View source for Summer 2003 Day of Zeux Judging Sheets:Exophase

<pre>*--- Summer 2003 Dualstream Day of Zeux ---*
+++- DoZ Score sheet -++++++++++++++++++++++
###- Exophase -#############################

--- Introduction ---

  Ah.. finally finished these scores. It took a lot longer than I wanted it to
and I apologize for that. Mostly I've been pleased with the results of this
DoZ, and I'm glad that this many people finished again. However, there are
some things I'd like to say regarding future DoZ's, and since I'm the host of
this DoZ it's best that I say it here:

  Please try to take the anonymity rule seriously. I know that a lot of people
find it very obvious who did which games, but the judges never know for sure
unless you spoil it for them. This really applies more to other people talking
about other's games in public places, but some individuals have also talked
about their games before the judging was finished. I know you all want to tell
everyone about your DoZ game after putting all the work you have into it, but
please wait until the results are out so that the judge's scores aren't skewed
because of that.

  I don't know if this was clear to everyone (and honestly, I can't understand
why it wouldn't be), but you may NOT use char sets made before the DoZ began
in your game. We've been pretty lax about it this time, but in the future it
could mean disqualification. No one wants to see anyone's game being
disqualified for petty reasons such as this, but you have to understand that
this is CHEATING. The rules are very clear regarding this; unfortunately MANY
people violated this rule this time around. Before entering any DoZ you must
be sure to read all of the rules very thoroughly.

  I don't really want to be the bearer of bad news in saying these things, but
I think that it's good for future reference so that everyone can have more
enjoyable upcoming DoZ's. Now, there are just a few more things regarding this
DoZ that I'd like to get off my chest...

  I'd like to again apoligize, this time for MZX bugs. There have been a few
bugs and version discrepencies that have caused some games to not work as they
should. I've truly dedicated a great deal of time to finding the source of
these bugs and I believe I've been pretty successful (see my notes regarding
the games). Nonetheless, it's not fair for games to be potentially penalized
for unpredictable bugs that aren't really their fault. Hopefully there won't
be any such scoring problems regarding this.

  Lastly I want to give a shout out to two people, asgromo and Dark_Shaolin,
for not being able to submit their games even though they finished it. I was
hoping that we could judge them anyway (disqualified, though), but I
personally haven't received either of them, so that's probably not going to
happen. I of course urge you both to compete in the uncoming DoZ.

--- Policies ---

  These are just a few notes regarding my own personal scoring style.

- Music and sound both receive 1's if none is included, and 0 if the
  music/sound is so unbearably bad as a whole that I have to turn it
  off. Fortunately no one got 0's in either this time, but it does happen
  sometimes.

- I judge discretion regarding how much common sense the author uses,
  basically. However, to get a perfect score in this category, the game really
  has to look and feel very professionally done. Things that are potential
  traps for discretion are bad language, unfair gameplay, obvious bugs,
  missing files, questionable rule adherence, and just being really
  annoying. ^_-

- The "grade" given is purely subjective and doesn't really have any meaning
  regarding anything, it's just a grade I gave the game, similar to one that
  would be given in an American school... an A is very good and an F is very
  bad, and letters inbetween are just that (there's no E of course) and
  +'s/-'s are higher/lower than the baseline.. uh.. no point really explaining
  this this much so yeah ^^

Team 1337: Paradigm AM (The Internet)
Grade: C, score: 159/300 (53%) It certainly could have been worse..

Gameplay: 22/70
   There really wasn't a lot of gameplay in this entry. The game mostly
  consisted of a few rounds of going between events. You talked to people or
  touched things and went to the next thing, with a very slight amount of
  direction. There wasn't any kind of fighting or anything that involved any
  level of thinking. There was one short blinking maze, but those are
  typically frowned upon and it didn't really add anything to the game. The
  game itself is short, although there aren't any serious bugs, as far as I'm
  aware.

Graphics: 41/50
   The graphics are quite good. The backgrounds are well detailed and colors
  are also chosen well. One thing that impressed me was the recreation of
  familiar icons. This was done faithfully and gave the game an authentic
  feel. Some pretty decent fades are used. Overall nothing incredibly
  fantastic, but everything had a clean and polished look to it. The graphics
  also have a decent amount of variation.. that is there differing kinds of
  areas. There was however one obvious pitfall to the graphics and that's the
  people. They're all default, 1 faced MZX smileys. Didn't really fit in with
  the background at all... the author of this game could have made them look
  nicer.

Plot: 28/45
   There is some plot, and I do have to give them credit for what's there. The
  problem is that nothing really progresses in a way that makes a lot of
  sense. The ending comes out of nowhere and is completely forced. There are
  plenty of NPC's but none of them really say anything important, they're just
  there for amusement. Speaking of which, the game seems to attempt to be
  funny sometimes, but never really succeeds. The overall premise was rather
  dull, but it probably could have done alright if it was put together more
  coherently.

Theme: 26/40
   The theme is used.. that is to say, their intentions regarding the theme are
  obvious. You're in an internet based virtual reality game and there are some
  internet like aspects to it... kinda. Having familiar internet icons and
  personalities here was a good idea, but unfortunately the game didn't take
  it far enough. Too much of the game had NOTHING to do with the internet, and
  much of what seemed to really was more about computers in general.

Innovation: 20/35
   Gameplay-wise there's nothing new here. The setting is also very
  familiar... seems like I've seen something just like this in some other
  games, humm... the whole virtual reality MMORPG idea is unique for MZX, but
  it's also a .Hack ripoff. Still, it does get some points for that.

Discretion: 0/20
   Ow, where do I begin. Okay, first, this game has a lot of blatantly
  offensive material. That in and of itself doesn't merit its low discretion
  score, but it seems like it was used for no reason whatsoever other than to
  get a bad discretion score. Especially the ending, with some bad rap song
  with a lot of really offensive lyrics is played; it's not the song itself
  that's the entirity of the problem, but the fact that there's no explanation
  or reason at all for WHY it's played. Same goes for a lot of the other
  material. But, that's not all. The game had a lot flashing white light that
  was rather painful on the eyes. Some of the text was also pretty hard to
  read. Lastly.. the score was at 3, but the game used a font from the
  encyclopedia for the title screen. This is really bad and should probably
  make the game disqualified, but the judges decided it won't be over this, so
  instead I'll just take away its remaining discretion points. All in all, the
  author of this game didn't show very good discretion.

Music: 18/35
   While there was definitely music there, I don't think it accomplished all
  that much. There were about 4 pieces... At least two of them have been
  commonly used in MZX games. None of them fit very well or were even very
  well done. They were all pretty long, but some of them were just of a low
  enough quality that I didn't really care to listen to it for very long. The
  music could have used these things: more pieces, more variation, and pieces
  that more closely fit the mood of the game. Of course, I've heard much worse
  music in DoZ games before.

Sound: 1/5
   No sound effects.


Team 1347: Castlevania: Drum Solo of Discombobulation (Trust)
Grade: C+, score: 154/300 (51%) OMGWTFLOL!!!!!!!!

