​Heart of the OHR Contest Results

2018 Edition

From May 1, 2018, to December 17, 2018, the OHR community was once again given the opportunity to relive the days when world exploration, random battle engagement, and chitchatting with townies could become anticipated moments in gaming. Once again, game design was about top-down travel through middling towns, sprawling dungeons, bits of underground places, and all of the fields in-between (except for where fast travel is implemented). Once again, designers were rewarded for implementing all types of throwback design into their games while innovating new mechanics that emulate a classic texture but for the smartphone era. The contest, called Heart of the OHR, had a simple rule: make, add to, or finish a traditional OHRRPG or any game that modeled the titles we played back in 1999. We’ve done it before. We’ve done it again. We’ve even done it a third time. Heck, we’ve done it a fourth time. But could we milk the community stone enough to get into history a successful fifth outing?

This year’s contest window started at the beginning of May, halfway between the March opening of 2016 and the July opening of 2010, but ended during the traditional bugfix window of seasons’ past (mid-December), making for the longest window in Heart of the OHR history. (It was supposed to run until the end of December, but the host had forgotten his own plan and set it to end two weeks earlier than previously scheduled.) The end result led us to having our most voluminous submission period ever with 23 possible contestants and 21 qualified contestants. Games like Restoration of the K’ab and Hanu in Hell were supposed to enter this year’s contest but were either dropped or disqualified due to insufficient content. Other games like Asphodelus, Px, and Zalag: Glustu were not originally designed for Heart of the OHR but seemed to qualify through the extended rules adopted in 2014, so they became contestants. Birdcaged, a title made for the 2018 One-Room Contest, was not originally a contestant but entered the Heart of the OHR by rite of being exactly the kind of RPG we would play in the engine’s early days. In total, we’ve had so many entries this year that to keep opinions fair, voting had to last until mid-February 2019, two months after the contest window ended. But, even with such a large voting period, we still had just 13 unique voters offer their voices. Maybe three months would’ve been better.

In Heart of the OHR seasons past, we’ve had three distinct categories for each game to help voters know how to vote: original release, rerelease, and OHR Legend. This system made it possible for older games to enter with new content and experience new life on the OHR and, perhaps, to give the author some incentive to finish. Now, while the community always looks forward to a new IP, there’s something to be said for a great game that gets more greatness added to it over time, and we all hope to see a great game finished in time. However, because games on the OHR have a history of slow or stalled development, getting new or finished content on any old game is rare. Therefore, it’s a treat when an author sticks to a property long enough to get us to its ending. In this spirit, along with 17 fresh properties debuting in 2018, we’ve had four returns from previous years, with three of those games, Bale, Dark Planet, and You Need a Hero having been original contestants in the previous Heart of the OHR Contest (2016). But, here’s where the story gets interesting. Traditionally, a rereleased game will contain new content beginning where the previous release left off, but this year’s contestants have done something that very few games ever do: they’ve actually rewritten their opening sequences with new and improved content, so the 2018 entries can be played from the start while promising a new experience from their 2016 versions. This hasn’t been done before to the host’s knowledge. The fourth rerelease, Drydocks: A Merchant RPG, is a bit more of a sandbox than a linear adventure and can be started from scratch regardless how the previous release played. This, too, is unique to the contest.

