If you’re all not aware, SIGURD, a 1-chapter hack-making contest, just wrapped up. I’m quite eager to play some of the entries, but of course, but just as much as that, I like reading some of the discussion around the entries.
And one such conversation had me interested. Specifically, the idea of taking contest-style ideas and expanding them into a full project. Certainly, I think there are many “contest hidden bosses” such as the esteemed Frog and Aura Wolf where we’ve not seen a full project out of them. However, some people are simply not interested in or taking their time in regards to making a full thing for themselves. It makes sense; it’s a long process and generally requires a diverse skillset that’s hard to cover as an individual. Contests allow for a smaller scope, more creative liberties, and lessened expectations in terms of complete package visual upheaval, although some people will still swing for the fences there anyway.
Naturally, my mind turned to the idea of somehow Frankensteining contest posts together. I was reminded of this complete lunatic post asking if every submission from MARTH could be combined onto one ROM like an anthology. This is insane. But then, I had a separate, somehow worse idea:
Contest Blitz.
HERE ARE THE FUCKIN’ CONTEST RULES:
Each person can choose a chapter between 1 and 24 to reserve (that’s the entrant cap) and make a chapter. Reservations are first come, first serve by posting in this thread (don’t DM me), and if someone else has chosen a chapter you wanted before you did and you didn’t realize, your reservation is voided. You can specify a priority list of chapters you want if you’d like and don’t want to bother reading other peoples’ posts.
Chapter Construction Rules
The chapter you make must have the following restrictions:
- All vanilla items must remain unchanged.
- All generics in that chapter have FE8 class bases/growths/movement data/whatever. Yes this means 6 move troubadours fuck you. ADDENDUM: Personal stats are allowed, but only to a max of +/- 3 per stat, and not for movement stats.
- Each generic can have at most one non-vanilla tool of your choosing (item or skill or something else I’m not thinking of?)
- Your chapter can have any number of deployment slots you want. However, in the vein of telephone rules, you can only introduce two permanent playable units. All other slots in your deployment must be filled with generic blue units adhering to rules 2 and 3. Note Your actual playable units, as well as non-generic enemies, do not need to adhere to these rules. Do not populate your chapter entirely with non-generic enemies. I will find you.
Whoever dibs Chapter 1 instead can have 5 or fewer non-generics and no generic playables.
Contest-Specific Rules
Beyond this, you can do whatever you want as in a normal 1-chapter contest entry. Below are some further rules clarifications:
- You cannot submit an existing chapter. This is a change from the Super Hit Post rules where you could do that.
- The deadline for this contest is the end of the year, 2025-12-31, 23:59:59 in the latest timezone available, as per Super Hit Post.
- You can work with any number of people to produce a chapter. However, no person can be on the team of more than one chapter (F2U assets are not counted as being on a team, and you can in fact cheese this by making assets used for contest entries F2U if you want that badly to help multiple people).
- I can’t penalize you for reserving a chapter and flaking, but I can judge you silently. Of course, you can, at any time, notify me that you’re relinquishing a reservation on a chapter.
- You can use any engine except Ren’py.
- If you reserve chapter 7 or 13, your gameplay does not need to be SRPG gameplay. You can trade this “right” to non-SRPG gameplay to another chapter with the consent of both parties and me as a witness.
- If you reserve chapter 10, you have the exclusive right to kill off the entire player party up until that point. For timing purposes, this right can only be transferred to chapter 11, 12, or 13 under the same circumstances as the right to do a non-SRPG chapter. No other submitter is allowed to take any action that would guarantee the death of more than one party member under reasonable circumstances.
Now, what makes this a blitz? After the contest is over (and the chapters scored, for there will still be scoring), I will compile them all into a single shit-ass LT project. You might be thinking: “How will that work?” Leave it to me to fail and just work on your own thing.
Blitz Guidelines (can be ignored I guess)
Blitz related notes, many of which will be stolen wholesale from Void’s Blitzarre Adventure:
- Plot/writing is optional. If you have a line spoken by a generic, I will do my best to translate that line to an existing unit at assembly time.
- Assume the player has 0 gold at the start of each chapter if you’re going to add shops.
- After the contest deadline, I will assemble the chapters together as an LT project (just owing to the difficulty/impossibility of a weakling like myself implementing certain things in GBA). GBA entries will be ported to LT while I cry and piss and shit my pants.
- Collusion with other entrants in terms of broad strokes like plot is permitted, mostly because I can’t stop you. However, these things won’t factor into your score.