Gameplay: 51/70
   This game definitely had gameplay. It was clearly modelled after old NES
  Castlevania games. However some things it wrong pretty badly and that really
  hurt it. First, the whip engine isn't very responsive nor does it stay out
  for long enough. Then there's the jumping.. it's just bad. Way too slow and
  clunky. The movement in general has this kind of feel. This makes fighting
  certain enemies hard, especially the bats who have a way of creeping up on
  you when you're in really tight situations. The game has a lot of bottomless
  pits, which is annoying because the control has such obvious
  problems. Fortunately you can save anywhere, which alleviates a lot of the
  pain of this game. This game isn't the MOST challenging I've played
  recently, but it's hardly a walk in the palk either. Don't let the fact that
  this is an obvious joke entry fool you, because the level mechanics,
  enemies, and bosses are pretty on the level gameplay-wise. Like I said, the
  whip weapon is pretty terrible, but the other weapons more than make up for
  this. They're not perfect, but they're still much more pleasant to use than
  the whip. Of course using them uses hearts, but that's not the main
  handicap.. that would be the fact that you have to press delete. Delete is
  an awful key for anything in a sidescroller, and I can't really justify
  using it for something action-oriented like a weapon. There's no really
  excuse for using it either when all of the other keys are every bit as
  accessible by this MZX version.
   This game is very LONG. I can't emphasize this enough. It's definitely
  longer than any DoZ game I can remember playing, and it's longer than a lot
  of full MZX games too. If you play this one you're in for the long haul,
  which is good if you can tolerate the gameplay flaws. Bosses near the end
  get pretty hard although if you play around enough you can find a pretty
  cheap way to beat them (which is good because the end boss can be very cheap
  himself). There are some other nice additions too, like the
  worldmap.. although that really doesn't add much to the game itself. So,
  overall, this game does have pretty solid gameplay. It also has a few
  problems and some people won't like it for that. If you can overlook them,
  though, then it's a worthwhile way to kill quite a bit of time.

Graphics: 29/50
   At first I was going to give this game a much lower graphics score. At first
  the graphics are pretty hideous: blocky and very loud. Basically like you'd
  expect a pretty bad MZX game to be, although there were some slightly better
  things thrown in (char editing on the backgrounds). The worldmap also looks
  particularly bad and the chars are your typical MZX smileys. But strangely,
  the game actually got BETTER looking as it progressed. Not just in one area
  but consistently, it just kept getting better and better. Now, it never
  became truly excellent, but during some of the later levels the backgrounds
  actually looked like they had some level of skill applied to them. There
  were some decent effects all about that gave some nice, albiet minor,
  graphical additions. The levels also had a distinctly NES look to them, even
  the pretty bad ones, which is a nice touch given the nature of the game...

Plot: 31/45
   There's a pretty clear presence of a plot. Even though it's a sidescroller
  it does have more plot then you'd expect from one, particularly the older
  NES Castlevania ones it's emulating. The dialogue at first is pretty
  annoying and not very funny, then it progresses to semi-annoying and funny,
  but only with injokes. By the end I was actually laughing, as it was really
  pretty funny. I've got to give the game credit for turning around rather
  unexpectedly in this department. Still, the plot is kinda weak, but the
  comedy value is there.

Theme: 1/40
   The level of either theme present in this game was pretty much a joke.. they
  just emphasized "trust" a few times, although this did add some decent humor
  value, present the topic it did not. They even through in "the internet"
  towards the end for kicks too but that didn't really matter. Put it this
  way, it's obvious that the maker of the game didn't really make it with plot
  in mind.

Innovation: 23/35
   A Castlevania like sidecsroller in MZX.. haven't really seen one of these
  done to this level before, so it's pretty new and interesting. Also
  parodying it was original. Of course since it's a parody it in nature kinda
  lacks pure originality but for MZX it's easy distinguished.

Discretion: 5/20
   Even though this game is an instant-DQ, so to speak, I'm still going to
  judge it as if it weren't, and given that it used very poor discretion.. I
  mean, it's so obvious that it takes after the previous joke game,
  FFXXX. Sure, that doesn't really mean that it gives away anonimity but if it
  didn't it just be blatant theft anyway. Point is that it doesn't show very
  good discretion to reuse so many things from other games.. using inside
  jokes also doesn't show that much discretion, and there were some annoying
  gameplay aspects that could have been easily changed.

Music: 9/30
   Usually game parodies have music consisting of extremely downgraded versions
  of the original, and unfortunately this game is no different. There are lots
  of pieces, and I think they're all Castlevania knock offs, but they're all
  pretty awful. They're all very short and repetitive, which makes them
  quickly grating. I wish there was just a lot more to them.

Sound: 5/5
   The game had a lot of sound effects and it used them well. Some of them were
  a bit silly, but then so was this game so it was fitting. None of them were
  annoying... and they really helped breath life into this game.


Team 160: The Evil Internet Virus (The Internet)
Grade: C+, score: 197/300 (66%) It was okay, kinda boring though.

Gameplay: 41/70
   The gameplay in this game consisted of running around in small rooms,
  picking up ammo, life, and coins, and shooting enemies that spawned. When
  you got all the coins, the level ended. There were 7 weapons, but many of
  them seemed to do the exact same thing, although some of them were pretty
  interesting. This quickly got tedious for me... For one thing, there was
  only one type of enemy. You also had to spend a lot of extra time just
  running around picking up all the coins. This was nice for one level, but
  when I saw there were four more just like it afterwards I wasn't that
  happy. There were some other problems with the main engine. It made you
  switch a weapon on at the start of every level, so you always started
  unarmed. The ammo listing was brought up when you pressed enter (yet I don't
  think this listed every weapon), however it would have been much more useful
  to have an onscreen one. As it stood you got plenty of ammo so running out
  wasn't usually a problem, but it could and did happen for various weapons,
  and when it did happen you could be in trouble depending on the
  situation. For instance, if several enemies suddenly spawned and you ran out
  of ammo you could be pushed against a wall and no amount of further shooting
  could get you out. Then you got to die a slow and embarrassing death... this
  was especially easy to have happen to you in the last level where enemies
  constantly spawned and the space was much more cramped. So, to sum things
  up, the game WAS sorta fun for a while, but wasn't something I wanted to
  play for as much as the game made me. It looked like there were going to be
  more things to this game.. unfortunately, there weren't. I guess they ran
  out of time.

Graphics: 30/50
   The graphics in this game get the job done, but without any real extra
  touch. They're not bad, but don't really stand out. Nice curved edges are
  used and default animations are edited. Likewise a lot of bright, attention
  grabbing colors are used for powerups and the like and some things are
  nicely animated (like coins and health) keeping the screen nicely
  active. The intro looked okay, not great but again, it got the job done. I'd
  say the intro in particular was a bit above average. Now, for the
  problems... well, the main problem with the graphics was the abundance of
  black space. There was just way too much of it; of course that was somewhat
  alleviated by all the power ups and stuff strewn over the floor but there
  still could have been nicer floors. The graphics are also very
  repetitive. Once you've seen the first level, you've seen it all. So, a
  little above average, but not a lot. Oh, and the font was annoyingly bad.

Plot: 25/45
   The plot is introduced in the opening and the first few scenes following it
  pretty well. It's all easy to understand and makes enough sense; it's clear
  that some thought was put into it. However, after these scenes.. plot's
  pretty much flushed down the toilet. We don't even get much of an
  appropriate ending, just some generic text ("you are free!"). Would have
  been nice to have seen things much more fleshed out.