Another interesting phenomenon that occurred in 2018 that has hardly happened in the past was the inclusion of the multi-game author. In 2012, Spoonweaver had entered two games into Heart of the OHR, Legendary Heroes (rereleased version) and Kinvesard: Epilogue of the Princess, marking the first occurrence of the multi-game author in this contest. In 2014, RedMaverickZero had also entered two games, Mr. Triangle’s Adventure and Batman and Robin. These were the only two times in Heart of the OHR history that one author had released two different titles in the same contest year. It seemed as though this phenomenon would never become a trend. But, today, we can see that this isn’t so. In 2018, the multi-game author has returned, this time with a vengeance. For starters, author MorpheusKitami released Arc Wars (aka Arc War / aka Skotos Dorchatus) at the end of the contest window, but his other game, Zalag: Glustu (episode five of The Complicated Gallery), which was released much earlier in the year, appeared to meet Heart of the OHR’s obscurest guidelines, so it was also officially entered. Then, in reviewing every game released during the window, the host saw that ChalkFlower’s Asphodelus and Px both fit the “in the spirit of 1999” rule, so he invited the author to enter them both, to which he or she did. And while the Heart of the OHR saw its first year where more than one author released two eligible games during the contest window, this wasn’t the moment when it would experience its earth-shattering multi-game author debut. No, the Heart of the OHR broke an all-time contest record this year (to be clear, an all-OHR-contest record, not just a Heart of the OHR record) when author TheCrimsonDM released not one, not two, not three, not four, but five games for Heart of the OHR (with one, Masks: 15 Pages, exclusively for Heart of the OHR; the others were released to escape from eight years of dormancy, but because they fit the guidelines, they were entered, too). It’s unlikely we’ll see anything like this year’s multi-game author phenomenon happen again. It was quite the scene.

Fun Fact: Feenicks, author of this year’s False Skies, released another game, WitchX, just five days after the contest window closed. If the host had remembered that the 2018 contest was supposed to last until the end of the year, not the 17th, then WitchX would’ve given us four sets of multi-game authors, not three. To correct this oversight, the host gave Feenicks the opportunity to enter his second game, but Feenicks honored the window as it was decided and kept his second game out of the contest.

Between shattering previous entry records and multi-game author records, it would seem that Heart of the OHR 2018 has had enough “firsts” to set its standout season of highlights in stone. But, no. This year’s contest also saw, for the first time, its debut non-English title with author Bird’s entry, Rolling, Radical Revolution, or Rollende, Radikale Revolte, as it is called in its native German. As of this writing, there was still no English translation, but the author says he’s working on it. Voters were instructed to vote on the game’s content, not its language. Adhering to this standard, the voters rewarded the game well, thanks to its graphics, design, and music; though, voters still couldn’t wait to see what the game might play like in English, as they would very much like to know what it’s about.

This year also saw the beginning of a new trend in OHR gaming and design: the inclusion of the commercial game, with the Wobbler’s Kaiju Big Battel: Fighto Fantasy entering the ring (full version purchasable on Steam, Itch.io, and Android). To make it easier on voters, two versions of the game were eligible for vote, the commercial version for those who had it and the demo version for those who didn’t. Votes from both versions were consolidated into a single score, so the end result accounted for both versions. The host expects to see more commercial games debuting in 2020, with RedMaverickZero’s Axe Cop being the likeliest candidate so far.

Thanks to this year’s sheer contrast between numbers of entries and voters, Heart of the OHR 2018 has debuted the contest’s first true sets of ties. While previous years required tie-breakers between at least two games, a combination of pure votes and precision scoring had provided enough variance to break ties by mere decimals, making clear, if not extremely close distinctions between game placements. However, in 2018, voter scores were much less bendable, and tied scores were no longer unavoidable. In this case, we had two sets of ties, with a first-ever three-way tie vying for 3rd place.

For the sake of placement on the chart, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place would be listed according to quantity of highest single votes, but the average scores were still even with 3rd place, so all three games in these spots were technically tied for 3rd. But, perhaps, even more stunning was the tie for 15th place, which involved two games from the same series by the same author, receiving the same average score and number of votes. When all was said and done, there was really no way to separate these games by rank, so 15th and 16th place were determined by highest single vote.

Much of the trends that began with the 2010 season has persisted into 2018. Authors shared their progress regularly in the Heart of the OHR announcement thread, stoking hype and confidence in their entries. TMC took up the mantle of offering the bug bounty prize that James Paige had first introduced in our debut season (James had decided in 2016 to cancel the bug bounty as it was too taxing on his time, and therefore would have no means to fulfill them all). The host had once again offered his e-books as entry prizes, and to his surprise, some contestants had actually gotten them this time (as was evidenced in his sales reports). Most of the contestants who said they would make a game for the contest followed through. The ones who couldn’t make the deadline apologized for it.

