As we prepare to see a crap year out and welcome in another

Before going any further I have to honour a promise made early in the year.


I confess it took ten spins before I was brave enough to settle on a result.

Goes nicely with salted porridge

Honourable mentions

There were so many entries that took the art of creating a crap game to lofty levels. 

All of TMD2003's entries came with a wealth of fascinating notes and development logs and each entry was extremely highly polished. So much so that Katakombs of Kakrafon was at risk of winning best game for much of the contest.

Vegetable Stock wins Best Loading Screen in my mind for the perfect use of the Spectrum's palette to reproduce highly recognisable vegetables. Sweary Hangman also deserves a mention for its very professional loading screen.

All the Firelord Quality Games came with extensive (and very amusing manuals) which probably took as much time to write as the games themselves.

Most unusual machine entry was Number Board Plus for the Lambda. Good to see the QL getting a look in on its birthday as well with Etch-A-Sketch and Mona Loser.

Most likely to be a useful utility is LinguaFranKeys.

Best Adventure and Master of puns goes to Lunar Tick.

Best Asteroid twist is won by Guess the Asteroid.

Most Mistitled Game surely falls to The Dutch Art of Doing Nothing.

Winner of the Cascade of Copious Entries goes to JJ52.

Most likely to result in a Stomach Pump is swept away by Porridge Roulette.

Most Accurate Simulation BankZXy.

Best AI-generated content, any of ZXKerl's cassette covers.

Dishonourable mentions

Worst April Fool goes to UNIS.

Best Troll surely goes to Word Crane.

But there can only be one winner and one loser. 

The Winner

The shortlist for the winner (most crap game) of the 2024 CSSCGC came down to:

  • Valve
  • Sloth Attack

After a lot of deliberation, there was a hair's breadth between sitting at a desk for the rest of my life rotating a valve or ambling away from a sloth hell-bent on one day killing me. In the end, it came down to graphics, the beautifully drawn loading screen and valve of Valve were pipped by the cute face of the psycho sloth.

This year's winner is therefore 

Sloth Attack by absinthe_boy

The Loser

The shortlist for the loser (least crap game) of 2024 came down to

  • Why? - Kempston
  • Katakombs of Kakrafon
  • Lunar Tick

It is no secret that I like adventure games and Lunar Tick was a memorable example with achievable puzzles once you had worked out what was going on. Katakombs of Kakrafon was not only beautifully polished but was also programmed for the Next which made it stand out. The three-armed sprite was adorable. However, I'm pleased to announce this year's winner/loser and next year's host is

WHY? by Kempston

WHY? with it's talking duck and a design that played to the Spectrum's palette was the game that I would have most happily loaded into my Spectrum after paying the local newsagent £1.99 and felt like I had a good deal.





Comments

  1. J257January 3, 2025 at 6:55 PM

    Congrats to the winners. I apologize if I was unable to congratulate you all properly

    ReplyDelete

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