Yes, grats to all four winners.

Noogy, you game was simply amazing. Like I said a few weeks ago, after seeing it, I think I was more floored by the fact that you said you've only been programming for six months that I was by the artwork. I'm sure you have much bigger accomplishments ahead.

Congrats guys, amazing work this year.  I look forward to buying lots of MS Points and vastly increasing the size of my Indie Games collection within the coming weeks.

Congrats Noogy!

Congrats to everyone. Great Job, you guys have definitely raised awareness of XBLIG.

MommysBest:

@Matthew:
It's really sweet Duality ZF was in the top 20. I must have missed a forum post or two... I thought it didn't make it in. Is this a complete surprise in as much as not thinking you even got into the contest?

Thanks so much Nathan!  And it looks like we were seventh, which, if so, means we fared really well in this contest.  Sorry about it, but I had meant to contact you and let you know that Dream Build Play accepted us into the contest.  It was nice for you to mention us in your blog.  Much appreciated.  Kudos to the DBP team for letting us (and others) in after the submission glitches we had.  It shows you should never give up.  Had we not made an extra attempt to get in, we'd be out of the contest and never know we had a top 20 game.

I'm surprised Grapple Buggy isn't in there.  It must only be that your game is unfinished, unlike Weapon of Choice the year before.

And to answer your question, again, we knew we were in the contest about a week ago.  Once we heard we didn't make the top 6 (we weren't fully aware of all our competition at this point) we lowered our expectations to not even making the top 20.  Due to the "shoot'em up" genre of our game and the lack of innovation within it, it was easy to see a low scorecard on our game.  Shoot'em ups are so overdone that it would not have surprised me that another one would be a turn off to a judge.  That said, our goal is to finally do a shoot'em up "right", and give the genre the justice it deserves and earned back in the '90s...

Congratulations to Noogy and Dust!

And also to everyone else. All games were great.

Hey Noogy, if you're reading this... I told ya you were going to win. :)

Congrats to all the winners, especially Noogy who is an inspiration to us all.

- JDP

Wow, I'm speechless!  I am without speech!

I'm getting over the shock of it all.  I can't thank you all enough for the kind words, and it is truly an honor to have won in such fine company.  Of course, I want to thank the judges for seeing something in my little game worthy of an award!  I honestly started this just wanting to learn and have fun... I never thought I'd end up here.

This community has made it all worth it.  Being witness to so much talent has been a humbling experience for me, and I honestly wouldn't have done this without you guys and gals here.

It's been a rollercoaster this last week... obviously with DBP, but with my grandmother in the hospital.  In fact, she left her earthly body at the same time the announcement was made just a couple hours ago.  I suppose it can be her parting gift with me.

Matthew Doucette:

I posted videos of the top 20 (except 2 are only screenshots):
http://xona.com/2009/09/05.html

Thanks for that convenient list :)

Congratulations to all that were named, paticularly Noogy and the top six. Your games all look incredible this year. Thankyou Microsoft and DBP judges for placing Square Off among them.

cydereal:

...but I don't think the hate in this thread is entirely called for...
I feel I've been pitched to a bit here with the discussion of "formulaic" games being promoted on the platform.
I feel we've succeeded in creating a tower defense game which brings... rather than just a tower defense game.

Hi cydereal,
as I am under the impression that my post(s) are the ones you refer to I wanted to make things clear:
I never blamed your game (nor any other of the top 6) to be an uninnovative game. I have not even played the games so I am far from judging them and (like FlowChartRevival stated) I only had the expression "tower defense game" from the g4tv website.
So all I wanted to state was that I felt that 5 of the 6 finalists seem to be easilty classifiable concerning their genre. That doesn't mean they are not innovative and that's not what I said. I just FELT like innovation is only appreciated in detail and not in a larger scale, because there is so little time to play each game which makes accessability (again I emphasize that this is my opinion) more important than the introduction of new mechanisms.
(And now that I saw the top 20 - which I hadn't when I wrote the posts you refer to -this feeling grew even stronger in me.)

To come to an end I didn't feel any antipathy against your game or any of the other top six and in contrary I was stunned by the fantastic graphics of sol survivor and from what I saw in the vid I am eager to play it.

Best regards, Christoph.

I want to second the idea that what's almost more impressive than Dean's artwork is the fact that he hasn't coded for 20 years.  Just, WOW!

Christoph, I agree the innovation is in the detail for most of the top 20 and this certainly includes our shoot'em up.  We are probably the least innovative game on there.  But innovation is only 30%, so that probably explains what you see.  I thought losing that 30% was enough for us to be dropped right out of the top 20 no matter how good the rest of our game was.  Our game must have just been fun; I hope so!

But who knows, maybe adding dual play, eight fighters at once, and the morphing spread/laser with hybrids inbetween won us some innovation points because those three things are shoot'em up firsts.  And they are something "shmup" fans actually want, more than a marketing gimmick, so we might have got innovation points (maybe just some) and fun factor points all in one.

