One of the best things about all three competitions so far is the sheer range of game types. Just look at the subset of games in this competition that featured replaying a level multiple times: you have a platformer (A Good Hunch), a shmup (Super Earth Defense Game), an avoid/collect game (Rerun), a puzzler (Replay 2: The Sequel), a card game (Parley), two action puzzlers (Time Raider and TimeBot), a micromanagement game (Turtles of Time) and something I'm not even sure how to categorize (Karma). There's truly something for everyone!
So if you found the pace of Gimme Friction Baby too leisurely, or if Rerun required just a bit too much manual dexterity, then chances are you'll like the CGDC3 Honorable Mention: ReMaze. Like Rerun, it has many strengths and hardly any weaknesses. In fact, the two games are similar in many ways: both adapt a classic popular game type to incorporate nicely the Replay theme; both use polished visuals and carefully selected music and sound effects to set a mood that reflects the gameplay; both are well thought-out and bug-free; they both feel like finished products.
Despite all these commonalities, Rerun and ReMaze are two of the most oppositely-styled games in the competition. ReMaze is dark and deliberate where Rerun is light and spontaneous. It sucks you in with its spooky soundtrack, disorients you with its flickering mazes and cryptic messages, and roughs you up a bit with its fiendish sudden-death levels. Just when you thought you had seen the last of a maze, it comes back to haunt you in the next level. To persevere, you must be wily and thorough.
ReMaze starts off easily enough, with only one corridor down which to guide the white squares. Then there is another, and another, and soon you are caught up trying to navigate several mazes at once, not just to reach the goals, but to reach them simultaneously. Then comes the red death. One misstep and you're toast!
On the later levels, the ones filled with those fiery red squares, your best weapon will often be logic. Eliminate all of the directions you can't go, and often your path will be nearly worked out for you. However, the clever way the levels are designed does NOT make this obvious. That's the real strength underlying ReMaze—the level design. It offers a nice learning curve, teaching at the beginning, then piquing your interest, and finally throwing at you everything it's got. Despite the repeated maze segments, each level is unique unto itself, which only serves to bolster the effectiveness of the Replay theme and the quality of the gameplay.
So while our top two runners up may look similar on paper, don't think even for a minute that they will play the same way. Rerun and ReMaze together show that excellence is excellence, no matter what form it takes. Congratulations again to Felix for delighting us and earning an Honorable Mention with his fantastic puzzle game!
Jay - It may be interesting to note that the top 3 games in this competition were all based on very simple ideas. In fact, ReMaze includes little in the way of instructions at all, apart from the introductory: "Use spacebar to reset; don't get lost." And you don't need them. The objective is clear immediately upon seeing the first level and after a brief experimentation with the arrow keys on the keyboard. This is the hallmark of exceptional casual gameplay design.
There were many excellent games in this competition, and ReMaze ranks among my personal favorites. The atmosphere is mysterious and moody, the implementation of the replay theme is brilliant, and the level design is excellent and ramps comfortably in difficulty. The only areas where points were not awarded in full were in usability, due to its rather heavy requirement on the CPU for its nice (but unnecessary) ripple effect, and in replay value. It would have been nice for the game to calculate the frames per second on-the-fly and adjust whether the ripple effect was to be used. Or even an option for the player to turn it off, if desired.
Overall, an exceptional game, a worthy contender, and a pleasure to have amongst the other entries in this competition. Well done, Felix!
oh wow, this game is fun, and a little creepy, thanks to the design and the music.
it gets hard at a nice rate, and the fact that you only have one guy to guide through the red maze is kinda nice.
I can't find any real complaints about this game other than having to read the instructions here. Even though the game isn't hard to figure out.
The graphics and sound are fitting, although it might be nice to see something other than white dots (like steel boxes for walls), however with that said, the graphics all fit together nicely.
I'm really impressed with this, good work!
Alright, another very impressive game. I love the presentation and atmosphere. Very simple but very polished. The theme does seem kind of stretched but that appears to just be part of this competition as a whole. This is one of my favorites so far.
Nice, I like the fact that this game does not have any time or moves counters so I can spend lot of time on every maze until its solved. Good music too and there is nothing wrong with white dots.
Very good! It really gets tough with 3 mazes all in red. If I weren't so hungry for Breakfast I'd keep playing ...
now this is superb.
