Heart of the OHR Contest Results - 2012 Edition

Pepsi Ranger organized the Heart of the OHR contest both in 2012 and in 2010. Today, he's announcing the results from the voting period. What follows is a detailed breakdown of every entrant, the votes they received, and the winner of the contest. Also, a bunch of really cool statistics and achievements for each.

From June 1, 2012 to November 30, 2012, the OHR community was once again given the opportunity to relive the days when random battles were accepted and game design was about visiting towns and crawling through dungeons, and then get rewarded for implementing the throwback design into their games. The contest, called Heart of the OHR, had a simple rule: make, add to, or finish a traditional OHRRPG.

This year we had an overwhelming turnout. With three categories to enter, fifteen people rose to the challenge. And meet the challenge they did. One author submitted the first ever “OHR Legends” release, the classic Vikings of Midgard, which has now earned the world’s first Heart of the OHR Legends badge. The condition for earning the “Legends” title is to release a game previously rereleased for a Heart of the OHR contest but with new content. In the “Rereleased” category, three authors released new content to games we’ve played before, with one of those games originally released as an original for the 2010 contest. Thirteen authors (including one who released a release, and the one who released the Legends title) produced new games never before seen in the OHR community for the coveted “Originals” category, and many of them knocked their entries out of the park. With a whopping 17 entries total, these authors’ contributions made the 2012 Heart of the OHR among the best contests in the OHR’s history for turnout (the 2001 48-Hour contest still holds the lead with 19 entries) and one of the best for quality. It was also one of the few contests where nearly every entry was rated generously. The Heart of the OHR 2012’s average contest score was 6.14, which is more than a third of a point above Heart of the OHR 2010’s average of 5.8. With so many great games released in 2010, this seemed like an unbelievable feat. But mission accomplished nonetheless.

However, even with so many high praises given to the games of Heart of the OHR 2012, only two could reign supreme: the one for the original category and the one for the rereleased category. The rest had to fight for second place and beyond.

Here again is the story of that battle for the Heart of the OHR:

Please note that rankings are listed from worst to best, and based on average votes, not rosters or quantities of total players. For this reason, abstained votes did not count against games, but in many ways helped their averages.

-Rereleased Games-

3. Abel by BlastedEarth
Fuzzy Description: Improve your body one part at a time, and then use your modified self to run errands for the bigwigs.
Average score: 5.5
Total Voters: 8
Achievements: Ambiguous Entry, Awesome but Canceled, Winner of Best Font
Highest Rating: 7 Lowest Rating: 3	Audience Consensus: The ability to customize the hero through perks is a nice touch. As a demo the game is very incomplete, though, and it’s unclear how much of it was even intended for this contest.

2. Legendary Heroes by Spoonweaver
Fuzzy Description: Join monster-killing guilds for money and fame. Kill rats, bats, and penguins (well, not that last one…yet). Ride giant turtles to glory. Ask the tough questions like, “Um…so what happened to the original female character who’s now replaced by another?” Be a legendary hero.
Average score: 6.29
Total Voters: 7
Achievements:  Lowest Voter Turnout (tied), Future Candidate for Legends Category, Sidekick
Highest Rating: 8 Lowest Rating: 4	Audience Consensus: Cartoonish design and easy battles keep things lighthearted. The lack of backstory makes the main character a little difficult to connect with or care about. New content easy to find (it starts at the turtle).

1. Final Dragon Legacy by mjohnson092088
Fuzzy Description: In that section of Midgard where the Vikings are not as popular, a boy must travel the land to figure out what happened to his father after he and his small party had stopped Ragnarok from taking place 15 years earlier.
Average score: 7.0
Total Voters: 7
Achievements:  Lowest Voter Turnout (tied), Unclear New Content, Cinched Vote
Highest Rating: 8 Lowest Rating: 6	Audience Consensus: A fun kind of nostalgic romp that doesn’t always remain consistent in its challenges or presentation, but does keep things moving along in a steady pace. Quite long in its delivery nonetheless. Takes hours to finish.