I'd love to see the scorecards on all our games. 

thanks Matthew but i really didn't want to make anybody feel like they had to justify themselves.
sometimes it's so hard for me to strike the right note in English..

Matthew Doucette:

I want to second the idea that what's almost more impressive than Dean's artwork is the fact that he hasn't coded for 20 years.  Just, WOW!

To be fair, the coding I did as a child wasn't exactly award winning :)  It was just extended basic on the TI994a.  Although, I am a little proud of the ghetto version of Splatterhouse I had going.

And don't worry Gooni, I know what you meant.  I don't think any of the finalists can really claim full originality with their titles.  I had a clear vision of the types of games I enjoyed, and went in that direction.  I imagine the last truly original game I played was probably Tetris.

Noogy:

Wow, I'm speechless!  I am without speech!

I'm getting over the shock of it all.  I can't thank you all enough for the kind words, and it is truly an honor to have won in such fine company.  Of course, I want to thank the judges for seeing something in my little game worthy of an award!  I honestly started this just wanting to learn and have fun... I never thought I'd end up here.

This community has made it all worth it.  Being witness to so much talent has been a humbling experience for me, and I honestly wouldn't have done this without you guys and gals here.

It's been a rollercoaster this last week... obviously with DBP, but with my grandmother in the hospital.  In fact, she left her earthly body at the same time the announcement was made just a couple hours ago.  I suppose it can be her parting gift with me.

Matthew Doucette:

And to answer your question, again, we knew we were in the contest about a week ago.

Wow! Well that must have felt pretty amazing, to have squeaked in, and been a finalist. So cool.

Matthew Doucette:

I'm surprised Grapple Buggy isn't in there.  It must only be that your game is unfinished, unlike Weapon of Choice the year before.

Yup, color me surprised as well. I tried to address the sad news with a touch of humor instead of just bitterness:
http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2009/09/fun-can-wrap.html

MommysBest:

Wow! Well that must have felt pretty amazing, to have squeaked in, and been a finalist. So cool.

It feels good, especially to do it with a shmup that is true to its roots (ie, no innovation in the core gameplay).

MommysBest:

Yup, color me surprised as well. I tried to address the sad news with a touch of humor instead of just bitterness:
http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2009/09/fun-can-wrap.html

Love that whole article!  You wrapped the fun factor.  DON'T WRAP THE FUN FACTOR FOLKS, it starts at 0 again!

Congratulations to the top 6 winners, as well as the top 20.

Argiris Baltzis:

as the far as the game goes i am pulling the plug, i dont even have enough money to buy food next month much less find time to work on it.

Where there's a will there's a way. Don't pull the plug, finish the game!

Noogy is it?

When I saw the list of games I had a really eerie chill. The competition was amazing. But when I saw your game I thought "That's gonna be one rich guy by the end of September.." And I was RIGHT!!! Congrats to you man!!!

Also congrats to all who have entered DBP '09 this year. Really amazing stuff. I wish I could have entered, but I hit many roadblocks in development. You guys really put your hearts into this, and I can appreciate the time and effort invested into this.

To the creator of Magnetic Mind (I forgot your name I'm sorry), I saw your vids and you're right, you were attacked by PS3 fanboys. What I would've said was "You build a game for PS3 Indie Games then, Oh wait... YOU CAN'T!! lol

Congrats to everyone!!! Especially you Noogy! Bravo everyone!!

...I'm done ranting like a cheerleader now.

Ninja Gate Studios:

When I saw the list of games I had a really eerie chill. The competition was amazing. But when I saw your game I thought "That's gonna be one rich guy by the end of September.." And I was RIGHT!!! Congrats to you man!!!

:)  Rich?  No, but it certainly allows me to make the game all I had hoped it could be :)  Thank you for the kind words, it stills feels a little unreal to me.  Not much has changed really, I'm still typing out code and doing my little chicken scratchings as always.

Noogy:

I'm still typing out code and doing my little chicken scratchings as always.

"little chicken scratchings", indeed! I'd smack you in the head if I could reach you! ;) :P

I can't even draw straight lines for stick men! :(

Jim Perry:

"little chicken scratchings", indeed! I'd smack you in the head if I could reach you! ;) :P

The feeling is mutual :)  When I see some some of the code being thrown around in these forums it is quite humbling.  It seems every day I look at something I programmed, and realize how dumb I really am :D  Thankfully games are more than just code.

Congrats Noogy for also winning the PAX People's Choice (and another $2,500 :-)

http://creators.xna.com/news/pax09wrapup

Doc

Thanks SpynDoctor :)  Wish I could have been there!

The community blog says there is going to be photos and videos.  I'm not sure if that post you linked is the entire writeup, but I'd love to see more of what went on at PAX.

Congrats, noogy not only did you grab the bull by the horns you pulled his head clean off lol I wish I had the money to make somthing as great but I believe I have the resources to complete a game.