Wow! Great game... Why is it me who is always the one who gets stuck 1st? How do you solve the one that looks like a face with a wiggly mouth, with the two white boxes as eyes? If you know which one i am talking about please help, it's making me go mad.
great game, simple and addictive. But please oh please tell us how many levels! They are starting to take 20-30 minutes, but if I'm near the end I'll soldier on...
Agree with tonypa, the lack of a moves counter and a timer is a plus. Takes the pressure off so you can feel free to keep trying different things without having to reset continually or stress out.
Fun Puzzles + No Stress = Smile Time.
Its a great game. Only 1 issue.
Am I the only one that this game kills my IE? When I start playing my CPU and memory start getting maxed. If you look at the mem usage meter in Task Manager it looks like a saw blade. My memory usage grows to 700MB then drops to normal. Rise and fall over and over. I believe it is on the same cycle as the "splash" effect on the game.
There are 21 levels, if I just counted right. I'm glad you all seem to like it!
@Leo,
The splash/ripple effect does hog CPU so for those people who use a laptop like I do, be careful not to accidently cook your lap.
*vroom vroom* Go fans go!
Yay! I'm not lost! :-)
Puzzle style somewhat reminiscent of an animated version of the World Puzzle Championships stuff. In a good way.
Didn't solve the mystery of the encrypted (?) text, though. Did anyone crack it?
I haven't gotten far enough to see if this is already built into the game, but perhaps a future version could include "kill spots" that you must avoid to complete the puzzle. Along those lines, maybe "transporter spots" could be incorporated as well.
My favorite of this competition yet. At first it seemed too easy but then the controls started going weird and it got hard. Great work.
You really should play a little farther ;)
Wow. Thats this game in one word. Simple color scheme (2 colors lol) anda great use of "replay". It brings back memories of games where theres one level you love and the rest not so much...so you just keep playing that one level over again, but this adds a twist and throws in those other levels too. Definitely the best game so far out of all the entries
Awesome game. It's perfect exactly as it is, except not enough levels.
Although it's not particularly original in terms of mechanics (really, there's nothing in here that wasn't done 15 years ago in Heaven & Earth), the level design is fantastic, with a perfect learning curve and a nice, slow, intuitive introduction of special tiles. An enjoyable game, though I could've done without the ripple. It crashed Safari the first time I tried to play!
This is AWESOME!!!
Superb graphix, and haunting sountrack. Brilliant!
My only suggestion would be a level counter. Cos I really dont know what level I'm stuck on now ;D
Best game so far!
Terrific game, the voice was okay until it would take about 10 seconds of loading time before it would start. Since I was playing for about 5 seconds and watching the little loading icon for 10 I had to give up, but it was great until that happened.
This one is the one i like the most so far.
A level counter would be nice though.
Yes, yes, I quite like this one! I think it has a good atmosphere. I don't think it stretches the theme, seeing as how you seem to be replaying the same maze more than once, but the addition of the other mazes makes it harder. I flew through the first 8 or 10 levels... and then it started getting a little harder... now I am kinda stuck...
Hah I will def be coming back to this.
Oh. Now this is just pure genius. I absolutely love it. The way the theme is incorporated is friggin' amazing, too.
>.
Sweet.
An amazing amount of atmosphere for a game about dots and squares. Love the cryptic, paranoid storyline and the subtle re-use of mazes in different contexts. It's like they're ganging up on me. Just ridiculously clever and well-made.
I'm stuck on the one with the game separated into four squares, with mazes in all but the upper-right, which is all black. Bottom-right maze has two red squares and is mostly empty, and the other two are full of red squares and a big white square in each.
If anyone knows which level I'm talking about, please help!
By the way, while a level counter would help for asking for help, it would take away from the feel of the game, where things just sort of slide in and out without the real feeling that you're going from one level to another.
Great game!
Neeeeeever mind! Power of posting... or rather, realizing that the endless possibilities aren't actually all that endless.
Seems like a nice game (I like the style and how it makes you think without being too frustrating), but the ripple effect makes my computer so slow it's hard to play, even on low quality. It's a pity that such a simple game that could use simple graphics has to use a mandatory, processor-intensive effect that limits its audience.
Well Done Felix!
