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Assembly Game dev compo results - what are your picks?YouGamers was on location at the official presentation of contestants at Assembly Summer 2007 official Game Development competition. Although we'll only present the top 3 place winners in this report, you can download and try the games and let your opinion be heard on the YouGamers forums! First, the champion: Centripetality is a multiplatform twitch game with traditional top-down space shooter aesthetics. While visually the game doesn't reach the fireworks of Super Stardust HD or Geometry Wars, it draws inspiration from both and challenges them with simple yet addictive gameplay and a clean presentation. The developers have also figured out what makes SSHD and GW so addictive - Centripetality has online scoreboards ("The Ultimate Web2.0(tm) Compatible Scoring System").
Zompie is a "survival horror" shooter portrayed from a top-down isometric angle. The game features an arsenal of guns, grenades and no plot whatsoever. What sets it apart is PhysX-powered physics (for, you guessed, throwing wooden boxes around). Be warned, however, of the game's low-brow grindhouse style: the player character flings an endless stream of profanities at a similarly inexhaustible crowd of zombies.
Cinnamon Beats, the third place winner, shows a new take on the recently popular percussion games. A charming combination of The Incredible Machine and a drum game, Cinnamon Beats has the player solve puzzles by dropping balls on percussion instruments to match the given rhythm.
The rest of the pack varied greatly in terms of quality and production values. XNA-powered Xbox360 games looked great but showed little innovation in gameplay, while some titles like Dice Wars (for Nintendo DS, the only handheld contestant) and PlayDetective Heartbreakers (the only adventure game entry) obviously suffered from the format of the official demo. Indiana Jones fans (and people with a secret desire to squish Indy under a boulder) should check out A Tribute to the Rolling Boulder.
The audience was very vocal, with some combination of cheers, boos and applauses after every demo. After seeing all entries, the folks around me didn't seem very enthused. "This year's level was nothing to write home about," said 'KKFin'. "Last year's was much better. There were only a couple of entries I'd be willing to vote for." This lukewarm attitude could be explained by many of the better-received games being earlier in the demo.
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