-Original Games-

13. Universal Wars by jcenterprises
Fuzzy Description: Travel with our colorful heroes as they venture through straight-lined dungeons into badly drawn towns so they can stop the terrible Moolar and his terrible Mad Cow disease (and other villains and plots of madness)!
Average score: 3.7
Total Voters: 10
Achievements: Waist Level Champion, The Cows Have It, Most Ridiculous, Best Villain Nominee: Moolar
Highest Rating: 5 Lowest Rating: 3	Audience Consensus: Crazy quests add to the ridiculous humor, but bad graphics and lame battles mean the joke is really on the player. The lined floors are glaring on the eyes. Moolar makes up for the game’s many shortcomings, however.

12. Reign of Grelok by misac
Fuzzy Description: A mysterious traveler enters an oppressed town and vows to dethrone the wizard who is making the lives of its citizens hell. By traveling to the surrounding regions, he gradually chips away at the blockades that keep him from encountering the wizard. Adapted from a Fallout 3 mini-game.
Average score: 4.18
Total Voters: 11
Achievements: Best Map Transitions, Effective Inability to Save, Best Use of Randomly Ripped NPC
Highest Rating: 6 Lowest Rating: 3	Audience Consensus: The various bugs that appear make this game hard to love, and the inability to save makes it hard to return to. Using backdrops to divide the maps is a cool gimmick, though. Maps, unfortunately, have pacing and consistency issues. English not the author’s first language and it shows at times. The fact that it has an ending is a bonus, however.

11. AR-PUH-GUH! by Meowskivich
Fuzzy Description: Journey through a futuristic world where instructions are given at every turn and battles are so unfairly weighted against certain parties that it’s impossible to tell if the game is easy or crazy difficult. But don’t worry because you can create the party of your dreams and seek out nearly any quest to fit your whims. Are you up for the challenge?
Average score: 4.36
Total Voters: 14
Achievements: Most In Your Face, Winner of the Prestigious WTF Award, King of Hype, Most Spirited
Highest Rating: 8 Lowest Rating: 3	Audience Consensus: Can be overwhelming in its information, but once the player settles in, it’s not so bad. The many side quests appeal to an explorer’s heart, and there are enough of them to keep him exploring for a while. Goals can be ambiguous, but that’s what makes it adventurous. Berserker pretty much useless to beginning players, but it’s nice to be able to build a party of pretty much whomever the player wants.

10. Illusions by Master K
Fuzzy Description: Alone in a cabin in the middle of the squirrel-filled swamps, a hero’s privacy is broken when he’s driven into an adventure with a girl who is being chased by illusions. Analyze the invisible creatures to find out if they’re real or just a blob of pixels.
Average score: 4.92
Total Voters: 13
Achievements: Battle-confused, Spokesman for the Anti-squirrel Association, Repeat Villainess, Most Expansive Nothing, Best Villain Nominee: Illusion Girl
Highest Rating: 7 Lowest Rating: 3	Audience Consensus: Pretty neat “mist” gimmick for the battles, but mostly vast and bland for the regular map mode. Why are we beating up so many squirrels?

9. Silhouette by Mystic
Fuzzy Description: Are you a hero or a scientific experiment? Do you have free will, or is your fate predetermined? Are you okay with solving a picture puzzle to open a door, or would you rather just find a key? Wake up and see what happens in this journey through a monster-filled laboratory. You might just not be real.
Average score: 5.27
Total Voters: 11
Achievements: Mechanical Heart, Puzzle Trumps RPG, Save Game Corrupter
Highest Rating: 7 Lowest Rating: 3	Audience Consensus: Not much story or characterization here, but the battle mechanic has appeal and the puzzles are enough to add to the challenge. Pretty deterministic in its outcome, and doesn’t particularly capture the “heart of the OHR” as well as it could have. Doesn’t handle saving and loading as well as it could, either. Yet, it’s still fun for what it is.

