...the love we take is equal to the love we make.
What a year of making (crap games) it has been. 44 games, all, from what I can tell, made with great love, and sometimes even great competence.
Firstly I thank everyone who submitted a game. It has been a great pleasure to interact with you and be the first person who got to play your games.
For me it's been a challenging year for reasons I won't go in to. Not least because the constant and endless wars are heartbreaking. I know I'm not the only one haunted by what is happening in Garza right now. These events have shook many of us, and this even translated into a crap game. Andy Jenkins made a thought provoking comment on war and empire with Palace Dine.
Even in the darkest moments we must allow ourselves some joy and silliness. We just must. And the CGC provided me, and I hope you too, with just such an escape.
There have been well over 40 games to keep us busy this year. What an eclectic bunch of games you guys have made! Some games were very deliberately crap (I'm looking at you Dr Beep). Some were crap by accident, and some were not games at all. But many more were simply GOOD, games. More than a handful were a great pleasure to play and review - far better than most games found the Cassette50 for example. Here is a little trot through some of the highs and lows:
Face Punch was an early game that I reviewed that I have found to me very memorable. The game play was a little crap, but look at those cool graphics. I just loved the design of the visuals and the ambition - huge, full colour, animated and well designed sprites - fantastic!
Then, there was the whole etch a sketch debacle, where I was sent thousands of *literally* identical non games to review (oh, you do exaggerate Mr Bizzle).
I loved the way that these sub-themes emerged from the competition, which seemed to come about because a community of people were riffing off of each others ideas, inspiring each other and having fun with it. This is why I enjoy the Spectrum community so much, and it is what I enjoyed the most about being the host - the interaction with everyone who made and submitted a game.
Of course, not everything I received could be described as a game. Here at CGC23 Towers I've had a handful of 'utilities' (I'm being generous here) and non-games. Here are the highs and lows of this category:
'100% honestly for money' is the perfect example of a terrible non game by Dr Beep - it was 1k leaving me sure there was a secret game in there somewhere, but alas it was a con! Arguably, Jim Waterman (apart from being Richard Pelley's biggest fan boy) is the king of the non game. As you would expect, he made a number of handsome and competent non games - just see the brilliant loading screen below. However, while interesting, non of these non games won or lost because ultimately this is a game competition.
Moving back to games, there were a couple of pretty great ADG examples:
Arguably both are contenders for best game. Chief among them was Cocaine Bear. It had AY music, lovely graphics and was even reviewed in Crash no less.
Cocaine Bear was a masterstroke in marketing and captured lots of attention, I actually felt That Soanysoft's AI Made Me Do It was the most enjoyable of the two ADG games. It was cruel to the point of humor and mastering a level was actually very satisfying, well worth playing (I considered this a contender for best game). But at the same time it's rough edges kept it safe from losing the comp. Likewise, cocaine bear was a beautiful game, and certainly attracted huge attention, but beyond the hype it was a simple couple of screens with no way to win - that gave it enough crap points to protect it from losing.
Now to talk about a special category of game: good quality BASIC games.
Yes, there were quite a few.
Space Zap and Footy by ZXKerl as well as Pam Ferris's Ferrous Ferries, udgil and the cursed scroll and The Curious Consequence Of Negative Co-ordinate Space all by Andy Jenkinson. There was also Ceviche Chef by Nathan Obuch which was an interesting and charming little game. All of these are well worth checking out.
The one I enjoyed the most was Andy's The Curious Consequence Of Negative Co-ordinate Space - it just seemed to negate every limitation of basic to deliver a fun puzzle game, set over a number of varied levels. It also felt 'fresh', something not easy to do on a 40year old computer.
In a parallel universe somewhere, Andy has lost CGC23 with this game and is having to host the compo again. But I am not that sadistic. In any case, if he lost it would deprive the world of an other year of his quality games, and I know he has good things are in the pipeline.
There were many more good games and fun games, and games that even though they were simple, just made you fall in love with them. Too many to mention here. Krazy Kitties, Marvin the Mole, Softly Softly Catchee Monkey are a few examples. And I know I haven't mentioned Kweepa's games yet - Go check them out, they were far to competent for this competition.
The loser of CGC23....
I must stop beating around the bush! Who won, and who lost this infernal comp, I hear you cry?
So now it comes to the part where I say which game I think was best. This game was well made, and it was clear a lot of effort was but into it. It had a lovely loading screen, the developer listened to feedback from players and made alterations and refinements. I mean the fact this game had 'players' says a lot. It was a game that embodied everything good about CGC23, including community spirit, weird humor and obsession with lawnmower simulators. I am of course talking about License to Mow by Ed Toovey.
This game was very well made and amusing. It's definitely worth checking out. There were many great lawnmower games, and Jim Waterman also made some fine versions of the classic, but Ed didn't just remake ALS for a new audience, he used it as a starting point for a whole adventure game of his own design. And there was really nothing crap about his achievement.
Ed, I induct you to a world of pain and wonder that will be CGC24. Good luck, and god speed!
