After much scrutiny and consideration of the twenty-four Wikigame Puzzle Design Competition entries, our fantastic anonymous reviewers (IF and game design professionals) have decided on the following Top 5 puzzles based on blind review:
- Escape Pod by Perrin (Our Grand Prize Winner!)
- The Torch, or Safecracking for Beginners by TinRobot
- The "Shut that door! It's blowing a bloody gale through here!" Puzzle by cavalcade
- The Airlock also by Tin Robot
- Fixing the Generator - Saving Janitor Bot Bryan by DennisChow
Each of our winners will receive one copy of the puzzle game Boom Blox, designed by Steven Spielberg and EA. Our top winner - Perrin - will also receive a Nintendo Wii kindly donated by EA's promotions crew!
The reviewers offer Honourable Mentions to the following puzzles:
- Fixing the Engine (or some other machine) from Hambargarz
- The Officer Suitability Space Personality Questionnaire from the extremely prolific cavalcade
All puzzles been annotated with comments and scores on their discussion pages, so head here to see the truly fantastic puzzles and read what our reviewers had to say about them.
If you fancy contributing to our game design experiment, we're always looking for help. At the moment, we'd really like some assistance on content for two of the puzzles: the The Officer Suitability Space Personality Questionnaire and The Distress Signal and the Idiot. Both of these need scifi-themed quiz questions.
The OSSPQ needs questions based on well-known science fiction themes to assess the players' sociopathic tendencies. The answers the player chooses will result in a personality score, like this:
An alien lifeform with acid for blood, large teeth and a hatred for spacefaring mammals has boarded your vessel. One by one it has murdered your fellow crew members in a variety of horrible ways leaving you alone in the last remaining space lifeboat. As you are about to launch you remember the shipboard spacegerbil is still alive.
Do you:
A) sacrifice the company owned spacegerbil (which is provided at great expense by the company for your mental wellbeing) and launch your escape raft leaving both it and the ship in the hands of an unstable and violent alien creature?
B) sneak back into the ship to rescue the company owned spacegerbil (which is provided at great expense by the company for your mental wellbeing), and escape in the space lifeboat with your mammalian companion subsequently contacting your line manager to report the alien invasion and allowing him or her time to arrange an armed company exobiological liaison officer to enter the ship to negotiate with the violent inhuman acid blooded beast?
C) return to the vessel, strip to your vest, and fight the alien singlehandedly with a self-built rifle and flamethrower to ensure the safe protection of your company owned vessel and spacegerbil (which is provided at great expense by the company for your mental wellbeing) ultimately causing minimal monetary impact on the company that has graciously provided the vessel for your safety and security and to encourage you to meet the profit targets of the company over the next financial year?
You can contribute to this Quick Help here.
If this is too much, we're also looking for quick and easy fact-driven multiple choice questions for Perrin's The Distress Signal and the Idiot like this:
- Name the computer in 2001
- Complete this tagline: "In space no one can hear you _____"
- Complete this quote: "where we're going, you don't need ____ to see"
- Name the paranoid android
You can contribute to this Quick Help here.
You know there's loads of SciFi nonsense rattling around in that brain of yours - help us to flesh out the Wikigame with your boundless knowledge!