One trend that has changed drastically since 2016, however, was the inclusion of a #hotohr2018 channel on Discord, which has steadily replaced IRC as the go-to for real-time chat, expanding Heart of the OHR’s social media reach to places that not even the host had anticipated (or created). That channel remained quite active throughout the contest window, and many of the discussions and pep talks that went unnoticed on Slime Salad were instead being held on Discord. This, in the host’s opinion, kept creativity and encouragement alive in this exceptionally long season, and hardly anyone burned out as a result. Thanks to this successful transference of discussion forums, Heart of the OHR plans to expand to the moon and maybe to Mars for 2020, but it still won’t deal with Facebook, as Facebook buries conversations that the poster didn’t pay for. For now, Discord would seem like a great place for Heart of the OHR to continue its realm of interaction, and the host looks forward to participating in the discussion much sooner next time.

On a sadder note, it seemed that Castle Paradox was no longer relevant enough to carry any of the 21 games in this year’s Heart of the OHR, even though one veteran user had at least posted progress on a game he was making early in the contest window. That author and that game hasn’t been seen since.

In short, the battle for the Heart of the OHR raged on in 2018, this time with an impressive average game score of 5.63, up more than two points over the 2016 average (but still half a point below the all-time highest average set in 2012), with five games scoring higher than the 2014 winner. Unlike in previous years, however, voter turnout had been largely consistent, with every game satisfying the two-thirds rule, which is the rule that states that every game must receive at least two-thirds the maximum vote given to a single game to avoid receiving “robot scores” of 5 for each vote “below par.” This year, two games, Bale and False Skies, received 12 votes, setting the par for the other games at 8. Five games received eight votes. No game received votes from every voter. Thanks to each game dodging the robot score, all scores recorded this year were purely by community vote, which helped keep the contest average above 5.0.

Most impressive, though, was the Heart of the OHR 2018 winner, which scored the second highest average in Heart of the OHR history, just ahead of the 2012 winner, DUNGEONMEN: Men of Dungeons. However, no game in Heart of the OHR history has ever topped the original winner, Motrya, which still stands at a record 9.5 voter average, and while the 2018 winner came close, it still fell short by half a point. Perhaps in 2020, we’ll see a new King of the Heart of the OHR. It’s a longshot, but we shall see.

That said, Heart of the OHR 2018 is now over, and with its ending comes the final march for its competitive entries.

Here again is the story of that battle for the Heart of the OHR:

Please note that rankings are listed from worst to best, and based on average votes, not rosters or quantities of total players. For this reason, abstained votes did not count against games, but in many ways helped their averages. Also, the two-thirds rule was implemented, but no game fell below par, so the rule was ultimately thrown out this year. For the games that were tied, their ranking was determined by numbers of high-score votes (the game with the most high-score votes receiving the higher rank). Games that shared values in all categories (score, average score, precision score, and total votes), and could not otherwise break the tie under any global circumstance, were ranked according to highest single score votes. Games that received scores before they were disqualified had their scores thrown out. This applied only to Hanu in Hell, which was disqualified due to insufficient content.

Also note that footage from each game can be viewed at the host’s YouTube channel in the special Heart of the OHR 2018 playlist (locate via “Playlists” section), beginning at 10 a.m. EST, Monday, March 10, 2019, with new episodes airing every three hours (until 7 p.m. each night) until Friday, March 15, 2019, at 10 p.m. Each video includes a special Heart of the OHR 2018 introduction complete with theme song (composed by Kylekrack) and lasts an average 40-50 minutes (the low end at about 18 minutes, Px, and the high end at just over 90 minutes, Masks: 15 Pages). The “season finale” video contains a Heart of the OHR 2018 retrospective in the host’s own words beginning at time marker 20:09.