Theme: 28/40
   It hit the theme pretty well in the background plot, utilizing the
  internet.. as you can tell by the topic, it involves a virus and an
  MMORPG... again it's kinda .hack like, but that's to be expected. It really
  could have carried through more beyond this, but since the plot was
  vaporized beyond the intro points that's all there really is to it.

Innovation: 22/35
   Basic MZX combat, multiple weapons.. been done before, but I don't think
  I've ever seen a random placement engine quite like this before. It
  definitely had a new, unique feel to it.

Discretion: 18/20
   Didn't really do anything in poor judgement, although I would have
  personally done less levels in general, but that could have just made the
  game too short. Could have used some more instructions (ie, press enter to
  view the ammo) and could have had more ammo on the menu...

Music: 30/35
   I liked the music. There were plenty of high quality pieces that all lasted
  a very long time. This variance really made the long winded gameplay more
  enjoyable. I'm pretty sure these aren't all original tracks, although I
  don't know where they're from. I'm told some of them might be from the game
  Flashback. Nonetheless, the music all worked. It gave an appropriate feel to
  the game, and was fairly enjoyable to listen to.

Sound: 3/5
   A lot of sound effects are used, for pretty much everything. Some of them
  are fairly common as far as sound effects in MZX go, and the constant usage
  of "groovy!" got a little old but the sound effects were still well enough
  utilized.


Team 101: Net Demon (The Internet)
Grade: F+, score: 66/300 (22%) This game is just really bad.

Gameplay: 15/70
   Let's see.. basic MZX shooting in one board with a few mindless robot
  enemies. Very short and pointless.

Graphics: 18/50
   The best part of the graphics in this game are the text openings which have
  been converted for usage in MZX.. other than that, they're pretty bad. The
  intro looks barely passable, but the "game" itself is made up of mostly
  black backgrounds and some default chars used in weird ways (like letters
  for bullets?) And.. yeah, that's about it.

Plot: 10/45
   There is some attempt at a plot, but it makes no sense at all. Seems almost
  randomly conceived.

Theme: 4/40
   The game starts out trying to have something to do with the theme but
  clearly the author gave up in making this really related to the internet so
  just wrote some nonsense to try to make it seem that way, or
  something. Yeah.

Innovation: 3/35
   There's nothing innovative about this game, just standard MZX shooting...

Discretion: 10/20
   I'm basically giving them half points for even submitting this thing. If you
  can't handle the DoZ don't bother ;D

Music: 5/35
   One mod. Very repetitive. I think ripped from somewhere. It's not looking
  good here either.

Sound: 1/5
   None.

Team 215: Lethal Recourse (Trust)
Grade: C, score: 169/300 (56%) This game is a lesson in tragedy.

Gameplay: 41/70
   Alright.. let me start out by saying that this game could have gotten a much
  higher gameplay score. It started out pretty solidly, and the engine was
  very nice but... it was a flawed concept, in a way. At first I thought it
  was a really TERRIBLE idea, to have to enter combos like this in a REAL TIME
  engine. But, after a bit, it really started to grow on me.. there's a steep
  learning curve, but I really think that the gameplay in this game could have
  worked, and it could have gotten pretty good, too. Unfortunately, it quickly
  bugs out.. it just becomes full of bugs by the second board. Lots of
  graphical glitches on screen, enemies not working, getting stuck INSIDE an
  enemy... then, there's the infamous endgame bug which froze MZX by trapping
  it in a loop of teleport players with commands set to 32767. Not
  good. That's more of a discretion matter, though, because it didn't really
  detract from the gameplay itself. What did was the difficulty.. the enemies
  were too merciless in taking your life while you struggling to fight against
  them. Maybe if they fought in a way with delays similar to the ones you'd
  experience while fighting things would be different. Still, at first the
  engine seemed very smooth and nicely executed.. it's a shame this game
  couldn't have done more with it.

Graphics: 32/50
   They work pretty well; nice animations, especially with the Kama blade. The
  backgrounds look nice, although there are some errors in not loading char
  sets for one or two of the intro boards. Nonetheless for 1x1 they stand out.

Plot: 30/45
   We just get a backplot, but it's described in a lot of well written
  text. It's intruiging; too bad we never get to see where it goes.

Theme: 0/40
   I couldn't find one thing in this game that related it to either topic, and
  no, saying "trust" in the title screen doesn't count.

Innovation: 30/40
   The whole Kama blade engine was definitely very innovative, if not perfectly
  executed in this game. It would have been very nice to have seen it work
  out. There's no question that this game stands out.. it also makes intuitive
  use of sprites and the vlayer, giving it a technical edge over other games
  which allows its relatively complicated Kama blade engine to work, as well
  as giving it a nice heads up display.

Discretion: 9/20
   First, the gameover bug. Settings commands to 32767 in the first place is a
  bad idea, because if you're not careful, this is what happens.. control of
  MZX is literally seized. Doing an infinite loop of the relatively SLOW
  teleport player command can result in disaster, and it did here. This game
  obviously wasn't thoroughly bug tested, or else this would have been
  noticed. This isn't the only problem with the game... first, the whole Kama
  blade engine shows questionable discretion because it's just a very strange
  idea for an action game. Then, the text in the openings.. it was so FAST! I
  guess whoever wrote this must be a real speed reader because even at speed 9
  I could barely keep up.

Music: 24/35
   I only heard a few mods in this game. They were nice, and fit the areas
  well.. but I could have used more. Then again, this game could have used a
  lot more too.

Sound: 3/5
   There were sound effects for swings and the like and monster's howling in
  the background. Unfortunately some of them were constantly played in the
  background and got all crackly, which was annoying.


Team 222: Netsplit (The Internet)
Grade: B-, score: 206/300 (69%) This one's broken too. It's still interesting,
though.

Note: There's an NPC who can crash MZX with their long frown
(":(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((("). If you talk to this person.. you'd
probably be best off closing MZX and trying it again without talking to
them. The game won't be counted off because of this.

Gameplay: 38/70
   The main gameplay of the game involved the mini-game Netsplit, which is
  similar to Battleship.. kinda. The game itself was pretty simple but it did
  require at least a little bit of thought. This was really all the game was
  about... you walked around and talked to people, and there were some boards
  you went between... the main problem is that the game was obviously
  incomplete. New boards didn't show up, and although there was a hidden board
  you could access, nothing particularly useful was there. It told you to
  save, but there wasn't actually anything that could do anything to
  you. Looked like there could have been some good fetch elements here, but
  nothing really took off. Of course, playing in the editor revealed a little
  bit more.. well, not really. But you could get to the end boss, which was an
  interesting if not frustrating sort of maze involving words of Al Gore...

Graphics: 40/50
   The graphics in this game are very stylish, in a good way. The title screen
  is particular impressive. From there on you have well detailed and nicely
  colored backgrounds and okay character animations. The scenic backgrounds
  such as the Netsplit background or the channel select board looked
  particularly nice and really had a technological feel to
  them. Unfortunately, there are some graphical errors, such as failure to
  load char sets/palettes, and missing text boxes. That takes away from the
  score a little.

