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Game Competition: The High Scores Table

News | | December 2nd, 2014

Game Over

Another fantastic competition draws to a celebratory close. Thanks to everyone who took part.

The standard of entries was, as always, extremely high, and the FontStructing community again flaunted their seemingly endless ingenuity and range of imagination. Some entries were genuinely playable as puzzles or games in themselves, while others were designed with real and complex game scenarios in mind. Never before have the FontStruction descriptions been as detailed and interesting as they were for this competition. The affinity between playful, puzzling minds and FontStructing is apparently a deep and intimate one.

The four judges, each asked to name their three favourites, came up with nine different winning candidates, as well as three runners-up. So it was a very close run thing with a great gaggle* of brick-laden runners dipping into the winning frame. (*Collective noun for FontStructors anyone?)

Fortunately there was one clear winner – both the “FontStructor’s Favourite” and a choice of a majority of the judges: Wrath of Mordor by Frodo7.

Wrath of Mordor

Indie game legend and guest judge Shaun Inman found the design “definitely evocative of its inspiration”. Frodo7 himself wrote:

This is my endeavour to make a spiky blackletter in Szpajdel’s black metal style that evokes the terror of Mordor at pixel level

You succeeded. Congratulations Frodo7!

The second prizewinning entry was the ingenious AT Sudoku by Zhalgas Kassymkulov which turned multiple, mind-bending puzzles into a well-designed and genuinely legible font (Sample shows the variation AT Sudoku+).

AT Sudoku+

As Goatmeal wrote:

Add the requisite Latin squares to your printout, and you have 55 different games in a single typeface.

Congratulations Zhalgas!

Last but not least, the judges chose Stepwyze by geneus1 as a prizewinner. As so often in the past, geneus1 had several strong entries. Stepwyze won over a number of other high-quality platform/level oriented FontStructions with it’s mature design, attention to detail and integrated gaming concept:

Try not to stumble over your words as you go about your business and time flies by. Just like in real life.

Stepwyze

To my great surprise and delight, I noticed while writing this, that geneus’s playable prototyped version of the game for this font exists already!
Congratulations geneus1!

There are really just too many fine entries to mention them all in this post, but here’s a selection of other FontStructions which caught the judges eye:

Buzz Wire

Shaun Inman enjoyed Buzz Wire by ben17. “Unexpected meatspace inspiration. Legibility suffers for its inventiveness but I’d still play with it in a pediatrician’s waiting room.”

Pixel Spaceships

There were surprisingly few picture/icon fonts but Pixel Spaceships by escaphandro – a complete two-layered spritesheet –  missed out on a prize by a subpixel’s whisker.

Retro Pixel

The entries from four caught the attention of several of the judges and Level Rebel was second in the race for the FontStructor’s favorite crown. Goatmeal liked this one: “Simple yet highly effective.  Would work great as a video game’s title screen or as the titles for each level.”. Shaun Inman also liked the unassuming but perfectly executed Retropixel (shown above)– “Marble meets LCD. Legible and handsome.”

En Word Puzzle

En Word Puzzle by naveenchandru was also the subject of praise, Shaun Inman writing “Font as playable game. Like Neven Mrgan’s Blackbar distilled into a typeface.”

Try Again by minidonut, Click Pop Beads by Aeolian, Zogg Domination by funk_king, Ray Type Alpha by geneus1 and AT Tactica by architaraz all also appeared on the judges’ scorecards.

Congratulations to everyone. Thank you all for taking part in the competition and I’m looking forward to the next one.

Prizewinners will be contacted shortly regarding their prizes.

Thank you Judges!

All our brick are belong to you. It takes quite a while to have a proper look at 45 entries and samples. Many thanks to our expert guest judges for kindly spending time with us.

Shaun Inman is a designer, developer, and composer. His myriad of projects and presences is well worth a deep trawl. Shaun uses FontStruct in his game development work, for example in Retro Game Crunch!

Stephen Coles is an editor and typographer living in Oakland and Berlin. After six years at FontShop as a creative director, he now publishes Fonts In Use and Typographicawrites for type foundries, and consults with various organizations on typeface selection.

Goatmeal has been creating, recreating and sharing game fonts since the very early days of our site. You can read more about him here, or just go straight to his amazing archive.

 

 

 

 


26 Comments

  1. 1saac

    Congrats tho the winners!!! (≧▽≦)/

    1saac — December 2, 2014 #

  2. 1saac

    *to

    1saac — December 2, 2014 #

  3. escaphandro

    lots of highly inspired designs!

    thanks for the honorable mention, this was really a great competition.

    escaphandro — December 2, 2014 #

  4. Isaiah Garcia

    I see some very nice designs.
    I would have participated if I had the time to. xD

    Isaiah Garcia — December 2, 2014 #

  5. Goatmeal

    Congratulations not only to the winners, but to _ALL_ entrants. Everyone’s font designs were terrific, which made judging that much harder! :^)

    Goatmeal — December 2, 2014 #

  6. Aeolien

    “Well done and Congratulations” to the winners! And to everybody else, as all the fonts are great for games …

    And thankyou to the judges for liking ‘The Beads’ enough to mention them :)

    Aeolien — December 2, 2014 #

  7. Dhanasekar

    congrats naveen chandru !!!

