The Video Game Name Generator Competition

Indie game super site TIGSource recently held a competition called the Video Game Name Generator Competition, or simply "The VGNG Competition." To enter the competition, you'll have to create a game based on a name generated by Video Game Name Generator, which, unsurprisingly, tend to spew out ridiculous names that makes as much sense as a penguin going to a hot spring in Japan.

Of course, being late as always, the winner of the competition has already been announced before we could post something meaningful about the competition...nonetheless, below are some interesting entries that caught my attention, so I'm going to write about them whether they won the competition or not.

Samurai Railroad Mansion
by Lurk
Game | Download

The first thing that will grab your attention is the art. The art is gorgeous, period. The artist's style reminds me of Makoto Tsuchibayashi (artist of Capcom games like Sengoku Basara and Shinobi). What makes his art so special is the use of watercolor (Photoshop or not) brush strokes, which gives the characters' personality a whole new dimension. Many will likely try out the game just for the art; after all, good first appearance is what counts the most, proven by many crappy games that came equipped with good-looking covers.

The game itself, made with the Game Maker engine, is actually quite simple. If you've ever played a Nintendo light gun game before, you know the drill: Enemies pop up on the screen, you try to strike them down before they strike you down, yada yada. As long as you don't have the reflect of a three-toed sloth, you should be good. You can move left, right and middle by using the left and right cursor key, press z will result in an attack. After encountering a set number of enemies, you advance to the next stage. Attacking the wrong target will cost you "honor," lose enough honor and it's game over.

The game runs fairly smooth, but the gameplay gets repetitive before you can say "duck hunt." There are only eight stages, after which the game just loops back to the first level (at one point I played just so I could get to the next level and see new artworks). Maybe the game is trying to pack all of its images, music and whatnot into one executable file, but it takes around only a 100% of your CPU during game startup and loading. As if that was not bad enough, the game hogs approximately 50% CPU while running, if you have a crappy computer, forget about an enjoyable experience.

Despite its setbacks, anyone with a speck of artistic taste should try this game out, if just for the art itself.

No One Can Stop the Farm Pioneer
by Team Dino
Game | Download

A nice little game where you play as this farmer on a really, really small planet, and you run around collecting wheat, chop down trees, feed cows and so on. There is a set of task you need to finish, like finish building your house (which requires tree), or harvest enough food to keep your farmer from hunger. If you are the adventurous kind, you can also load your harvested wheat and cows into your space train (apparently they act as fuel), and explore another planet.

The silhouette art reminds of me this video I once saw called Limbo. When I first saw that video, I thought it would be at least 5 years until a game with graphics and physics as good as that would show up, apparently I was wrong about both.

What I also discovered was that, after walking around the planet a few rounds, I got dizzy and sick of the continual spinning, so if you have motion sickness...beware!

My First Skydiving Academy
by Farmergnome
Game | Download

Another game with great graphics. The game plays like your usual "helicopter" game, except in this case you control a poor little baby who fell from a plane. As you guide the poor soul down a deep valley, avoiding vultures, bats and Pterodactylus, you'll notice the baby losing a limb here and there. If you make it to the bottom with at least one limb left, you win (and you get to watch the baby fall to his death).

For the more observant gamer, after getting over the sadist nature of this game, you'll realize that there are only three levels, but playing through them was an interesting experience after navigating the baby through harms only to him die anyway.

Small-Time Scorched Earth Invasion
by gummikana
Game | Download

A game that plays like Space Invader, features enemies from Space Invader, with graphic that looks just like Space Invader. The difference? You are on a planet, can move around, and aim/fire with the mouse. One thing to watch out for is that due to the strong gravity of your pathetically small planet, the shots you fire will fall back toward you, so if you don't shoot them down, they'll cause damage to the planet as well. Fairly simple concept, the game play gets old after a while though.

Also, the amount of time you have to wait before the first enemy shows up is a bit long. The first time I fired up the game, it took me a while to realize I'm supposed to wait for the invaders to show up, as opposed to just firing into space and watch the shots fall back toward my tiny little planet.