Plot: 33/45
   Intersting premise; although it was another "travel around the internet"
  kinda thing it really was expressed well. There were some nice beginnings of
  a plot involving virii and finding suspicious people, but once again it just
  doesn't go anywhere. Still, even though there's no real advancement, the
  people and situations were interesting.

Theme: 36/40
   I really felt that this game did a good job with the internet theme. The
  boards really felt reminiscent of IRC channels and other internet familiar
  aspects were used. The game seemed to get this setting nailed.

Innovation: 24/40
   The main innovation of this game is the netsplit game, which is innovative,
  but since it's relatively simple it can't be given too much credit. Many DoZ
  games have relatively simply yet innovative mini-games but don't completely
  rely on them. The "end boss" was innovative though.

Discretion: 13/20
   It would have been nice if the game were somehow wrapped up so that the
  player didn't have to realize that it weren't simply unfinished. Also there
  are some spelling errors and sams that are used when they haven't been
  included.

Music: 20/35
   Just a few pieces. Nothing really great, and I thought the netsplit game
  piece was kinda obnoxious.

Sound: 2/5
   Well, there's an opening with funny voice recordings... that deserves a
  point. Other than that...


Team 261: Dark Core (Trust)
Grade: B+, score: 228/300 (76%) Finally, a solid game!

Gameplay: 59/70
   In this game you fight enemies and explore an area, pressing switches to
  open passageways and collecting health and power-ups. It's pretty simple but
  effective; plays kinda like a Zelda 1 dungeon but without any puzzles or
  anything. One of the nice features of the game is the ability to choose the
  difficulty level. I played the game in "easy", and indeed easy it was. I
  played some in extreme, and it was a lot harder. I didn't beat the game in
  anything besides easy, though this does give some replay value as well as
  the ability for pretty much anyone to play the game. This game is also
  fairly long, especially considering the number of boards in the game
  itself. There are a few issues with collision detection, but they're all
  minor and don't detract from the game itself.

Graphics: 37/50
   Graphics look very NES style. Colors are well chosen and the game makes
  heavy use of 2x1 char blocks (which is one of the reasons why it looks so
  much like an NES game). The graphics get the job done well, and some nice
  effects are used (like at the end), but they lack a lot of variation. The
  board scrolling looks nice.

Plot: 33/45
   There's an opening and an ending, and not really anything inbetween. What's
  there is a bit stale... a light core that the people depended on betrayed
  them and now it's a dark core that the hero must destroy. Nothing
  particularly deep or thought provoking here; the game could have definitely
  benefitted from more plot thrown in with the gameplay during the course of
  the game.

Theme: 27/40
   There was an issue of breaking trust, but it was a little weak, considering
  it involved trust in some kind of object. It seemed superficial and a little
  forced and didn't really give a strong impression throughout the game, but
  there's no denying that it was there.

Innovation: 29/35
   This game does a pretty good job standing out from the other games. It looks
  and feels more like an NES game than an MZX one, which is something you see
  very rarely. The weapon engine is pretty innovative as far as MZX games go,
  and the usage of sprites works well. Storing the game on mostly one board
  isn't completely original, but still pretty unique.

Discretion: 20/20
   I really can't say anything negative regarding the discretion used in making
  this game. It's just very well polished, and has a lot of well chosen
  implementations.. from the difficulty settings to the ability to skip the
  two cutscenes.

Music: 18/35
   There are only a few pieces, and one in particularly plays for the entire
  actual gameplay portion of the game. It's not very good either, getting
  pretty grating. Still, the music has a dark mood to it that complements the
  feel of the game itself.

Sound: 5/5
   Nice sound effects accompany pretty much everything that happens in this
  game.


Team 331: Net Wars (The Internet)
Grade: D, score: 122/300 (41%) Well, at least they're modest
*cough*yeahright*cough*

Gameplay: 22/70
   Not this game's strong point (but then again, what is?). Well, most of the
  gameplay consists of walking around aimlessly. Most of the areas included in
  the game don't matter, but it's just as well because you can't really access
  them. The game is buggy.. you can walk through WALLS! I don't know why they
  didn't add collision detection for this, as simple as it would have
  been. Okay, that's the "passive" part of the gameplay (read, the not so
  interactive part). Then there was going to be some kind of puzzle.. I
  think. It introduced it, then told me to press j if I was bored with
  listening to the explanation. Then it froze. So I pressed j, and it told me
  I won! Okay, then there's one more part of the gameplay.. it's optional, so
  to speak, meaning you don't need to go through it to beat the game. And
  that's fortunate, because it's not good.. I'm speaking of the battle
  engine. A one on one battle engine... sure, it doesn't use annoying [ menus
  or whatever, but it's pointless; you can't even see how much HP you have! I
  don't think it was even close to finished. So anyway, this game has nothing
  enjoyable to offer as far as gameplay goes.

Graphics: 20/50
   I've definitely seen worse this DoZ, but nonetheless they're still not very
  good. It's a shame too because some things were well edited, but they don't
  do much to offset the overall striking blandness and uglyness of the
  game. There's a lot of repeated chars in the backgrounds and stale, blocky
  areas. There are some decent effects with the text, but it seems they spent
  way too much time on this because it really didn't amount to much. Then
  there are the battles.. oh dear.. these look awful. Almost nothing but
  spaces, with some lines for menus. The tech effects make things look a
  LITTLE better, but don't save them.

Plot: 26/45
   Ah, the plot. Well, I give them credit for at least putting something
  together here. There's some text at the beginning, and sure enough some
  dialogue in the game (well, I use the word dialogue a little loosely since
  it's mostly one sided descriptions). So, it does deliver in terms of amount
  of content, but the content itself isn't that good. Some doctor was captured
  by terrorists, and now has called for you, his robot, to jack into the
  internet and save him. In all honesty I've seen better plots in children's
  cartoons. The plot also has dead ends (IE brings up things that it never
  bothers finishing) and doesn't actually have a finale itself, just a "you
  win!" message.

Theme: 23/40
   Hrm.. again, like many other DoZ games, it involves you going into the
  internet. Unfortunately this is expressed very superficially; you simply go
  into the internet, but very little about the internet is actually utilized
  here. It really feels slapped on, but it is there.

Innovation: 18/35
   Some things about this game really do set it apart from the rest. Perhaps
  it's the way sprites are used (as incompletely as they are). I don't know,
  maybe the ability to walk through walls was supposed to be some kind of
  awful feature. But the unfortunate fact is that this game touted itself as
  an RPG, and a very GENERIC one it tried to be. RPG's like this in MZX are
  just not innovative! Sorry, not even in DoZ's. It's been done. It's been
  done a lot _better_....