Nice job on the design. The difficulty level increases at a good pace, and you've kept intrusions (from noise and images) to a minimum. Very enjoyable and good for a wide range of ages. On the negative, I also experienced some drag from the rippling (like Xeva) but that may also just be due to the number of players at this time. A terrific first entry!
catgrin - Just so you know the facts, the number of visitors playing a Flash game does not affect the performance of the game that you experience while playing on your computer, apart from the initial (down)loading of it.
That is some first entry. I'll be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect, but the gameplay quickly sucked me in. Like others, I think I could have done without the ripple--it just seems so out of place. Other than that, though, very well done. Simplicity can be a very good thing.
The quality of entries in this contest is definitely up to par with previous contests. It's great to see such creativity and artistry! I've got quite a few "favorites" now.
great game.
i'm FREE!
finally
Anyone mind telling me how to play this game? I'm stuck at first level. How do I move on to the next one?
Wow...this game is starting to hurt my brain.
All in all, a very polished package - the sparse graphics and droning soundtrack support the simplicity of the gameplay.
An option to mute the sound would be a useful addition, and once again, it is unfortunate that there does not appear to be a way to save progress.
This is the best entry so far imo
I love it :)
This is definitely my favourite. I love how it looks, the atmosphere is great, and, most important of all, it plays very well.
Well, I'm absolutely stuck. It's a level with four mazes: the top left is a large maze that has a white square in the middle (the goal is just underneath it), upper right is a simple maze (shaped like a "["), bottom left is a square maze with the goal towards the bottom left corner, and the bottom right is a large square maze with a white square in the far right. I have no idea what to do :(.
With that being said, this is my favorite entry so far. Brilliantly executed.
This game is wonderful. I love the graphics and the quiet pacing.
Which am I? And which are the doppelgängers? help I've been cloned and I don't know which one I am...
Early on, a previous maze zooms open, and two more mazes appear - suggesting I'm in the zooming one. But later I realized that "I" am all of them, since they are all controlled in the same way. None are specially privileged.
So, "I" am truly distributed - this aspect is like Blobular (a LocoRoco clone).
I'm with Orkman. Am I really so blind as to not be able to pass even the first level?
I've guided the white square to the black square.
It seems to be all I can do. What am I missing?
Krebz, Orkman, are you using Flash Player 7? The game works fine under FP8 and FP9, and the issues you are describing sound like a bug.
Considering the small amount of entries that will be revealed, chance that this game will get my vote is extremely high. Great hard puzzles, beautiful transitions+design and conceptually, allthough, as someone said equal to some old double-maze puzzles, so refreshing because the old mazes stay.
But most important for me is that the puzzles are so perfectly made. Congrats
Felix, I am using Flash Player 9 in Firefox and encounter the same bug as Krebz and Orman. In IE it seems to work, but IE runs on my machine like. this.
sentence.
re
a
this game seems awesome--except my computer dies and i cant play it....
i beat a few levels before it completely owned my CPU..
maybe i will toggle quality...
@Blee:
Are you using linux? A friend of mine tried the game under Fedora and it managed to crash his whole system. I'm a bit upset about the game making such trouble, but this sounds like an FP issue with the bitmap manipulation. At least, for upcoming projects I'll be sure to test the game on different platforms.
Completely stuck after some days in the level with two mazes on top and below a line with the black square in the middle and red squares at the ends.
I am completely stuck, and obsessed with this, that is my favorite game.
I'm stuck at the level with the scrolling gibberish and 6 mazes, because the top two mazes are identical and have white boxes that are moving in tandem, but their goals are in different corners! I can't figure out how to separate them!
That was a tricky one, octochan.
Since you can't win if those top two squares get into the same position, you should concentrate your efforts on only those two squares to get a feel for how to move them independently of one another, which you can -- it's just tricky.
I had to reset that level many times until I figured it out.
This game is really cool! I got stuck and gave up, though, but I did get farther than I'd expect to in such a game.
Also, I disagree with most people. I think the ripple effect adds to the eerieness and isn't something unnecessary. Although I'll admit it might be nice for people having issues with it to be able to turn it off.
I'm going to echo blee and say that this makes my MacBook run like cold molasses.