Finally, the contest rubric:
Contest Insanity Factor (10 points): How much your chapter resembles a typical minihack contest entry. Points are largely awarded here for unique mechanics/concepts.
FE Chapter Factor (10 points): How well your chapter slots in as a chapter in an overall campaign. You might think this is at odds with the prior scoring criterium. You would be correct, but let’s see what you guys got in store.
Fun Factor (10 points): How good the gameplay actually feels. Note that this is obviously highly subjective, but I do think group project heads tend to taint the project as a whole, and I’d like to be no exception.
Style Factor (10 points): Aesthetic choices, graphics, audio, the likes.
Speed (-2 points): If you finish your chapter later than the person who’s working on the chapter directly after you, you lose 2 points. This is just for the funnies, but it would be cool to have everyone submit in order somehow.
NOTE: Any submission that scores below 21 will be ignored for the final compilation.
Do you trust me to assemble all this after the contest is over? I wouldn’t, so try and make your chapter as good standalone as you would any other contest. Think of the contest restrictions as a “theming” with the possible reward of helping to produce one of the most dogshit LT games ever concocted.
Those who are interesting in comingling with their fellow blitzheads can join LTcord and head to #larrangement
Current Chapters Tracker:
0 (Exposition) - Mud
1 - Darrman
2 - Bandana
3 - Rasta
4 - jack
5 - PKLucky
6 - Frog
7 - Citrus
8 - DonutPlains
8x - ATHATH
⑨ - Dr. Green
10 - JiroPaiPai
11 - RW
12 - Rivian
13 - Ru
14 - Fringus
15 - aorlnn
16 - Had0uken
17 - Alguien
18 - Rammerush
19 - Rainlash
20 - TheAtlas
21 - Yasako
22 - Rye
23 - Jumpants
24 - Bpat
JUDGING
Prologue (Pass)
Link by Muddak
Content Insanity Factor - 7/10: Including a sliding block puzzle in FE is pretty weird.
FE Chapter Factor - 10/10: The vibes are Prologue.
Fun Factor - 4/10: It’s not a bad sliding puzzle, but it might not be fun for FE enjoyers.
Style Factor - 8/10: Two points deducted for using the red narration text, which looks ugly as fuck.
Total: 29/40
Chapter 1 (Temporary DQ)
Link by Darrman
Content Insanity Factor - 3/10: Lethal Company as a premise is, like, not that weird.
FE Chapter Factor - 10/10: The vibes are Chapter 1.
Fun Factor - 2/10: Mario got siege lunge chained minute 1 and died on the second turn, which I’m not sure is meaningfully avoidable. It was funny, which is legally distinct from fun.
Style Factor - 0/10: u better come back to this shit later smh
Total: 15/40 (currently DQ’d)
Chapter 2 (Temporary DQ)
(no final link yet) by Bandana
Content Insanity Factor - 10/10: Fog of war interrogation with body disposal and mana/line of sight is kind of hype moments and aura.
FE Chapter Factor - -1/10: This is the least Chapter 2 chapter to ever do it. No deploy for starting crew (including a possible lord), overly escalated plot. This is a 5x or a prologue.
Fun Factor - 10/10: Fog of war interrogation with body disposal and mana/line of sight is kind of hype moments and aura.
Style Factor - 6/10: Great map, loved the little voice line bit. Some points deducted for having a shinobi with a fuckass infinite range boomstick on a stealth mission.
Total: 25/40 (currently DQ’d for crashing)
Chapter 3 (Temporary DQ)
(Not Yet Publicly Submitted) by Rasta
Content Insanity Factor - 6/10: Scrambled, unviewable weapons + 2 tile thracia fog are a pretty funny combination. However, points are deducted her because the implementation of unviewable weapons is somewhat incomplete: weapon icons return if you suspend the game and reload, and you can still view item R-text in the item menu, even though you can’t in the info menu.
FE Chapter Factor - 7/10: This has “slightly later than chapter 3” vibes, but is still otherwise a perfectly solid “filler chapter” idea.
Fun Factor - 2/10: The villagers can and will die on the turn they spawn, meaning you have to already have units stationed near the houses that spawn them. The Thracia fog makes it difficult to work out where you even need to go. Additionally, the second villager that spawns requires walking quite close to the boss, and with the units provided, it’s easier to just walk up to the boss and slap him away (not sure if that breaks any cutscenes). Also the victory and game over conditions are all nonfunctional.
Style Factor - 7/10: It’s hard to look at, which is in keeping with the theme of the map.
