When most contests are announced to the community, a handful of excited game designers jump onto the announcement thread and talk about their plans for entering. That thread will continue sporadically until the contest deadline. After all of the dropout announcements are made (usually due to time management conflicts), anywhere from three to eight contestants are left to enter their games. Then the judging starts immediately.

It’s pretty straightforward. Not much fanfare. And this had been the standard for most contests prior to 2010. Even in the case of popular contests like the 48-hour contest of the early 2000s (with 2001’s edition being among the most popular contests in OHR history, sweeping in as many as 19 games!), the Ridiculous Games Contest (formerly the Terrible Games Contest), and the much-loved 8-Bit Contest, the end result was always the same: release, vote, announce, celebrate victory with a pat on your own shoulder, standby for next contest announcement.

Heart of the OHR took a different approach. Even though it was announced with extra hype and a T-shirt, no one, not even I, quite knew what surprises would result from its success.

Here are the highlights in my opinion. If anyone else can think of something I’ve missed, I’ll add it to the list.

To sweeten the pot on generating interest for this contest, I issued a temporary release of my long-in-development improvement to my first OHR game (released almost ten years earlier), The Adventures of Powerstick Man: Extended Edition. While this game still remains behind the wall of obscurity in 2021 (due to rampant uses of trademark and copyrights I neither own nor have permission to use and therefore must excise them all before posting an official release—true of all of my games, in fact—dang lawyers!), I wanted to release a preview edition for that season to reiterate the idea that Heart of the OHR isn’t about releasing just new games but also attempting to finish, or at least add to, existing demos. Prior to 2010, the only example of The Adventures of Powerstick Man online was the original 2000 release, which used bad graphics and old sound to tell its convoluted non-story. The Extended Edition was (and is) designed to improve everything about that game and provide a rich experience for players and lovers of exploration (like me), as well as to add new areas and more story (with a touch of plot to tie it all together). Here are a few screenshots from that game.

Note 1: I did not include The Adventures of Powerstick Man: Extended Edition into the voting structure because I did not intend to officially release it that year. Because I released it as a source of interest, not a contestant, I didn’t think it was right to put it up for voting.

Note 2: Even though the game is still unavailable, I do plan to make it available via My Games section once I’ve reached a certain checkpoint in development. Be sure to check My Games for updates (after I’ve created the page for it).

Shortly after the 2010 contest ended, a user by the name of Barnabus stunned the community by releasing a game that borrows elements from every entry and combines them into a single game that exploits the gimmicks each game is known for. This masterpiece of parody and homage is still regarded as one of the best games to come out of Heart of the OHR, and it wasn’t even a contestant. If you have the pleasure to play the games released for this contest, then be sure to check out this brilliant piece of art when you’re done. As of this writing, it’s still available on the Slime Salad game list.

One of the original prizes offered to the winner of the Heart of the OHR was a HamsterSpeak cover dedicated to his or her game. I’d originally tried commissioning it (for free, of course) to one of the community’s many talented artists. But no one took the job (volunteer effort), so I ended up creating it myself. This was the end result.

JSH357, that year’s winner, had this to say about the cover:

“That… that cover. Oh my god.”

After another response or two from others about the cover, user Nathan Karr responded with:

“I don’t know what peoples’ problem is with the cover.”

JSH357 came back to clarify:

“We actually like it, just appreciating how horrifying it is.”

So, there you go. My artistic contribution to the contest was “horrifying.” I haven’t offered my artistic services as a prize since.

To be fair, though, I knew it was going to be in the realm of horrifying. I was using a mediocre art program to create mouse-designed art from a low-level art skill, attempting to create a “painting” of the game, rather than a “drawing.” It was always going to be better than stick figures, but never a glorious thing that could make a grandmother weep for all the right reasons. But yeah, that’s why my future prize offerings were free books.

To view the whole discussion on Slime Salad’s “HamsterSpeak 46 Online” thread, click on the access button below. There you can find out what the game’s artist, Newbie Newtype, thought of the cover.

And for those of you reading this who know nothing of HamsterSpeak Magazine, it was the OHR community’s official source of news, reviews, promotions, and bonus materials from 2007–2012. It had 63 issues and a few annuals that recapped the year’s greatest content. Surlaw (now The Wobbler) was its editor. The magazine started to fill a need for better announcements and motivation, but it ultimately closed because it was taking up too much of Surlaw’s free time and not enough people were interacting with it to justify continuing.

The lack of numbers has always been a community weakness. Those who participate are quite involved, but those numbers are often so small that those looking for interaction are discouraged to continue. It brings back the classic question: Am I making this for myself or an audience? Doing anything for oneself leads to completion. Doing anything for an audience leads to an outcome dependent on the audience. HamsterSpeak Magazine was for an audience, and that audience stopped participating, so the content dried up. But that’s what happens when all the work is deferred to one person.

It was quite the ride getting to the end, though. Anyway, you can check out HamsterSpeak #46 and its commentary on Heart of the OHR content below.

Thanks for taking this trip down memory lane with me. Hope you enjoyed it. Don’t forget, you can always view the original announcement threads for this and other Heart of the OHR contest seasons by clicking on their respective links below.

You can also jump to the next season’s contest page series by clicking on the button below. There, you’ll find even more nuggets into the life and times of Heart of the OHR. Hope you’ll check it out.

Finally, I want to offer a special thanks to everyone who participated in each Heart of the OHR contest season. It goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway, this contest could not exist without you. Obviously. So, thank you for making it possible if you were one of the participants. I also want to thank the prize holders for volunteering their gifts and services, as well as the voters who gave up their time to play these games. This contest was among the most successful contests of the 2010s because of your participation. It came back every even-numbered year because I knew you’d come back, too. So, thanks again for making Heart of the OHR such a special event each time.

I hope that whatever replaces it in the 2020s will be just as special.