I'm stuck in the same level as Fernando... Help, please?
help!
o=red
+=white
@=me
*=exit
++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++@++@o o+
+ ++ o ooo o+
+o oooooo++ o o o+
+ ++ oo o +
++o ooo o++ o o +
+ o ++o o oo +
+o+ o o o++ o o oo +
++ + o *++ o o*+
++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++
+o * o+
++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++
+++++ +++++
+++++ +++++ ++++++++++++++++++++ says re-construct re-
consider re-connect
re-think re-enter re-echo
re name replace rebuild
recalculate re-check
re-make replay
I'd swear this is impossible>:[+]
HELP ME
I just finished all the levels in this one. It was by far my favorite entry. I'd LOVE to see a sequel with more levels and more mind-bending challenges (with an explanation of what Bob and Alice are talking about, and if we or someone else turns out to be "Eve").
I've been playing "Gimme Friction, Baby", so it's taken me a while to get to this one. I'll have to agree that this game totally wrecked my browser, I had to shut it down via Task Manager. Other than that, the game concept seems excellent!
It's a lot more fun once you get to multiple red mazes. Still, I wish there was a way to go back and play levels you've already solved...or just any indication of what level you're *on*, for that matter.
I'm stuck on a level with two red mazes in the upper left and right corners, and a snaky white maze in the bottom that behaves like it's been rotated ninety degrees clockwise. How many levels do I have after this one?
You may use the UI console menu's reset button to start the game back at level 1 again.
I do not know how many levels to go after that one you describe, OtherBill.
Yes, I made it! Favourite game of the competition.
I got a "71" at the end. No clue what it means, though. Anyone?
Thanks for the feedback, and thanks for the votes. You guys make the competition really rewarding!
@LSN: sometimes Eve is called Malroy...
So stuck. How do I pass the one with the encrypted text?
Please help! ;)
Nevermind. Power of Posting!
For shatter and anyone else who made it all the way:
I also got the all white screen grid with "71" in black - I don't think it means anything. Maybe it's just a stylized version of the creator's initials "FL"?
Oh, also forgot to mention that I was out of the country during the competition, but this game is hands-down the best! How on earth did that ricochet game end up winning??! ReMaze is incredibly well done!
Finally made it! =) Great game, now my head hurts a little XD
WinXP, IE6, Flash9, doesn't go past the first level for me either.
Also, ripple effect really needs an off switch. Or, it would, if I could play it at all. Which I can't. So it doesn't matter.
Brilliant!
Beat it but I would like to know what is reason/message(if any) of the cryptic writing
What I'd like to know is how to beat the level shown at the top of this page...
I dedicated one playthrough to getting all the understandable text.
Here you go:
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: RE: CHECK IT OUT!
> CHECK OUT THE LATEST RESULTS!
> WE HAVE SOME REALLY GREAT
> IMPROVEMENTS SINCE THE
> LAST NC-UPDATE.
WOW! I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE M.'S
REACTION!
BYE
ALICE
------------------------------
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: RE: SPOOKY
> I STILL CAN'T GET MY HEAD AROUND
> THOSE NEW RED ENTITIES. WHY DID
> HE GENERATE THEM \63
> AND WITH WHAT RULESET \63
DOES IT MATTER \63 IT'S A TOTAL
SUCCESS! THE GRID CAN BARELY SUPPLY
THE EXAFLOPS IT NEEDS.
------------------------------
RE-ENTER
RE-ECHO
RECONSIDER
RENAME
REPLACE
REBUILD
RE-CONSTRUCT
RECALCULATE
RE-CONNECT
RE-CHECK
REMAKE
(REPEAT)
[RE]PLAY
[RE]SCRICT
[RE]THINK
------------------------------
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: RE: BOB TURING
> I'M SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, BUT I AM
> A BIT WORRIED ABOUT MY COLLEAGE
> BOB. SECURITY TELLS ME HE
> DIDN'T LEAVE THE NC-GRID AREA, BUT
> THEY TOO CAN'T FIND HIM.
DEAR MS MANDEL,
I HAVE ASKED EVERYONE AVAILABLE TO
COME DOWN TO THE GRID. PERPHAPS BOB
JUST FELL AND PASSED OUT. ANYWAY, WE
WILL SURELY FIND HIM.
------------------------------
FREE!
------------------------------
71
------------------------------
YOU MADE IT
YOU AREN'T LOST
PERHAPS NEXT TIME...
...YOU'LL UNDERSTAND
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