2008 Special Awards

Though Game Tunnel has a very extensive set of awards, there are some games that deserve special recognition in unique areas.

For those games we have the special awards! Highlighting specific achievements and a few fun odds and ends the 2008 Special awards gives you a little bit of everything.

Game of the Year: Innovation - Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!

MWe feel pretty confident saying that there's never been another game like Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble (DHSGiT). It's a board game, but not really. It's a casual game played with mini-games, but that's not all. It's an adventure mystery game, but that doesn't cover it. It's a high school relationship sim, but that's not really the point.

DHSGiT is a great many things all at once, but more than anything else is how strikingly fresh the experience is. From its cavalcade of sassy and sly female protagonists to its spot-on take on early 1900s social drama, this is a game that stands alone in gameplay and presentation. It's easy to try for something fresh and simply reach too far and come up with something clunky and unsatisfying. Right from the start, though, DHSGiT is a triumphant bit of experimentation and good fun all the way through.

Multiplayer Game of the Year - Multiwinia

The success of Multiwinia as a multiplayer game comes from two things. One is modest system requirements and the other, the most critical aspect, is that the game is simple and dynamic. Those elements combined mean that anyone can play and the more people that can play, the better a headstart your multiplayer game has.

Multiwinia is a game that, within about 20 minutes, a new gamer can be playing at the level of a pro. It can be really hard to get into an established multiplayer gaming community, as the pros will tend to annihilate any newbs. However, Multiwinia is a dream to control. It's incredibly simple, but with a very flexible and dynamic play style that keeps things interesting.

The sense of scale with your little Multiwinian warriors is impressive and helps give the feel of commanding a vast army in an epic combat. Multiwinia is just a blast to play and is likely to give gamers dreams of storming waypoints and treasure falling slowly from the sky.

Game of the Year: Sound - Everyday Shooter

When just about half of your game's core concept is music, you had better have some good sound. Everyday Shooter does not disappoint. What might otherwise have just been a competent shooter in the vein of Geometry Wars is turned into a pretty fantastically groovy game.

The score for the action is an all-guitar soundtrack...but each enemy you destroy doesn't explode with a boom, but with a guitar riff that morphs the music as you play. More than morphing the sound, though, your gameplay will cause the graphics that make up each level to change, giving the game a wonderful ambient feel.

It's not just that sound is an integral part of Everyday Shooter that makes it our winner for year's best sound… it's also that the music itself is excellent. The tracks for each level are distinct and strike a balance between being soothing and complementing the frenetic on-screen action at the same time. This is as close to really being able to play and experience an aural world as you'll get in indie gaming.

Game of the Year: Graphics - World of Goo

World of Goo has a look that complements its gameplay perfectly. It is smooth and fluid and vibrant and quirky. The two elements mirror themselves admirably. Other games might find it difficult to give a personality to the little bits of goo that comprise the game's central population and most essential tool, but 2-D Boy pulls it off. The goo manage to be distinct and delightful across their various categories… but even within each type of goo, even though there may be dozens of them, they feel unique. There are lazy ones and hyper ones and serious ones and even though they're all the same, it feels like you're really working with a diverse native population… of goo.

World of Goo has a cohesive look that immerses the gamer in the goo. It's very easy to fall in love with and it makes an ideal vacation spot for any gamer looking to really submerge themselves in a different world.

Honorable Mention - Eternity's Child

There's been a lot said about Eternity's Child this year, most of it bad. However, looking beyond the hype and some of the game's more unfortunate quirks, it has a wonderful art style. The character designs are unique and distinctive (sort of a fantasy goth) and the backgrounds and lush and complex and lovingly crafted. You may not love the game, but you can't deny that it looks good.

Worst Script Translation - BC Kings

BC Kings is actually a full featured and engaging real-time strategy game with a nice helping of RPG elements thrown in to make things interesting. There's a lot of fun to be had playing it… unfortunately some of that fun comes from reading the script, which appears to have been written in not-English and then translated by someone without a spellchecker. Some samplings:

"This is the time of the tribal wars. The Boneheads are weakened but the war is far from over and no one expected the new force has just arrived, that could wanquish the entire Unga tribe."

"Just lick on the item's icon to prove it." - In all, the tutorial is pretty solid and totally easy to follow, however, this typo was particularly amusing.

"Every mission has one or more primary goalas to receive…" - Ah, yes. The majestic Goala, symbol of Australia's outback.

These are all just in the first 2-3 minutes of play.

Without joking around, though, wading through typos and stilted dialogue is a small-ish price to pay for solid RTS gaming.

Most Overhyper Criticism - Eternity's Child

Seriously, people. It wasn't that bad.

Most Liberal Application of the F-Word - Penny Arcade Adventures

Jerry Holkins is an artist. It's true that Mike Krahulik illustrates the wildly popular Penny Arcade comic and is the font for the designs and graphics that you see in the Penny Arcade Adventure games. But Jerry is the artiste we're drawing attention to today.

He opts to wield a pen instead of a brush, and more often than not he chooses to pepper his pieces with speckles of blue.

I am referring to the f-word. The f-bomb. Frik. Frak. Fudge.

You see a lot of it in Penny Arcade Adventures, just as you do in the comics. It's part of the broad strokes used to paint the world of New Arcadia, a world writ large in the language of the movies that you're not supposed to stay up and watch when your parents are away.

Language and all, Penny Arcade Adventures is a game that will delight all fans of the comic. All your favorite characters are there, the graphics are great, the sound is excellent and the kinetic RPG combat will keep your fingers twitching.

They just use bad words a lot.

Most Characters without Arms - Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People

Really, this could also have been the "Most Improbable Limbs" category. How does Strong Bad grip anything with his gloves on? Are those the Cheat's eyes? Or are they his nostrils? Does it matter? How does Trogdor get that bicep definition? How many curls does he do each day? Just how does Pom-pom get all the ladies? Why does Strong Sad have elephant feet?

But we digress… the real honor here belongs to Homestar Runner and his lady fair, Marzipan. Both manage to live unfettered lives, lifting things and playing instruments and generally getting into shenanigans that for most would require arms… but not those two. Armless mavericks, both of them.

Best Arthouse Game - Gravitybone

There's a lot of talk about games as art these days. Gaming has evolved to the point that real debates can be held on that topic. This year, though, the best Arthouse title is clearly Gravitybone. There are many games out there that are expanding the gaming field and changing the way we view games, but Gravitybone was designed from the ground up to be an experience. It's not really even fair to call it a game. It's a 20 minute experience consisting of only two levels. However, using the now "classic" Quake 2 engine, Gravitybone absolutely explodes with panache. It's distinct from head to toe and unified in its vision. Really, the entire experience leads up to the end cinematic and, like any good piece of art, will leave you scratching your head and begging for more.

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By: Michael Scarpelli
Posted: Sunday December 28, 2008