8. NO MORE VILLAINS by Fenrir-Lunaris
Fuzzy Description: Last year, six OHR villains were in charge of the 2012 Terrible Games Contest. This is the result of what happened.
Average score: 5.31
Total Voters: 13
Achievements: Polar Bear, Polygraph Vote, Prettiest Turkey, Beautiful Question Mark, Hand in the Cookie Jar
Highest Rating: 8 Lowest Rating: 1	Audience Consensus: Does a nice job concluding the 2012 Terrible Games Contest, but does it really belong to the Heart of the OHR? Most of the game spends time developing the characters’ stories, but hardly any time implementing those elements that make it an RPG.

7. Legacy by BMR
Fuzzy Description: Escape your prison, make some new friends, and ride a boat to the most visually stunning town on the OHR. Fight a billion cloned battles along the way.
Average score: 5.8
Total Voters: 10
Achievements: Walkabout Master, Expectation Shocker, Most Boring Battler, Legacy of Viridia
Highest Rating: 9 Lowest Rating: 4	Audience Consensus: Visually stunning and staggering in its details, it still falls short of perfection. Battles are repetitive and cumbersome. Dialogue trees maybe a little too detailed and unwieldy? Bugs plague the game, especially in regard to moving heroes around. Party members spend more time in walls than on the ground. For all the detail that went into the game, there is still surprisingly little to do to advance the story or to interact with the environment. Yet, the epic scope of the game gives it much potential for the future.

6. Kinvesard: Epilogue of the Princess by Spoonweaver
Fuzzy Description: Select your party of misfits and find your way out of that puzzle-filled dungeon, doing your best not to die. Hang out with mythical creatures if you make it to the other side.
Average score: 6.54
Total Voters: 13
Achievements: Most Abrupt Ending, Working 9 to 5, Number Pad, Bit Champer Best Dungeon Nominee: Castle
Highest Rating: 9 Lowest Rating: 5	Audience Consensus: Well designed and a lot of fun for what it is, but it’s ultimately too short. Party construction a nice feature, and the statues provide a helpful boost at the beginning. Is there a way to open that locked door to the right of the dungeon?

5. Super Penguin Chef by Mogri
Fuzzy Description: To make their adoptive father (Super Walrus Man) proud, a penguin and his three eclectic brothers travel around the land’s dungeons to scour ingredients and learn new recipes for their restaurant in order to pay off their gambling-addicted father’s debts.
Average score: 7.5
Total Voters: 12
Achievements: Guilty Pleasure, Banker, Best Use of Food, Ugly Chick
Highest Rating: 9 Lowest Rating: 5	Audience Consensus: Whimsical design masks what’s ultimately a depressing tale, and keeps the game lighthearted. Dungeons incomplete, but what’s there is a lot of fun to navigate. Collecting items can be a drag when the engine randomly deletes them from inventory. Making recipes are intuitive to those with natural cooking ability, which can be a plus for the foodies. Lots of fun and worth coming back to. Would be even better if it were finished. The relationship between running the restaurant and ending the day should be clearer.

4. Dreg Sector: The Tract by Willy Elektrix
Fuzzy Description: Build your space fleet and own the galaxy through exploration, trading, fighting, and race relations. Pay off your parents’ gambling debts today. (No relation to Super Walrus Man.)
Average score: 7.64 (7.636)
Total Voters: 11
Achievements: Shafted Warrior, Subquest Harboring, Up Here, Please, Fan Favorite Best Villain Nominee: Faceless Evil
Highest Rating: 10 Lowest Rating: 6	Audience Consensus: Pretty difficult at first and laborious to break into, but moves along quite nicely once the player gets going. Battles are slow, but in an epic way. Colored sectors could stand to be more colorblind-friendly. A game that balances economy well, is simple to understand, and will ultimately suck the better part of a player’s day away from him. Featuring awesome music from SDHawk.

