Comp 4: Simple rules, complex game

Too often, game developers try to make a good game by adding more bells and whistles. Not enough variety in your project? No problem, just add more enemies and abilities ... right? Wrong. A flawed game doesn't become better simply because you add more features – it's the core dynamic, that little kernel of your game which defines it and makes it special. This was an exercise to create a few rules that the game developer could twist and manipulate to generate a massive variety of gaming scenarios, and exercised the creativity and flexibility of developers. This particular competition produced one of the finest games of Game.Dev's early era – an offering called Roach Toaster which stood head and shoulders above the rest of the entries up until that point and raised the bar for all competitions that followed. It didn't have mindblowing graphics. It didn't have a load of flashy scripted events. It didn't even have sound effects. It just had a basic roach generation algorithm and a few well-balanced roach busting tools that were meticulously considered to provide a player with a simple experience that felt like an epic.

Comp 5: Action!

Action games are difficult. They tend to be real-time and a lot of control leaves the developer: you can't force the player to take a turn, deal a specific amount of damage and tailor the enemy response to provide a balanced counter-attack. Every split-second matters, which means that the developer needed a lot of help to make sure that the game felt 'just right' no matter who played it. By the time Comp 5 came about, a flood of new developers had entered the forum and it fell upon the established crowd to help them get into the swing of things. This revealed a trait about the community which has successfully lasted to this very day: an openness and friendliness which is critical for allowing good game development. Whether an entrant was a development veteran or a complete newbie who had just learned the concept of "player.x + 1", feedback from the community was inevitably constructive and helped make early, clumsy offerings into golden games by the end of the competition month. Those who posted early drafts excelled in this competition, because instead of relying on a single developer to playtest and hunt for bugs in their title, these entries had the feedback and collective expertise of at least a dozen enthusiasts to back them up.

Comp 6: Polishing an old game

Game.Dev's Comp 6 decided to go in a slightly different direction and forced entrants to look at previous work for inspiration. Most new game developers are quick to generate a fun or quirky title, but tend to lose steam after they've finished a "full go" of the game or realised that there were too many extra resources to generate easily. Comp 6 was very much a discipline competition – people are often reluctant to revisit their old creations, favouring a hop to new titles rather than lingering with the old. But polish is important for good game creation, and most of the successful games out there weren't simply done with one take – they repeatedly changed as development progressed, and no matter how heartbreaking it may be to throw away a particular piece of code or artwork and start again, it's necessary to allow growth in your game where it's needed. Successful competitors were also generally able to modify their games quite easily – they'd left enough room in the design for change, rather than creating a static game with no opportunity for expansion. Remember to plan ahead when designing your game – you never know how it may change at the end, and it's much better to modify a small amount of code rather than being forced to restart the whole mess.