The Twelfth Annual People's Choice Awards
Welcome to the
Twelfth Annual People's Choice Awards (also known as
The Deadlies)!
Wow, this year many of the categories were neck and neck until very late into the voting stages. Fortunately towards the end of the voting the tied categories were all resolved and we were left with a series of clear winners. So lets get right to it!
Best Custom Game Element
Weeping Angel from Blackout by Lucky Luc
After Lucky Luc's entry in Elemental Showcase 5.0, we all knew that he has a love of Doctor Who. Taking the concept of the monster directly from the Doctor Who villains of the same name, the Weeping Angels blended perfectly with the uniquely dark and creepy atmosphere of Blackout. Who knew a monster that never moved could have such puzzle potential! What's that? They do move? Are you sure? They look like they're standing still to me...
(Runner up... Seeker from
Narrow Perspectives by skell)
Design Excellence in a Modification or Addition
RPG HD Graphics by DezzTech
Having drawn entirely from scratch some new high definition graphics for some of RPGs blurry upscales, DezzTech's images were officially implemented into the latest version of DROD RPG. If that's not an acknowledgement of their quality, then I don't know what is!
(There are no runners up this year.)
Technical Design Excellence in Scripting
Blackout by Lucky Luc
I'm sure that nobody is terribly surprised by this result. Blackout is an incredible exercise in scripting to produce a horror-inducing line-of-sight system that rivals a number of horror games for its sheer creepiness. Combined with the scripted monster that pairs beautifully with the mechanics, Blackout is a distinctly unique and impressive experience.
(Runner up...
Narrow Perspectives by skell)
Technical Design Excellence in Layout and Aesthetics
Delay by Insoluble
In addition to being filled with solid puzzles, Insoluble's debut solo hold contains levels with strong, unique and impressively varied visual styles and themes. If I was to show you a screenshot of a random room, odds are good that you would know that it came from Delay, which is a testament to how memorable the design is.
(Runner ups... A three-way tie between
Elemental Showcase 5.0 by Nuntar (Collaboration),
Narrow Perspectives by skell and
Pickle Cellar by Chaco)
Technical Design Excellence in Concept
Blackout by Lucky Luc
Blackout is nothing like any hold that has come before it, and there may never again be another hold like it. I wouldn't be a huge surprise if someone classified Blackout as part of the survival horror genre instead of a puzzle game, that's how different it is.
(Runners up... A tie between
Delay by Insoluble and
The Room of Humility by blorx1)
Creative Design Excellence in Storyline
Delay by Insoluble
In addition to being strongly story-driven, Delay is also very funny. While solving the puzzles is its own reward, Delay encourages you to continue and rewards you for doing so with a witty and engaging story which really improves the experience.
(Runner up...
Blackout by Lucky Luc)
Creative Design Excellence in Difficulty
The Room of Humility by blorx1
There are holds that are hard, then there are holds that are
hard, then there is The Room of Humility. Currently the highest-rated published user hold for difficulty in the history of DROD, it's easy to forget that this hold is just a single room! It has an expected solving time ranging in the
hours, but boy is it satisfying when you figure it out, and its entirely fair.
(Runners up... A tie between
Delay by Insoluble and
Six Times Six by Jutt)
Creative Design Excellence in Entertainment
Narrow Perspectives by skell
Narrow Perspectives is a solid hold that gets straight to the point, just straightforward puzzle solving with none of that pesky walking-around nonsense, thanks to its cool fast travel system. Combined with its not-too-challenging rooms, Narrow Perspectives will provide you with a speedy and fun time.
(Runner up...
Pickle Cellar by Chaco)
DROD Hold of the Year
Pickle Cellar by Chaco
Chaco once again proves his strong understanding of DROD puzzles by going back to basics with a hold that deliberately eschews a number of common elements like force arrows and pressure plates and instead focusses on a small selection of elements. This gives Pickle Cellar a bit of a retro feel, like a blast back to the days of Journey to Rooted Hold but with a few more modern elements thrown into the mix. The restricted element set makes the rooms in the hold often look much simpler at first glance than they really are. Perhaps the best description I've been able to come up with is "
like Beethro's Teacher except without the high difficulty"
, which hopefully puts across the right combination of old-skool primarily lynchpin focussed DROD and high quality puzzles.