Discretion: 2/20
   I can't say that I feel the authors of this game used very good discretion
  in making it. I can demonstrate this on several counts too. First, the whole
  wall problem. This game wasn't very action oriented; if they couldn't handle
  sprites they really shouldn't have used them. It wouldn't have made that big
  of a difference. Okay, another thing that REALLY bugged me about this game
  is that they seemed to try harder to convince me to give them a good score
  than actually trying to earn one! At the beginning of the game you're told
  how many impressive things the game utilizes. It seems proud to express how
  much of an RPG it is, and no less the beginning of a series (why would
  anyone continue this game?). The RPG engine itself brags about itself, but
  then tries to excuse its shortcomings (since afterall, it is just a
  DoZ). Then, at the end it even has the nerve to tell me to give it a good
  score! A good DoZ game speaks for itself. Trying to sugar coat the game with
  words when it isn't a very good game anyway is pretty poor. Not only does it
  make me want to gag, but it hypes the game to the point where I'm even more
  let down when it fails to deliver. Why couldn't they have spent more time
  and energy actually working on the game rather than hyping it up? Okay,
  that's not all. The battle engine.. yes, I'm going to touch that here. Doing
  a boring, pointless, one on one battle engine like this just shows little
  common sense. Yes, it wasn't required to play it, but then that brings up
  the question - why even bother including it? The game would have been better
  off if they simply deleted it. Oh yeah, pressing space to talk is just dumb.

Music: 10/35
   I can tell you right off that it's all ripped. But that's not the major
  problem - the music isn't very well USED. Yes, even though they used one of
  my favorite mods, Crystal Summer, it's still not well fitting for the title
  screen of this game at ALL. Mods seem to just be thrown randomly on here as
  they feel fit.. oh, and Crystal Summer definitely was the best mod used. The
  rest were just bad. I give them a little credit for quantity but quality is
  definitely not up to par.

Sound: 1/5
   No sound effects.


Team 344: Finite Space (The Internet)
Grade: F, score: 33/300 (11%) Ooh dear :(

Gameplay: 4/70
   You ran through one room, gathering hearts while fighting enemies with
  really bad AI. Nuff said.

Graphics: 10/50
   The graphics in the game you see are very, very bad. However, in a lot of
  the inaccessible boards in the game the graphics actually look pretty
  good. Not great, but a lot better than what was in the game
  itself. Unfortunately, since these are inaccessible they don't carry much
  weight, and besides that they're also very incomplete. Oh, and the title
  screen's screwed up.

Plot: 5/45
   Something about some internet virus making computers mad.. probably made up
  at the last minute. It's not good.

Theme: 2/40
   VERY little to actually do with the theme; more related to computers than
  the internet. Very forced on.

Innovation: 5/35
   Run around and shoot things. To its benefit, I think it randomly placed
  stuff, which isn't seen TOO often but often enough. It was so poorly
  executed that you couldn't really determine what was happening.

Discretion: 5/20
   The author spent a lot more time writing apologies and explanations than
  trying to put some game together. It showed pretty bad discretion to not
  some USE the boards that had the better graphics instead of the crappy
  boards, I mean they could have placed enemies there instead... and all the
  broken things that would have been easy to have fixed, like the title
  screen... sigh.

Music: 1/35
   Alas, there isn't any. Could have probably included SOMETHING...

Sound: 1/5
   No sound effects either.

Team 385: Gross Injustice (Trust)
Grade: B-, score: 181/300 (60%) It's a full game! But it is SLOPPY.

Note: "chase.gdm" crashes MZX; you should delete/rename it to play this game.

Gameplay: 47/70
   The gameplay was actually kinda interesting, involving a few things. You
  searched for jewelery within a time limit, ran away from cops for as long as
  possible, then escaped from a jail by evading guards. However, there were
  two main problems with all of this. The first is that how well you completed
  the tasks at hand didn't seem to make any difference whatsoever, really
  removing motivation to do it. The second is that the execution was just very
  poor - gameplay elements weren't really implemented in a way that was
  consistent or even properly working in some cases. For instance, you could
  find a spot where the police would never find you during the chase, and
  during the chase the guards often saw you when they shouldn't have and
  didn't see you when they should have; getting through was more dumb luck
  than anything. The game was truly plagued with bad bugs. Some were merely
  graphical, but a lot of them made the gameplay harder to enjoy by having
  things break up or not be visible at all.

Graphics: 25/50
   The graphics were okay, although not great. The player chars in particular
  got the job done. The backgrounds were only average, but the fact that they
  were built for 2x2 did help. Decent usage of detail editing for chars was
  noticable, as was palette editing. Graphical bugs bring this score down a
  bit because the game really LOOKS sloppier than it FEELS. 2x2 entities
  constantly break apart and write over overlay bits, these bits themselves
  being prone to breakage.

Plot: 36/45
   The plot was interesting. There was a pretty generous amount of convincing
  dialogue and twists that weren't completely predictable. It also gets points
  for having multiple endings that you can control. It's nothing incredible,
  though.

Theme: 35/40
   This game did a good job enforcing the trust theme. It really made you
  contemplate issues of trusting long term friends and even made you make a
  decision based on trust. Well done adherence to the theme.

Innovation: 27/35
   The type of gameplay was actually fairly innovative; it was a nice change of
  pace to have a game not revolving around combat.

Discretion: 3/20
   First thing I really have to say is this.. WHY weren't sprites used?! The
  overlay based engines were so terribly done that it would have been much
  better without them. They really killed the game, and just made it look
  very, very unpolished. Next, using space to talk to people wasn't a very
  good thing (as I said with Net Wars). The dialogue boxes were also jerky to
  operate, which was very frustration. I think that they must have timed the
  loop wrong or something. Lastly, even though it's not their fault that a mod
  of their's was crashing MZX, this still should have been quickly
  noticable. This has been a long term problem in MZX and they shouldn't have
  included the mod.

Music: 6/35
   I really think the music in this game is quite awful. Mostly it's just a
  couple of sams playing in the background that get old very quickly and don't
  really add anything to the game. One of the mods I had to delete because it
  was crashing MZX, but from what I heard of this mod it wasn't good either.

Sound: 2/5
   There was a "click" sound effect. It didn't add much, but it was still sorta
  nice.


Team 4013: Hacker (The Internet)
Grade: D+, score: 124/300 (41%) Enh.. something about this game just isn't
right.

Gameplay: 33/70
   You fight enemies with no real AI with a little sword. I think you can get
  things with score, but unfortunately I never really got enough score to get
  anything because the game itself bugged out before I could really get
  anywhere. Looked around in the editor.. found that there was a boss that was
  pretty hard to beat because it shot at you while you had a little sword.. so
  I cheated until I won. No real point in that though. This game is hurt by
  lack of connections and fatal bugs (for instance, try visiting your
  neighbor's computer twice), but really lacks any strong substance at the
  heart of the gameplay itself.

Graphics: 15/50
   The graphics are pretty bad. There are a few char edits, but nothing major;
  mostly repetitive space and defaults. The player/enemies were very small and
  this was annoying. There were some graphical bugs, like the sword being
  prone to getting stuck on the overlay when an enemy pushes you, and the
  player staying red after being hit.

Plot: 30/45
   I found the plot was rather confusing and a bit inane. Apparently you're a
  hacker and you're hacking into people's computers for no real reason. 
  Nonetheless, there was a lot of supportive dialogue, and some of the  scenes 
  (like the chatroom one) were actually pretty funny.

Theme: 28/40
  You were hacking on the internet... it worked but it's rather superficial. 
 Again, like other games this one seems to focus on computers themselves as 
 much as the internet, and things seemed slapped together. Yes, you're a 
 hacker, but WHY?

Innovation: 10/35
   No innovation here, just another poorly done sword engine. Score apparently
  was supposed to impact the game somehow but it didn't really.