3. Cool Guy Bob Surlaw by The Wobbler
Fuzzy Description: The next installment in the epic adventures of Bob Surlaw and his wacky Walthrosian neighbors. Walk with Bob and his new nosestyle as he hunts down his friend’s kidnapper and makes the streets cool again, but watch your step because your decisions could cost you a great deal in the end.
Average score: 7.64 (7.642)
Total Voters: 14
Achievements: Series Facelift, Old Heroes Die Hard, Best Use of a Mirror, Reaping the Consequences Willy Shanker
Highest Rating: 9 Lowest Rating: 6	Audience Consensus: Another one that ends well before it truly begins. Cosmetically awesome and is perhaps the best-written game of Heart of the OHR 2012 (if that were a category). Branching dialogue and consequential outcomes a great gimmick. Just how many endings are there? Why is it so tempting to let Bob hit on the walrus girl and suffer the inevitable fallout with Super Walrus Man? Battles are also created with strategy in mind, thus adding to the appeal of encountering enemies. Music by Glock & Mr. 8-Bit = awesome.

2. The K'hyurbhi Lands by FnrrfYgmSchnish
Fuzzy Description: A Numnum and his band of round buddies return to his homeland to discover that a corrupt king has taken over. After getting thrown out of a palace window, the three heroes vow to supplant the tyrant, but not before the kingdom’s prized chef sends them on a training odyssey across the land. What follows is a grand adventure of cartoonish proportions.
Average score: 7.82
Total Voters: 11
Achievements: Is That My Party?, Quit Your Day Job, Money Clencher, Spiked Pink Lemonade
Highest Rating: 9 Lowest Rating: 5	Audience Consensus: The title could scare off potential players, but those who crack it open will most undoubtedly find a colorful, entertaining, surprising gem of a game inside. Never too complicated or overly redundant, this simple story has a lot to tell, and does a nice job fleshing out the characters as they gradually reveal who they are and what they can do.

1. DUNGEONMEN: Men of Dungeons by KFHarlock and Shizuma
Fuzzy Description: Accept the king’s petition. Gather your tools and armor. Search the castle for treasure. Break down doors. Forge your weapons. Light your torches. Analyze your question marks. Men your dungeons. Repeal the return of evil. It’s like Saturday afternoon in front of the SNES circa 1994 all over again.
Average score: 8.8
Total Voters: 15
Achievements: Highest Voter Turnout, Collector of Tens, Inflated Chest, Master of Balance, Best Dungeon Nominee: Falls in Swamp Candidate for Best of 2012
Highest Rating: 10 Lowest Rating: 7	Audience Consensus: A great game overall with no shortage of dungeons to explore. Nicely old school. Can be overwhelming in its breadth, and constantly returning to the castle to recover can be a chore, but the plentiful options and the depth of interaction with each region keeps the game fresh and exciting. Party customization a plus, even if it sacrifices the story that comes attached to the characters. In spite of how well documented the racy introduction is by now, it still catches a few players off guard. Mostly polished, but such a complicated game still reveals bugs at times. Music by Glock & Mr. 8-Bit = awesome, too.

And there you have it, your lineup for the 2012 Heart of the OHR Contest.

Excellent work to the contestants, and special kudos to KFHarlock and Shizuma for winning the Original Release category with such an awesome game. Congratulations to mjohnson092088 for winning the Rereleased category. Congratulations to Fenrir-Lunaris for taking the first ever OHR Legends badge (and for subsequently designing it).

Thanks also to James Paige, Fenrir-Lunaris, Mogri, Momoka, Mystic, and Inferior Minion for helping with the prizes.

Heart of the OHR 3 begins on June 1^st, 2014 and runs until November 30^th, 2014, so get your entries started now if you want to top this year’s winners.