(Runner up...
Homeward Adventure by Jeff_Ray...
DROD RPG Level Set of the Year
The 'Neatherhood by kieranmillar
Being the only RPG hold released in 2015, The 'Neatherhood manages to be both the best
and the worst RPG hold in 2015! This medium length RPG hold offers a unique take on key management, greckle management and stat growth, with a full set of custom monsters to complement the focus on small numbers.
(There are no runners up this year.)
Novice Architect Award
Insoluble
Insoluble has charged into the world of architecture and offered up a very impressive debut, starting with the excellent looking and playing Gears Within Gears level of Elemental Showcase 5.0, and releasing the full solo hold Delay. Insoluble has already proven capable of combining tough puzzles with a flair for visual design and layouts, and we all eagerly await his next work!
(Runner up... jokokoe)
Erik Hermansen Award for Lifetime Architectural Achievement
Jutt
Jutt's architectural style is very unique, in a way I can only best describe as "
mathematical"
. Jutt has always combined symmetrical elegance and patterns with tough logical puzzles in a way that's extremely hard for anybody else to replicate. Hard but fair, many of Jutt's rooms require you to really sit back and work things out which makes them fun to solve and very satisfying to beat. And to top things off, Jutt's work is often beautiful, both in terms of layouts and custom artwork. Congratulations Jutt!
Best Community Contributor
skell
The importance of the work Skell has done for DROD over 2015 is hard to overstate. Oodles of bug fixes and feature additions to DROD's source code which makes the majority of the upcoming 5.1 patch, along with the arduous tasks of checking old demos and hotfixing holds that comes along with this is perhaps the most obvious and significant contribuiton, but let us not also forget about skell's random ideas generator that spawned a contest and a community hold, his scritping videos, and his knowledge of DRODscript and eagerness and ability to help with any queries regarding it. That was a pretty big sentence, but it needs to be because skell's contributions have been pretty big. Yet perhaps more important than any of that, we need to really focus our efforts on what is possibly the most important contribution of all, without skell's face, Schik wouldn't have been able to make quite as many jokes this year. Thank you skell for all that you have done this year!
(Runner up... Nuntar)
Best DROD Let's Player
ThemsAllTook (a.k.a. Alex Diener)
This award is new for this year, created by popular request from the community. Alex has produced a significant amount of videos with his playthroughs of official DROD holds in 2015, but even more importantly is the quality of the commentary that comes along with Alex's playthroughs. Alex has always been able to explain his thoughts and reasonings as he solves rooms in a way that is clear and entertaining, which is not all that easy to do while concentrating on solving hard puzzles.
(Runner up... Pearls)
Unfortunately that is all for this year. A big congratulations to all this year's winners and runners up. Judging by the releases so far in 2016, next year looks to be the year of RPG. I know I'm looking forward to it!
Links
History of the People's Choice Awards
The First Annual People's Choice Awards |
Voting |
Tiebreaker
The Second Annual People’s Choice Awards |
Voting
The Third Annual People’s Choice Awards |
Voting |
Final Round |
Tiebreaker
The Fourth Annual People’s Choice Awards |
Voting |
Tiebreaker |
Winners
The Fifth Annual People's Choice Awards |
Voting |
Tiebreaker |
Winners
The Sixth Annual People's Choice Awards |
Voting |
Tiebreaker |
Winners
The Seventh Annual People's Choice Awards |
Voting |
Winners
The Eighth Annual People's Choice Awards |
Voting |
Winners
The Ninth Annual People's Choice Awards |
Voting |
Winners
The Tenth Annual People's Choice Awards |
Voting |
Winners
The Eleventh Annual People's Choice Awards |
Voting |
Winners
[Last edited by kieranmillar at 03-01-2016 02:01 PM]
