much better that those flsh-kind games with no miving screen or animation… how could anyone ignore the game called “save the planet”… it was so more professional than every game a saw on this website… hand made graphics and so different than every other games… I’m a bit disapointed by those results…
February 19th, 2009 at 2:49 am
They’re looking for casual games in these competitions. Games you can just play without having to do too much.
Man, I hate the casual gaming market. I like epic adventures/stories like Legend of Zelda and Paper Mario. The regular Mario series is starting to go casual as well; for Super Mario Galaxy, beating the game was easy. But they still left in a little hardcore for people who wanted to find all of the stars.
February 19th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Hi,
Sorry, do we just wait to be contacted regarding prizes?
Cheers
February 19th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Congrats to all of the winners and the runner-ups!
Any word on competition05? I hope the plot is better than the one for this comp.
Also, I think we had way too long to submit our entries. Maybe for the next comp you guys should cut down on the time we are given to create the games.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
The winners will be contacted about their prizes but this might take a while.
- Mark
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:24 am
If you reduced the number of runners up because you couldn’t display them all at once, why not just make the spotlight able to fit 10 games instead of 6?
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:14 am
How come you only fix the rating for the winners. I hate having only 2.8 stars, but I don’t want to lose all my plays, comments, and reviews, so I don’t delete it.
I hope you are planing on fixing the ratings for some of these games.
February 22nd, 2009 at 6:22 pm
@EasyBeak – Probably because it is meant to feature games, and not many people will sit through as it shifts through 5 different screens of two games.
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Congrats to everyone who won
I think Mr.Chubigans deserved to win.
Anyways Mark Overmars, when can we expect Competition05 to start, or when we will at least get some news about it?
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:48 am
Is there ANY news on comp05?
February 23rd, 2009 at 2:49 pm
They’ll give us news when they think of a good theme for competition 05. Just be patient.
@Kay J-You have a point, not many people will sit through 5 screens showing two games each. But how hard can it be to make it show four games per shift? Four, five, possibly more!
I’m still partial to the idea of a random game per day showed on the front page. Albeit very slowly, it would eventually help find the good games within the sea of not-so-good-games.
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Not much of a competition if it’s always going on.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:00 am
I know it could be a while but I didnt make a game for comp 4 so i could practice to make a game for comp 5 and i cant wait to see the theme!
February 26th, 2009 at 3:46 am
A bit curious as to why it takes a while to obtain paypal addresses and transfer the funds, fairly straightforward, no?
Not being ungrateful, just have my guys asking me
February 26th, 2009 at 11:08 am
If they haven’t changed their methods, a check is sent. Paypal isn’t used.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:45 am
Come on Sandy/Mark, submit your location to the GMC map. ^_^
http://www.gm-resources.com/world/
March 1st, 2009 at 4:36 am
This was the first contest I have entered. I’m not so good at creating stories on a game, so that’s probably why mine didn’t qualify for winning. There’s probably other numerous reasons too.
February 14th, 2010 at 9:37 pm
[...] Snowfall is a relaxing, winter-themed arcade game where you must control a slippery wagon in order to catch dropping snowflakes, while avoiding an array of obstacles. I attempted cartoon graphics with this one but generally failed. Your main aim is to catch a certain amount of the magical snow to ensure the snowmens’ safety (lamest story ever). It includes an online high score leaderboard to make things more interesting and was created for the Zerosoft Games ‘Christmas’ competition as well as the YoYo Games ‘Save the Planet’ competition. [...]