—Pepsi Ranger

P.S. For anyone who cares, here is the explanation for select achievements:

Ambiguous Entry

-The author of Abel requested a bugfix for the possibility of entering a game. Abel was the only game he updated during the contest window. The game itself was first released in 2010, but the game is so short that it’s hard to tell what’s new and what’s been there for two years.

Sidekick

-Spoonweaver released two games for this contest. Legendary Heroes seemed to play second fiddle to Kinvesard: Epilogue of the Princess with the voters.

Cinched Vote

-The votes for Final Dragon Legacy were so tight that they never spanned more than one number from the average.

Waist Level Champion

-No vote for Universal Wars broke the midpoint barrier (any score greater than 5).

Winner of the Prestigious WTF Award

-AR-PUH-GUH! in spite of its ambitious charm tends to throw so much at the player at once that it can be hard to digest everything, and the game can ultimately leave the player confused. Add to that the fact that signs lie to the player, and it’s hard to walk away not scratching your head when it’s all over.

Battle-confused

-Illusions had two types of battles: Really awesome ones that required analysis in order to see what the heroes are fighting, and ones against defenseless squirrels.

Most Expansive Nothing

-One of the common audience complaints against Illusions is that the maps are large and mostly empty. Vastness is generally fine in a map if there are things to do in its various pockets, but lame otherwise.

Mechanical Heart

-Silhouette played like an RPG, but was designed and executed like a puzzler, which sort of took the heart out of the OHR and replaced it with a mechanized imposter. This award could’ve also been called “Imaginary Heart.”

All of the Awards for NO MORE VILLAINS:

Polar Bear

-Even though it had RPG moments, the cut scene-heavy gameplay in NO MORE VILLAINS left players polarized in the votes.

Polygraph Vote

-The first string of voters voted fairly consistently, but then the numbers went wild and jumped from 1 to 8 in a flash. (It was also a brutally honest vote.)

Prettiest Turkey

-The game is revered for looking great and sounding awesome, but it’s also the only one in the entire contest to score below 3 with any voter, and it did so twice (scores of 2 and 1 respectively).

Beautiful Question Mark

-Essentially a combination of “Polar Bear” and “Prettiest Turkey,” no one really knew how to read this game as a Heart of the OHR contestant. It had RPG moments, but it was also primarily an OHR movie.

Hand in the Cookie Jar

-Although NO MORE VILLAINS was submitted for the Heart of the OHR contest, it was actually designed to complete the Terrible Games Contest and feels very much at home with that contest.

Expectation Shocker

-Legacy had so much hype going in, and had so much confirmed beauty and intriguing gameplay mechanics that most players were expecting something groundbreaking. What they got was underwhelming.

Legacy of Viridia

-Legacy and 2010’s Viridia: Chapter 2 have a lot in common. Both were terrifying in their hype. Both had walkabouts that exceeded the professional bar. Both had elevated expectations from players. Both were heavier on battles than on gameplay. Both fell quite short of expectations and ended up being quite exhaustive to play. Both placed 7^th with an average score of 5 and change. Both have authors who have learned from the criticism and have already begun to improve their masterpieces.

Working 9 to 5

-The voter range for Kinvesard reached as high as 9 but fell as low as 5.

Number Pad

-The first three votes and the last three votes for Kinvesard all share the same number, padding the middle scores between them and setting the average.

Bit Champer

-The abrupt ending to Kinvesard left many players feeling cheated, but the excellent gameplay getting them there had left them champing at the bit for more.

Banker

-Double-meaning: Super Penguin Chef is a game about making money and paying back a debt, but it is also a game that received a voting range of 9 to 5, matching those of banker hours. Triple-meaning if you consider the fact that the game doesn’t recognize weekends.