Discretion: 5/20
   Big bugs hurt this one; ones that can kill the game entirely are very
  bad. The font seems stolen, although I can't verify this, it gets counted
  off just for looking a LOT like existing fonts. Trying to distribute a game
  fix after the DoZ is also bad discretion (yes, I know, doesn't pertain to
  the game itself. Still, it affects the DoZ). Oh, and that wait at the
  beginning.. very bad because it then launches you right into important text,
  but you pretty much have to keep the thing at speed 1 just to be bearable. 
  Then the fact the text messages themselves can go too fast.. why couldn't 
  the author let you press space to advance them?

Music: 2/35
   Aieee.. there's only ONE mod. A CAVERNS remix of all things! This is
  slightly better than original Caverns music, but I'm sure we've all heard
  this anyway, and it doesn't fit the game at ALL. I guess the author gets the
  1 point simply for having it though, so congratulations.

Sound: 1/5
   No bad sound effects though.


Team 404: Serum (Trust)
Grade: C+, score: 149/300 (50%) Bad battle engine and bugs kills would could
have been a decent game.

Gameplay: 18/70
  The gameplay consists of walking around and getting into RPG battles,
  mainly. This of course detracts from the score because the battles are
  crappy... for most of the game you just have one player who has the options
  "attack" and "defend." Well, let me tell you, when there's only one player
  who can only attack otherwise, the "defend" option is pointless, so that
  means you're down to a one option engine, which is what you want to avoid at
  ALL COSTS with a battle engine. It had multiple enemies, but this was kinda
  pointless since you only had one real option.. ho hum. Later another player
  was added that could, instead of attack, use "magic" (as well as the
  pointless defend option), and now there were four "spells" (they basically
  all did the same kinda thing, and were just there for effect) and a way to
  legitimately heal yourself. While this was a pleasant addition it actually
  didn't add that much to the end.. oh, and the game bugged out well before
  then. Even if you did manage to fix the game, you could at most get into one
  of these battles before it bugged out again. There was a typical DoZ style
  "dodge the incoming stuff" kinda board.. which would have been great, if it
  WORKED. No, you can just fly right through...

Graphics: 38/50
   I liked the graphics in this game. They were kinda big and bland sometimes,
  but usually were fairly well edited and had some good colors going. The
  characters themselves looked pretty good. In battle they even had some
  animation. The spells in battle also looked fairly nice... unfortunately
  there were a few cases of missing char set/palette loadings that screwed up
  some areas. Since this is a 2x2 game it had to draw the background
  accordingly, and the background does like nice for 2x2.

Plot: 33/45
   Probably one of the stronger points of this game. It had a lot of dialogue
  that moved the game along, and some semblence of a real underlying plot. 
  Unfortunately there was never any conclusion (yes, another unfinished game 
  this DoZ... seems to be more the rule than the exception this time). Also 
  some of the parts seemed rather... contrived.

Theme: 1/40
   Theme? What theme? :P The author seemed to think the theme was "trust", not
  "truth." While the two words are vaguely related they are far from
  interchangable for the purpose of making a DoZ game. No actual relation to
  "trust" can be found.

Innovation: 19/35
   This was mostly standard fair.. another bad battle engine, but the execution
  of everything does seem nicer and more polished than the other games. 
  Sprites and MZM's in particular are well used (I like how it uses MZM's for 
  message boxes)

Discretion: 13/20
   Including cheat/reset keys in this one was actually more of a good idea than
  a bad one. However the fact that it needed them in the first place kinda
  hurt it. Very simple bugs ruined the game (color fade bugs) and that's a
  shame because they would have been easy to correct. Failure to INCLUDE sound
  effects used is bad, because since you really have to play some of the game
  in the editor you get the dreaded load errors for sams, a LOT. Very 
  annoying. The whole last sequence was pretty dumb; why have the second
  player block your path? That was just frustrating.

Music: 26/35
   There was a lot of music, and for the most part it fit well, although some
  of it seemed out of place.

Sound: 1/5
   The game had a lot of pretty good sound effects and I was going to give it a
  higher score but it used some really, really annoying sound effects as well
  that nearly made me go deaf. So no score for you!


Team 499: Shinrai (Trust)
Grade: C+, score: 182/300 (61%) Short and simple, but complete!

Gameplay: 45/70
   Hm.. well, you go around slashing up enemies with your katana. There's a
  decent amount of enemies (mostly varying in the speed they charge you at)
  and a boss.. a place to restore health where you can save... it's all pretty
  standard fare and simple to go through; just hold down space and run around
  slashing everything. Not a lot of depth to it, but at least it works.

Graphics: 30/50
   The graphics are also simple but effective. It's all 1x1, but some nice
  shading techniques are used in the backgrounds. The trees in particular look
  pretty nice. Also the swinging animations are well done. There really isn't
  much at all beyond that... the title screen was missing graphics so just
  looked like a mess.

Plot: 35/45
   The plot was also short and simple, but the dialogue provided was effective
  and fairly interesting. The whole ending was pretty funny... again, short,
  but enjoyable to a certain extent.

Theme: 34/40
   Even though the game was short it made a valid albiet silly demonstration
  regarding trust. Presented in a pretty unique manner that was again,
  effective. Good utilization of theme.

Innovation: 19/35
   Sword based games like this are becoming a dime a dozen in MZX these days,
  although this one does work better than most, largely because of the
  intuitive swinging where the sword remains out to be swung back.

Discretion: 17/20
   Failure to include title graphics (should have caught that one) and usage of
  some Japanese words that some players might not understand.

Music: 1/35
   There wasn't any music.

Sound: 1/5
   No sound effects either.


Team 505: Vyznium (Trust)
Grade: B-, score: 208/300 (69%) Fun, but ugly and frustrating.

Gameplay: 57/70
   Okay.. let me start by saying that this game is very hard and
  frustrating. It's a sidescrolling platformer, with no actual combat involved
  on the player's end, merely jumping around. Despite this it's pretty
  interesting, and very challenging. The last level in particular is
  ridiculously hard; I had to play at speed 9 just to get through it,
  something I imagine most players will do. Still, with great difficulty comes
  a decent amount of satisfaction, and even though it's very hard it doesn't
  feel TOO cheap. Besides pushing your finger agility, some.. interesting
  strategies were applicable sometimes. Such as luring enemies off the edge of
  the platform. Also there are gems that you can collect which make the game
  even more challenging. These are supposed to give you a better ending if you
  get them all, but sadly even if you do get them all you won't get the good
  ending. Pretty solid gameplay, that's very challenging, with levels that are
  well constructed. The game is also pretty well lengthed. Control isn't
  excellent, but it gets the job done (jumping is much better than in 1347's
  game). Fortunately you can save anywhere in this game.

Graphics: 15/20
   The graphics start out alright, with the title screen looking fairly
  decent. Then move on to the house, and things don't look so good... some
  char editing is used, but for the most part it looks very bland and blocky
  and the colors aren't well used at all. From this point onwards it only gets
  worse.. backgrounds look ZZT style (meaning there's a serious lack of
  char/palette editing).. they really aren't very well done.

