Challenge - Olav and the Lute - Winner Announcement

Back in October I set a small challenge for the readers of the blog. I’d come across a short independent game called Olav & the Lute, which took more than a little inspiration from the game I was playing at the time, Loom. The challenge was for readers to play the game and blog through it, similar to the way I do week in week out. Each entrant would receive 50 CAPs, and the entry I deemed the best (and yes, this would be entirely subjective) would receive 100 CAPs!!! Five readers took up the challenge and sent in their entries, being:

Andy_Panthro

http://playedbypanthro.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/free-indie-game-olav-lute.html

Andy’s entry is, like the game, short and sweet. It was more a typical game review than a complete playthrough, but I was very happy to see how much he enjoyed the game.

Charles

http://teseractia.blogspot.com.ar/p/blog-page.html

If you haven’t read Charles’ post yet, I highly recommend you do. He decided to approach it from a first person point of view, and the result is downright awesome. The fact that English isn’t your first language Charles seriously puts me to shame. This will be hard to beat!

Ilmari

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_gUUR63koWoZDI4Mk5vQkJHQk0/edit?usp=sharing

Ilmari’s entry was a bit more in line with what I usually do, although he managed to interweave a poem that describes the events of the game within it. I think he was bang on with his comments about the game in general too, making this another contender!

Reiko

http://telyni.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/game-review-olav-and-the-lute/

The thing I like about Reiko’s entry is that he really focuses on what would be helpful to Shelly Alon and the guys that assisted in making Olav & the Lute. There’s a fair bit of focus on what works and what doesn’t in the game, which would be invaluable to any game developer. Nice work!

Zenic Reverie

http://sidequestsaga.blogspot.com/2013/11/olav-lute-inspired-by-loom.html

Aha, finally someone dared to apply the PISSED rating system to Olav & the Lute! Zenic did a good job too, and I’m not sure the result would have ended up all that different had I done it myself. The list of bugs that he found would no doubt be appreciated by Shelly as well.

If you’ve read all these entries, you’ll know that they are all more than worthy, and each of them offers something a bit different from the rest. The main aim of all of this was to draw attention to the work of Shelly and his small team, and to give him some feedback on his admirable game debut. However, the time has come to choose a winner. After a fair amount of deliberation, I’ve chosen Charles to receive the 100 CAPs for no other reason than his entry was just so entertaining. Congratulations Charles! I trust you will do something wise with this stash of CAPs!