That leaves me with just one last task:
To tell you the game that is the winner. The game that is the crapest game I played in 2023. Perhaps the crapest game I have ever played.
This is a game that I KNOW the author put a lot of work and energy into. He took every effort to make something interesting and memorable, and even had a big build up on the forums before it was released. And yet, this game was so crap it failed in every conceivable way to be good. It haunted my dreams, and I lived in fear that the author would release a sequel during my tenure as host.
A game so infuriatingly bad that I laughed like a mad man playing it. A game that I loved to hate. A game from a developer who is so magnificently crap his name alone brings a smile to my lips. As I attempt to gently and lovingly lampoon this person, I hope he knows all his games this year amused me and all of them were a pleasure to review.
Game: I don't understand 'give'
Me: BUT YOU DO!
Me, also: Arghhhhhhhhh!
Yes, you guessed it. All the way from Greece, it's a Pacman text adventure called "The Real Adventures of Pacard Manford (Pac-Man) v15f4e" and the maker is non other than:
Fire Lord.
For me, his game was the embodiment all the worst frustrations of text adventures. Boring locations and vague replies to all attempts to communicate with it reasonably. The Pacman map, makes for a featureless and repetitive wasteland when described as text, and even with the long list of cheat codes FLQG sent me to ensure I played it all the way to the end, I could not make progress.
One cheat code collected every item I needed to win the game, and transported me to the last room of the game. I knew exactly what I was supposed to do in that room but still couldn't figure out the exact phase needed to win.
You know you made a bad game when an arm full of cheat codes are required just to make any sort of progress. But, while it was crap, I also felt an enormous amount of responsibility to do it justice, as I would very likely be the ONLY HUMAN BEING TO EVER PLAY THIS GAME APART FROM FLQG HIMSELF. I could tell the effort that had been made, I didn't want to let him down. But, at the same time, I could not progress even with chest codes.
Let me tell you, this game broke me. It broke my spirit. It was too earnest to insult, too crap to compliment. The perfect balance. The finest grade of crap imaginable.
But was it crap on purpose? The idea itself was certainly crap, so maybe yes. BUT, so much time and effort was put into it, so no, it must have been crap by mistake. Being crap while making every effort to be good has to be worth the most points of all! Anyone can be crap on purpose, but only the most special of souls can be crap by accident.
Perhaps we will never get to the truth of the matter. FLQG is either an evil genius or utterly hapless, in his un abashed quest for recognition. Who can say which it is? That's how it is with crap games, you never really know for sure.
Well done. Fire Lord, this is indeed a prestigious honor and one that is well deserved. Thank you for your service. Thank you for being a good sport.
Final thoughts
I've probably not been the world's best host. Yes there were typos. Short reviews. Unfunny jokes. Long gaps of inactivity. A period where I was frankly in hiding - broken by a Pacman based text adventure.
Despite my many short coming you guys delivered crap games by the bucket full. Yes, the games themselves were fun, but better still was meeting (digitally) all the wonderful people that make them and contributed to CGC24. You were the real stars of this compo. You kept me on the knife edge between despair and mild amusement the whole year long. Thanks, I guess.
I wonder what the allure of making a crap game is? Maybe it is nostalgia, maybe it is a wish to fulfill some childhood ambition. There is something very dependable about a crap game. I know where I am with them. They are something I can understand, to give an example:
'20 GO TO 10' always goes to 10.
If I type
PRINT "JBIZZLE IS COOL"
Then the spectrum always agrees.
When the real world becomes too much to bear, then there is always to comfort and certitude of a crap game. I conclude that nothing else quite makes sense like the basic code of a crap game. After a year of reviewing crap games, that is my final revelation. And I confess that I will miss the steady influx of crap games, that took my mind away from everything else, and allowed me to focus on something simple and reassuringly familiar.
As I write these final words, I reflect that only a special bunch of folk know the pain and pleasure of hosting a quarter of a century of crap spectrum games. Only a special collection of people know what it is to code and submit a game, wait for it to be reviewed and then giggle at the fact the reviewer found it annoying in all the ways you hoped they would.
If you are still here reading this, then chances are you are one of those special people. This is us, this is what we do for fun. To everyone else, I say:
You don't know man, you weren't there.
If god exists, then this competition is proof that he loves the Spectrum more than the Commodore 64. Here's to the next 75 years of crap games. Come on kids - what is stopping you? Rise up and persecute your fathers with the beeps and boops of of a 100 years of crap. Crap games are the pinnacle of all human endeavor. All else is meaningless. Come see.
But this is it. I'm done. It's over.
With the last review typed up, I press the double shift keys of my Z88 to send her into sleep mode. But as I do, suddenly, all around me a strange wind blows and outside a terrible storm engulfs my house...
I run to the window, but I am stopped in my tracks by the revelation that I will never leave this room, for it has been foreseen that the city of Crap Games would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when I, J Bizzle would finish reviewing the crapest game of all, and that everything coded in that game was unplayable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to review crap game competitions do not have a second opportunity on earth.
With love
Jamie Bradbury, 2023.
Over to Ed..... CSSCGC24
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