Total: 22/40 (currently DQ’d on account of being both unwinnable and unlosable)
Chapter 4 (Pass)
Chapter by jack1029
Content Insanity Factor - 6/10: Permanently giving a unit Brave and 0’d defenses is pretty funny. Some points lost here because certain bits and bobs don’t work quite as intended (Magician only uses Mag stat for attack, not the full magic formula, as it still targets Def. Star doesn’t give +1 Mov as stated.)
FE Chapter Factor - 9/10: Yeah this is chapter 4-core, sure.
Fun Factor - 6/10: It’s a very straightforward and easy chapter…or it would be, if you didn’t fuck up the Heal staff calculation to make it heal 0 + Mag instead of 10 + Mag. This lack of healing honestly added a little zest that might not otherwise be present, but otherwise it’s a plain-ish chapter.
Style Factor - 10/10: Big fan of the map, music choice, characters, everything really.
Total: 31/40
Chapter 5 (Pass)
Link by PKLucky
Content Insanity Factor - 7/10: Guy who recruits generics by giving them items is pretty funny.
FE Chapter Factor - 9/10: Extremely Chapter 5-cored.
Fun Factor - 4/10: The map is somewhat oppressive for a Chapter 5, and any consistency revolves around the idea of the flirter being able to get items back from the generics via Trading, which seems a little jank an unintended. Accepting all this at face value, it’s still perfectly playable on a sight read (and would benefit from being inside a proper full game structure with non-generic playables), but in and of itself it’s a bit of a madhouse.
Style Factor - 8/10: Normal. Nice mugs.
Total: 28/40
Chapter 6 (Pass)
(no link) by Frog
Content Insanity Factor - 10/10: are you fucking shitting me
FE Chapter Factor - 8/10: A little too cool for Chapter 6 but vibes-fitting otherwise.
Fun Factor - 10/10: are you fucking shitting me
Style Factor - 9/10: are you fucking shitting me (actually in retrospect i will have to deduct 1 point for the screencap banks mug lmao)
Total: 37/40
Chapter 8 (Temporary DQ)
Link by DonutPlains1
Content Insanity Factor - 7/10: The map itself is not too out there, but giving the player 4 unlimited range swarp staves that any unit can use is really funny for fucking up future chapters.
FE Chapter Factor - 7/10: For a Chapter 8, it feels…huge. The fact that you named such a fat fucking map “Close Quarters” is hilarious. However, the plot is definitely Chapter 8-core.
Fun Factor - 7/10: The idea of using the swarp staves to get edges in individual quadrants as you possess is very nice, and the matchups are satisfying as a result. I suspect that this map would actually be less interesting as part of a full game, as you would be able to manually deploy your units and attempt to hoard swarp staff uses. Other than that, the map is fucking big so I used Big to skip some of it ngl I can’t believe you left your debug unit in lmao.
Style Factor - 6/10: I’m a big fan of the environment of each quadrant, but the fat fucking cross hallway with no interior deco in the middle throws me off.
Total: 27/40
Note: None of the fucking doors work lmao.
Chapter 15 (Temporary DQ)
Link by Aorlnn
Content Insanity Factor - 10/10: I like the full-on horror vibes.
FE Chapter Factor - 2/10: I’m assuming this is getting refined later, but this is like Chapter 1 or Chapter 5x vibes, not Chapter 15 with a main cast.
Fun Factor - 3/10: The little puzzles are interesting, although the fun factor is hampered by using manual movement to get around the manor later in the map instead of free roam, as well as some requirements for progressing that don’t really contribute much (such as needing to kill every enemy before the switches work, or the door only opening when all four units stand in place, even as later doors can be opened via Event command).
Style Factor - 7/10: When you polish this shit it’s gonna pop off.
Total: 22/40
HOWEVER this is currently DQ’d for essentially being non-FE gameplay with like a thin veneer of FE gameplay intro splashed in at the beginning. If there was a cool boss at the end or some enemies in the solo rooms (which would also clean off the “why isn’t this free roam” vibes), that would be sufficient to revoke this DQ.
Chapter 18 (Pass)
Link by Rammerrush
Content Insanity Factor - 9/10: A crossword with FE gameplay is pretty wild. Props for including the ability to use off-class weapons as a pass forward to later chapters.
FE Chapter Factor - 8/10: The vibe of being part of a series of quests to do thing before final thing is very chapter 18-cored.
Fun Factor - 4/10: Combat feels a little discomforting because the player generics are somewhat close in level to the enemy generics. Some points are also deducted here due to a lack of explanation of certain mechanics, although this is easily remedied without changing any actual gameplay.
Style Factor - 9/10: Good mugs, good map, good crossword board.
Total: 30/40
