O.H.R.RPG.C.E. Terrible Games Contest

By: Paul Eres

On: May 28th, 2009

The goal of this contest for the Ohrrpgce engine was to make a terrible game. The games are terrible, intentionally, but interesting. The creator of the Ohrrpgce, James `SPAM Man’ Paige, posted great video reviews of all the entries. I thought these videos were very entertaining to watch, even if you don’t play any of the “terrible” games.

Among others the games include a game where the fate of various people are determined by a random button push, an RTS where babies face off against robots, a randomly generated bacon dungeon, the Village People: The Videogame (which is exactly what it sounds like), and a game which was so terrible it wasn’t even released, even though it too is an entry in this contest (see video above).

You can find the rest of the video reviews of each game after the “jump”.

Recommended Ohrrpgce Games

By: Paul Eres

On: October 29th, 2008

<img width=500 src=“http://hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce-images/7/7f/Front-page_screenshot_collage.png”>

Ohrrpgce games, as I noted in the Wandering Hamster post, are generally kind of bad, but there are a few that might be worth playing, and you can always get a smidgen of good from any game. Here I’ll highlight a few of the ones I’ve particularly enjoyed.

Because there are quite a few of these I’ve put them under “the jump” (I’ve never used “the jump” before, let’s hope it works!)

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Sword of Jade by Charbile and Fyrewulff is a lengthy (25+ hour) RPG with a lot of philosophy and furries. It can be very hard at first, but if you don’t give up after the first area it gets easier. If you enjoyed games with a lot of text and convoluted plots (like Xenogears or Planescape: Torment) you can enjoy this game. It’s personally my favorite Ohrrpgce game, but others feel it’s overrated, it’s very dependent on one’s tastes.

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Vikings of Midgard by Fenrir-Lunaris is an RPG with a Norse mythology setting, and has some of the best pixel art I’ve ever seen on the Ohrrpgce.

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Boundless Ocean is by Hardi Gosal (Orchard-L), the author of Missing and Fedora Spade. Boundless Ocean is an adventure game with RPG elements. I think it’s an interesting game, especially the storytelling and visualization, and just the sheer the idea of playing a game set in the afterlife (God and Buddha are characters you meet there).

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Walthros by PHC has fairly rudimentary graphics, but don’t let them scare you away, it’s a long game with an interesting story, and one of the better games on the Ohrrpgce.

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Wingedmene by Komera Waddi is an unfinished but lengthy traditional high-fantasy RPG. Well, at least the mechanics are traditional, the story surrounds a playable character who looks like this (I think that’s cute). I helped Komera with some of the game, the battle balance and one of the dungeons, but she did most of the work. It’s a very traditional RPG: if you liked the first Final Fantasy game, this game plays a lot like that, difficulty level and all.

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Keep in mind these are old games so they may not work on your computer; if they fail to work, you can try downloading the newest version of the Ohrrpgce game runner and running the game’s .RPG file through that. Some of them might not even come with that game runner, so it’s a good idea to pick it up anyway.

Wandering Hamster

By: Paul Eres

On: October 24th, 2008

Wandering Hamster, the “flagship” title of the Ohrrpgce (Official Hamster Republic RPG Creation Engine) was created by the author of that engine, James `SPAM Man’ Paige. It has one of the longest development times of any indie game: it was first released in 1997, and has been continuously updated every year until today (and it’s still unfinished and still being updated). Whenever the Ohrrpgce engine got a new feature, so did this game; recently when portraits and sound effects were added to the engine, this game got them too! (Yes, most Ohrrpgce games were created with the versions of the engine which don’t even support sound effects. Thousands upon thousands of games were created in the engine anyway.)

The game is a humorous, surrealist RPG, much like the Mother series (although probably not as good, but it does have a charm of its own). You play a Hamster and meet a variety of strange characters as you solve problems which I believe are created by an evil potted cactus (although I don’t know for sure, because the game isn’t finished yet). My view of this game might be affected by nostalgia (I learned how to create games largely by editing this game in the Ohrrpgce engine), so judge its quality for yourself. I do think it has some genuinely hilarious writing though.

Note: because the game engine uses 320×200 resolution, it might not work on monitors which don’t support that (it doesn’t work on mine). I believe there’s a way to get the game to auto-run in windowed mode, if I figure it out I’ll edit this post.