    – Dhanasekar — December 2, 2014 #

  8. minidonut

    at least appearing on the scorecards made me feel like “whoooaaaa duuude”

    minidonut — December 2, 2014 #

  9. time.peace

    This competition was so fun to compete in. Congratulations to the winners and honorable mentions, all are well deserved!

    time.peace — December 2, 2014 #

  10. funk_king

    congrats to all the winners! once again the comp was tons of fun and always good to see what everyone prodcuces. great work team fontstruct!

    funk_king — December 2, 2014 #

  11. four

    Congratulations to all participants but especially the three winners Frodo7, architaraz and geneus1! All three fonts are innovative and amazing! Thanks to the judges for giving your time and expertise. Thanks for the special mentions and another big thank you to meek for organising this successful challenge, I am looking forward to the next.

    four — December 2, 2014 #

  12. laynecom

    Congrats from me as well. All well deserved. The winning entries as well as the special mentions matched my list of favorites. ;-)

    laynecom — December 3, 2014 #

  13. geneus1

    Congratulations winners! Congrats to everyone! Thank you all for the creative rush. Thanks to Meek and staff for putting on this competition and giving me another opportunity to creatively stretch myself. I’ve never created a web game before and it was a fairly steep learning curve. I’ve had the most fun and most frustration during the GameComp. Two games are online at GameJolt.com as of now, Stepwyze and the recently released (just minutes ago) RayType Alpha. Enjoy!

    geneus1 — December 3, 2014 #

  14. minidonut

    wait wait WAIT–that’s my very own Try Again in the middle of the first picture OMG :O

    minidonut — December 3, 2014 #

  15. naveenchandru

    Congratz to all the participants and all the winners! Could see great and innovative designs. Can’t wait for the next competition. And thanks for the special mention (totally unexpected) :)

    naveenchandru — December 3, 2014 #

  16. elmoyenique

    CONGRATULATIONS, dear masters Frodo7, architaraz and geneus1!!! And great congrats too to the special mentioned and the rest of participants! Like a wave, we can see the foam of this challenge coming soon at FS.

    elmoyenique — December 3, 2014 #

  17. architaraz

    Another awesome Fontstruct Comp is over. Well done everyone who found time for this, we all did a great job :). These competitions bring the best of fontstructors, and GameComp was no exception. Hope to see more participants in the next one ;)

    Big thanks for selecting AT Sudoku+ as one of the prizewinners, for an honorable mention of AT Tactica, and for using AT Sudoku as a background in the game over image. Such a great honor!

    And let’s welcome new fontstructors dan11v, zs137530, hakr14 & Superdoggy, who despite their little experience in fontstructing managed to compete on a high level.

    P.S. There’s a typo, it’s AT SudokU instead of AT SudokO.

    architaraz — December 3, 2014 #

  18. minidonut

    @at: also noticed that other typo? Top left of the very first image: “conglaturations”

    minidonut — December 3, 2014 #

  19. ben17

    this was good – i liked how different the ideas were.

    thanks for the mention.

    ben17 — December 3, 2014 #

  20. Rob Meek (meek)

    @at – fixed
    @minidonut – Well spotted. It’s a quote from a Ghostbusters game.

    Rob Meek (meek) — December 4, 2014 #

  21. p2pnut

    Congratulations to the three winners – an well done to everyone who got a mention. Wow! what a plethora of talent this comp brought out.

    p2pnut — December 4, 2014 #

  22. Yautja

    Congratulations everyone! I didn’t have much inspiration to participate or comment, but there were many great entries that I like.

    Yautja — December 4, 2014 #

  23. minidonut

    @meek: oh, right, NES reference ;)

    I have no idea what I’m talking about, except for the NES. Nintendo is awesome.

    minidonut — December 4, 2014 #

  24. ETHproductions

    Congratulations, Frodo7, Architaraz, and Geneus1! All three of you are well-deserved winners. Also, congrats to everyone who participated! This competition had a ton of great entries. I can’t wait for the next one.

    ETHproductions — December 4, 2014 #

  25. Upixel

    BRAVO to the 3 winners and also to the special mentionned. well deserve.

    Thank to Meek and FS Staff for bringing this competetion it give us an opportunities to explorer new avenues.

    Upixel — December 5, 2014 #

  26. Structifier

    I love that Sudoku font. :)

    Structifier — December 8, 2014 #