Plot: 38/45
   The plot in this game isn't very serious, but that's one of its strengths. A
  lot of it was really very funny.  There was a more than adequete amount of
  text for a game of this nature, but for much of the game you're pulled along
  without much explanation of why you're going where you're going.

Theme: 27/40
   It's another "BUT I TRUSTED YOU!!!" kinda game. It works, but there's very
  little depth to it.

Innovation: 27/35
   Being the only sidescroller in the DoZ is a strength. Even though
  sidescrollers are common in MZX, this one stands apart by being entirely
  jumping/platform based which gives it a different kind of feeling than most
  sidescrollers.

Discretion: 15/20
   Messing up the gem count cost the ending pretty dearly. Also saying that the
  game matches the theme near the end... if we couldn't actually beat it we'd
  all look in the editor. But really the bite out of discretion comes in the
  DIFFICULTY. They should have at least suggested playing at speed 9 at some
  points, since that was obviously necessary.

Music: 26/35
   The music wasn't totally serious itself, but that was a good thing since it
  fit the game. Lots of music, but unfortunately nothing original, and some of
  the tunes we've heard a million times.

Sound: 3/5
   Conventional MZX sound effects are used. Some are rather annoying
  (everyone's favorite screaming..) but don't really get on your nerves.


Team 6047: Convergence (The Internet)
Grade: D, score: 103/300 (34%) Showed a lot of potential at first, but this
isn't a game, it's a diary.

Gameplay: 4/70
   Er.. there isn't any gameplay. Some stubs of hacking into the "wired" (where
  have I heard that name before?) but you can't actually really go anywhere or
  do anything.

Graphics: 17/50
   The message boxes and diary look nice, and the player looks okay, but the
  background we see (and it's only one) looks.. weird. The title's just text
  and.. that's about it.

Plot: 24/45
   Only backplot here, no development. Still, it was a long read and sounded
  interesting.

Theme: 28/40
   Although there was very little to this game I liked where it was actually
  going with the internet theme. It had "hack into the internet" concepts like
  other games, but seemed to be more focused on control and conspiracy being
  used in the internet.

Innovation: 14/35
   There's really too little here to consider anything innovative. The diary is
  sorta original though.

Discretion: 14/20
   Should have done SOMETHING to sew up the game somehow, instead of just
  leaving us dry with what's not there.

Music: 1/35
   No music.

Sound: 1/5
   No sound effects.


Team 666: Depravity (Trust)
Grade: B-, score: 206/300 (69%) At least it's one of the nicer incomplete
games.

Note: You should play this one in MZX 2.69b, because if you save it in 2.69c
it'll stop working (it's due to a discrepency in the way the sprite checking
is handled between versions, not so much a bug)

Gameplay: 47/70
   Run around and shoot things.. apparently there was a way to switch weapons
  after buying more, but I couldn't figure out how and I don't think it said
  how. It didn't really matter because the shooting portions were a joke. What
  really made the gameplay of this game was the hacking. Here you pressed a
  sequence of direction keys as shown in the screen before the time ran
  out. The ones that you needed to pass gave you a lot of time, whereas the
  optional ones were far more challenging. Even though this is relatively
  small it added a lot to the gameplay of this game.

Graphics: 38/50
   The graphics are pretty nice, especially the player animations. Some
  background pieces are very well done, but unfortunately there's way too much
  black space.

Plot: 31/45
   The plot is rather hard to pick up on because it's pretty fragmenting. After
  investigating it all in the MZX file it seems pretty coherent. There's a
  decent amount of dialogue, but the summation of the plot isn't all that
  interesting. Also, yet another game without any kind of an ending!

Theme: 26/40
   Another "YOU BETRAYED ME!" kind of plot. Some character from your past is
  introduced who then betrays you on a mission by stealing the plans for some
  war machine. It's pretty forced and not that deep, but the game does give
  some further insights about trust that help it.

Innovation: 28/35
   The hacking game is what made this stand out. It was pretty original. The
  rest of the game wasn't necessarily original, per se, but was presented in a
  manner that made it stand out against the other games.

Discretion: 10/20
   The big problem here is that sometimes the screen fades to black and you
  have to press enter to advance, but you miss some text in the process. Some
  text screens aren't on for long enough, and some text is hard to read due to
  the color used against the grey background of the [ boxes. The game should
  have used sprite y_order so that you didn't overlap with the other sprites.

Music: 23/35
   There were only a few pieces, and they weren't original, but they did fit
  the dark mood of the game pretty well.

Sound: 3/5
   A few well used sound effects.


Team 776: WHY THE INTERNET IS BORING (The Internet)
Grade: F+, score: 36/300 (12%) HOORAY JOKE ENTRY!

Gameplay: 0/70
   Certifiably no gameplay, it's just a cinema sequence.

Graphics: 12/50
   Erm.. well, there's not much to them, but they do look like.. uh.. text mode
  stuff, which kinda adds to the feeling it was trying to give?

Plot: 7/45
   Yes, I'm giving it this high because frankly I thought it was funny. Sue me.

Theme: 13/40
   Well, it WAS about the internet, right? Although it was.. uh.. wasn't really
  anything to it.

Innovation: 1/35
   It's a cinema. No innovation is actually involved here.....

Discretion: 1/20
   ... I don't want to give the game low discretion just for being a joke
  entry, but did this really have to be submitted? ^^

Music: 1/35
   None.

Sound: 1/5
   None.


Team 777: Hackers Can Turn Your Computer Into a Bomb (The Internet)
Grade: B, score: 214/300 (71%) WHIZBANG!

Gameplay: 62/70
   You fly around in a ship, fighting three different types of enemies in a
  sidescrolling space shooter. Using the mouse is kinda annoying, but it
  works.. and while things seem to get rather hard later you can use the right
  mouse button for rapid fire, which helps a lot (I don't know if this was
  intentionally left in). Only three levels, so it's a bit short and lacks
  variety of other things, but what it's meant to do it does very
  well. Refreshing to actually see gameplay this solid in this DoZ. But level
  1 is empty...

Graphics: 45/50
   NICE graphics. The normal MZX parts are only okay.. looking pretty good, but
  not excellent. The SMZX parts really shine, and that's not just because
  they're done in SMZX mode, but a lot of attention is paid to effects and
  detail. However, while the effects are incredible, it could use more
  background and some more animation. Still, very much doesn't look like
  something done in MZX.

Plot: 18/45
   There was a plot just tacked onto the beginning.. it seemed pretty thorough,
  but gets a low score because it didn't make a lot of SENSE and seemed to
  have almost nothing to do with the actual game.

Theme: 11/40
   Enh, give me a break.. we all know this game had nothing to do with the
  internet, the opening was just a silly tack on added to a game that was but
  a random space shooter game. Could have done a MUCH better job actually
  trying to make it fit the theme.

Innovation: 34/35
   Space shooters in MZX are rare enough as it is. Only a couple have been done
  well, but none have been done THIS well. Pure mastery of SMZX modes and
  actually pushing sprites in MZX makes this game truly stand out among the
  other DoZ games, or any MZX games for that matter.

Discretion: 16/20
   Some people might have a problem with this, but I think that mouse support
  only isn't a good idea. It should have had support for keyboard control too
  (and no, this wouldn't have been hard to have implemented). Other than that,
  pretty solid.

