{"id":2685,"date":"2014-12-02T08:10:42","date_gmt":"2014-12-02T15:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/?p=2685"},"modified":"2014-12-23T10:08:31","modified_gmt":"2014-12-23T17:08:31","slug":"game-competition-the-high-scores-table","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/2014\/12\/02\/game-competition-the-high-scores-table\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Competition: The High Scores Table"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Game<\/a><\/p>\n

Another fantastic competition draws to a celebratory close. Thanks to everyone who took part.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The four judges, each asked to name their three favourites, came up with nine<\/strong> 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?)<\/p>\n

Fortunately there was one clear winner \u2013 both the \u201cFontStructor’s Favourite\u201d and a choice of a majority of the judges: Wrath of Mordor<\/a>\u00a0by Frodo7<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Wrath<\/a><\/p>\n

Indie game legend and guest judge Shaun Inman found the design \u201cdefinitely evocative of its inspiration\u201d. Frodo7 himself wrote:<\/p>\n

This is my endeavour to make a spiky blackletter in Szpajdel’s black metal style that evokes the terror of Mordor at pixel level<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You succeeded. Congratulations Frodo7!<\/p>\n

The second prizewinning entry was the ingenious AT Sudoku<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Zhalgas Kassymkulov<\/a> which turned multiple, mind-bending puzzles into a well-designed and genuinely legible font (Sample shows the variation AT Sudoku+).<\/p>\n

\"AT<\/a><\/p>\n

As Goatmeal wrote:<\/p>\n

Add the requisite Latin squares to your printout, and you have 55 different games in a single typeface.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Congratulations Zhalgas!<\/p>\n

Last but not least, the judges chose Stepwyze<\/a>\u00a0by geneus1<\/a> 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:<\/p>\n

Try not to stumble over your words as you go about your business and time flies by. Just like in real life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Stepwyze\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To my great surprise and delight, I noticed while writing this, that\u00a0geneus’s playable prototyped version of the game<\/a>\u00a0for this font exists\u00a0already!
\nCongratulations geneus1!<\/p>\n

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

\"Buzz<\/a><\/p>\n

Shaun Inman enjoyed\u00a0Buzz Wire<\/a> by ben17<\/a>. \u201cUnexpected meatspace inspiration. Legibility suffers for its inventiveness but I\u2019d still play with it in a pediatrician\u2019s waiting room.”<\/p>\n

\"Pixel<\/a><\/p>\n

There were surprisingly few picture\/icon fonts but\u00a0Pixel Spaceships<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0escaphandro<\/a>\u00a0– a complete two-layered spritesheet – \u00a0missed out on a prize by a subpixel’s whisker.<\/p>\n

\"Retro<\/a><\/p>\n

The entries from\u00a0four<\/a>\u00a0caught the attention of several of the judges and Level Rebel<\/a>\u00a0was second in the race for the FontStructor’s favorite crown. Goatmeal liked this one: “Simple yet highly effective. \u00a0Would 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\u00a0Retropixel<\/a>\u00a0(shown above)\u2013 “Marble meets LCD. Legible and handsome.”<\/p>\n

\"En<\/a><\/p>\n

En Word Puzzle<\/a>\u00a0by naveenchandru<\/a>\u00a0was also the subject of praise, Shaun Inman writing\u00a0\u201cFont as playable game. Like Neven Mrgan\u2019s Blackbar distilled into a typeface.\u201d<\/p>\n

Try Again<\/a>\u00a0by minidonut<\/a>, Click Pop Beads<\/a> by Aeolian<\/a>, Zogg Domination<\/a> by funk_king<\/a>, Ray Type Alpha<\/a> by geneus1<\/a> and AT Tactica<\/a> by architaraz<\/a> all also appeared on the judges’ scorecards.<\/p>\n

Congratulations to everyone. Thank you all for taking part in the competition and I’m looking forward to the next one.<\/p>\n

Prizewinners will be contacted shortly regarding\u00a0their prizes.<\/p>\n

Thank you Judges!<\/h3>\n

All our brick are belong to you.\u00a0It 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.<\/p>\n

Shaun Inman<\/strong>\u00a0is a designer, developer, and composer. His myriad of projects and presences<\/a> is well worth a deep trawl. Shaun uses FontStruct in his game development work, for example in\u00a0Retro Game Crunch<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Stephen Coles\u00a0<\/strong>is an editor and typographer living in Oakland and Berlin. After six years at\u00a0FontShop<\/a>\u00a0as a creative director, he now publishes\u00a0Fonts In Use<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0<\/i>Typographica<\/a>,\u00a0<\/i>writes for type foundries, and\u00a0consults with various organizations on typeface selection.<\/p>\n

Goatmeal <\/strong>has been creating,\u00a0recreating and sharing game fonts since the very early days of our site. You can read more about him<\/a> here, or just go straight to his amazing archive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"FontStruct<\/a>
The results are in<\/a> for the FontStruct \u201cGame\u201d competition\u201c.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2685"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2718,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2685\/revisions\/2718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}