Shafted Warrior (and Willy Shanker)

-In 2010, voters helped screw over Do You Want to Be a Hero? by failing to vote for Vikings of Midgard and affecting its average score for the better. Vikings of Midgard won 2^nd Place because, while it had maintained 3^rd Place throughout most of the contest, the last voter didn’t cast a vote for it when he submitted his scores, but did cast a middling vote for DYWTBAH?, and allowed his abstained vote for Vikings to send its average score just past DYWTBAH?. In 2012, select voters committed a similar shaft when they voted with decimal values, which was never asked for, rather than with whole values, which I thought was implied (and later had to state with clarity). Thanks to the decimal values, I had to round a few scores up to the next whole value, which included scores for Cool Guy Bob Surlaw that would have given it 4^th Place had the voters just given it a 7 instead of a 7.75 or an 8 instead of an 8.5. In reality, the decimals factored in would have given Dreg Sector: The Tract 3^rd place by less than two one-thousandths of a point (0.00162). But I’m not averaging in decimals, so Cool Guy Bob Surlaw shanks Dreg Sector: The Tract in glorious Vikings of Midgard fashion.

Subquest Harboring

-Dreg Sector: The Tract has plenty of side missions to look for.

Up Here, Please

-Every vote for Dreg Sector: The Tract rated it above the waist at 6 points or higher.

Is That My Party?

-The heroes and NPCs in The K’hyurbhi Lands all look the same, and it isn’t easy to spot who’s who during the split party quests.

Quit Your Day Job

-Another 9 to 5 reference for a game that does everything right.

Spiked Pink Lemonade

-Part reference to The K’hyurbhi Lands’s tropical environments, but mainly a reference to the fact that something so simple and childish can be so addicting, and that the author must’ve laced it with some mind-altering substance for it to rate so well with players.

Inflated Chest

-DUNGEONMEN: Men of Dungeons never scored below a 7 with its players, thus making it the best received game in the history of the Heart of the OHR contest (Motrya scored considerably higher in the average vote in 2010, but it did take a 6 from one voter).

And now for fun, here is a statistics list of the Heart of the OHR’s various achievements so far:

Highest Participation Turnout: 17 (2012) (13 originals, 3 rereleased, 1 legend)

Lowest Participation Turnout: 12 (2010) (8 originals, 4 rereleased)

Highest Voter Turnout: 16 (2012)

Lowest Voter Turnout: 12 (2010)

Highest Average Contest Rating: 6.14 (2012)

Lowest Average Contest Rating: 5.8 (2010)

Highest Rated Game: Motrya (2010, 9.5)

Lowest Rated Game: Hero (2010, 2.3)

Most Voted On Game: DUNGEONMEN: Men of Dungeons (2012, 15 votes)

Least Voted On Game: Vikings of Midgard (2010, 5 votes)

Most Perfect 10’s Given to a Single Game: 8 (Motrya, 2010)

Most Imperfect 1’s Given to a Single Game: 5 (Hero, 2010)

Most Perfect 10’s Given in a Contest: 12 (2010)

Fewest Perfect 10’s Given in a Contest: 7 (2012)

Most Imperfect 1’s Given in a Contest: 13 (2010)

Fewest Imperfect 1’s Given in a Contest: 1 (2012)

Widest Voter Spread for a Game: 1 – 9 (tie, Tales of the New World 2, 2010; Okédoké! La Leyenda Mexicana, 2010)

Narrowest Voter Spread for a Game: 6 – 8 (Final Dragon Legacy, 2012); 3 – 5 (Universal Wars, 2012)*

Highest Low Score for a Game: 7 (DUNGEONMEN: Men of Dungeons, 2012)

Lowest High Score for a Game: 5 (Hero, 2010; Universal Wars, 2012)

Number of Games to Receive Votes from Every Voter: 1 (Eternity Fragment Prelude, 2010)

*Universal Wars actually received a low vote of 2.5, but decimal votes were not accepted and were thus rounded to the nearest whole number, in this case 3.

Thanks to Pepsi Ranger for allowing me to post this on the Hamster Burrow! It's quite an honor to have this amazing and historic contest end on our relatively new blog. Thanks for your support!