Music: 24/35
   The music is nice.. nothing original, but it's pretty high quality. Still,
  kinda just random existing themes thrown in on this one.

Sound: 4/5
   Nice sound effects for a shooter, all the explosions and shots are there.


Team 787: Innernet (The Internet)
Grade: B, score: 230/300 (77%) Nice little game.

Gameplay: 55/70
   Two levels here. The first one involves moving blocks around to zap little
  guys then putting them in a port before it closes, so it's mostly reflex
  based. The second is a difficult puzzle that makes you think pretty
  hard. The gameplay in these two stages is excellent, but unfortunately it
  ends there. It's just too short, but it still does a great job for what's
  there.

Graphics: 40/50
   The graphics are quite stylish.. nice colors and effects and everything is
  expressed well. The second stage puzzle is a bit straightforward, but on the
  other hand well detailed. The title is pretty cool and the font's also
  rather nice.

Plot: 25/45
   Not really a lot here, just an opening board with text.. no closing. Even
  though this is a puzzle game they could have had more story, but the
  backstory is pretty satisfying.

Theme: 24/35
   A lot of internet related things and terms are used in the levels
  given. Nice incorporation, although a little bit superficial.

Innovation: 35/35
   Both levels are very innovative! I have never seen anything like this before
  in MZX. Very well done.

Discretion: 20/20
   Everything's nice and polished... I can't really think of anything done
  badly here.

Music: 27/35
   Only a few tunes, but they're entertaining and they fit well. A definite
  electronic, techno-ish kinda feel which fits the levels and graphics. Of
  course it's not original, but what is in this DoZ?

Sound: 4/5
   The sound effects do a good job highlighting the game.


Team 787: Trust Falls (Trust)
Grade: D+, score: 124/300 (41%) This is a great game.. TO TORTURE SOMEONE WITH

Gameplay: 18/70
   This should have gotten so much higher. I wanted to give it a lot higher. 
  But the game just isn't fun; in fact, it's a REAL test in discipline to 
  actually get through the whole thing. See, there's a battle engine. It's one 
  on one. However you get to punch in "combos" (strings of keys done within a 
  time limit, not unlike the "hacking" in 666) and you keep learning new ones, 
  and you get to call your party (wonder why they weren't fighting with you in 
  the first place?) to perform some skill. Also you can use items.. to heal or 
  to raise your attack/defense. Even though one on one battle engines are 
  pretty much never good news, this could have been bearable, had they not 
  given the enemies 8 BILLION hit points then littered them all the place. For
  what it's worth, the encounters aren't random, but happen at fixed points on
  the board. Still, there are way too many of them. The whole combo system was
  interesting at first, as was learning new combos.. but then it backfired
  because you had to play at a fairly low speed to get the later ones in,
  which made the battles even more unbearably long. Not that the combos
  actually made your attacks significantly stronger - because they didn't -
  but they gave you "boxes" that you needed to survive. Because after you ran
  out of potions you could count on spending half your time healing. There was
  also an INFURIATING maze near the end... which would have been okay, if you
  didn't have to keep going through the battles. All in all.. this is an
  extremely boring, frustrating game.

Graphics: 23/50
   They're not that good, but have some better points. All 1x1, with
  some.. sorta bearable backgrounds. The animations are the best part,
  particularly in battle. That's a good thing too, because other than that the
  battles look awful, with almost nothing but black space. There are a few
  animations, but they're not that impressive. At least the menus and stuff
  look alright.

Plot: 33/45
   The plot is given through dialogue and is rather mysterious. After playing
  through what's there it's somewhat coherent, but could have been fleshed out
  considerably more. Still, what's there is there and it fulfills the role of
  being a plot...

Theme: 24/35
   Trust is easily broken between colonists and natives. Actually it seemed
  kinda weak for being trust; ie, one side tells the other side a lie and
  pisses them off and throws them on a rampage.... still, the game did try to
  stress this (at least towards the end)

Innovation: 23/35
   The combo moves in the battle engine were pretty innovative. Other than
  that, it has "typical boring MZX RPG" written all over it.

Discretion: 1/20
   Did you PLAY through this game? Maybe you would have realized how incredibly
  BORING it was! Giving the enemies so much HP was a TERRIBLE move! The 
  enemies in battle can get really screwed up, moving out of their starting
  position, which makes it look even less like they're attacking the player
  (especially when they move BEHIND him..) and it gets stuck this way, only
  getting worse. Come on, couldn't overlay have been used, or something?
  Moving robots around? And this bug wasn't noticed? To top everything off, at
  the end you get stuck in an infinite loop in the message.. great, just what
  I wanted. Suffered through playing that game up to that point and got
  cheating out of perhaps the only interesting battle the game had to
  offer. It's a crying shame.

Music: 1/35
   There's no music, and let me tell you, this game NEEDED music. I had to
  crank up WinAMP just to preserve my sanity during the excrutiatingly long
  battles.

Sound: 1/5
   Even sound effects could have made a world of difference for the battles,
  but nada.


--- The run-down ---

Categorial score rank:

1:  Innernet (787)                                    - 230/300
2:  Dark Core (261)                                   - 228/300
3:  Hackers Can Turn Your Computer Into a Bomb (777)  - 214/300
4:  Vyznium (505)                                     - 208/300
5:  Netsplit (222)                                    - 206/300
6:  Depravity (666)                                   - 206/300
7:  The Evil Internet Virus (16)                      - 197/300
8:  Shinrai (499)                                     - 182/300
9:  Gross Injustice (385)                             - 181/300
10: Lethal Recourse (215)                             - 169/300
11: Paradigm AM (1337)                                - 159/300
12: Castlevania: Drum Solo of Discombobulation (1347) - 154/300
13: Serum (404)                                       - 149/300
14: Hacker (4013)                                     - 124/300
15: Trust Falls (810)                                 - 124/300
16: Net Wars (331)                                    - 122/300
17: Convergence (6047)                                - 103/300
18: Net Demon (1777)                                  - 66/300
19: WHY THE INTERNET IS BORING (776)                  - 36/300
20: Finite Space (344)                                - 33/300


Subjective rank:

2:  Dark Core (261)                                   - 228/300
1:  Innernet (787)                                    - 230/300
3:  Hackers Can Turn Your Computer Into a Bomb (777)  - 214/300
6:  Depravity (666)                                   - 206/300
4:  Vyznium (505)                                     - 208/300
5:  Netsplit (222)                                    - 206/300
6:  Depravity (666)                                   - 206/300
12: Castlevania: Drum Solo of Discombobulation (1347) - 154/300
7:  The Evil Internet Virus (160)                     - 197/300
9:  Gross Injustice (385)                             - 181/300
8:  Shinrai (499)                                     - 182/300
13: Serum (404)                                       - 149/300
15: Trust Falls (810)                                 - 124/300
10: Lethal Recourse (215)                             - 169/300
11: Paradigm AM (1337)                                - 159/300
14: Hacker (4013)                                     - 124/300
16: Net Wars (331)                                    - 122/300
17: Convergence (6047)                                - 103/300
18: Net Demon (1777)                                  - 66/300
20: Finite Space (331)                                - 33/300
19: WHY THE INTERNET IS BORING (776)                  - 36/300</pre>