Only FIVE days for each team to build a game from scratch?

The results? Amazing! Nine new games were finished and submitted by the deadline. While we called this a competition, it was really a "week to do anything" and recharge our creative spirit. The level of creativity and innovation was surprising. Congratulations to all of the teams who finished their games.

How To Play:
Each game web page has special instructions, hints, and a list of the team members that created the game.

Soothe

Soothe is a top-down shooter inspired by Wolf Team's classic Granada. It combines Gauntlet-style exploration with fluid controls and frenetic "bullet hell" gameplay. Find the key to unlock each level's exit. Get weapon upgrades and health from some enemies. A good score multiplier is the key to a high score
Play Soothe!

Ninja Shadow Assault

Live Action castlevania type video game based off of Artix's super cheesy home movies. EbilCorp ninja attacks against the secret underground lab are becoming more frequent. Can you defeat the ninja's most secret super technique: Multi-Ninja-Bear-Chainsaw!
Play Ninja

Battle Fruit

Battle Fruit is a tower defense game featuring upgradeable heroes, customizable building options and a physics-based destruction engine. Upgrade your firepower as you go.
Kill ALL the turrets and enemy bases to win!
Play BattleFruit!

FAT PANDA

Feed a very hungry little panda. The more unhealthy food you get into his mouth, the fatter he will get. If your panda eats the healthy veggies and organic foods, he will get skinnier and skinnier.
Play Fat Panda!

Isonian

It's Survival time for the Isonian.
Use your arrow keys (or ASWD) and run around fighting as many monsters as you can, for as long as you can. CTRL to attack and SPACE to use your shields. Good luck and remember ISOOOOOONIAAAAAAAAAN!!!!
Play Isonian!

Stick Quest

Voidrin has been unleashed from the Void. But you're not going to stop him, you are Voidrin!!! Destroy everything with over 25 skills!
Play StickQuest!

ORGANISM

ORGANISM is an experiemental musical sandbox game. Setup your own scenes with objects and see and hear how they interact with each other in musical ways. Organisms activate various objects on stage, including glowsticks, flowers, hearts, and skulls. Will you earn enough points to gain the approval of the mysterious cheetah?
Play Organism!

Gnome Man's Land

Castle defense/DOTA crossover with gnome & robots versus undead theme. Steampunk tech and good ol' undead battling each other! Collect gold to summon units to defend your base while assulting the undead armies.
Play Gnome!

Zorbak's Rampage

The oddly named team "Have anyone really been far as decided to use even go want to do look more like" created a 3D third-person mech shooter, with training zones and exciting combat action.
Play Zorbak!

Comments from Artix

Some of the GAMETASTIC games were simple, polished and very fun, while others were ambitious undertakings which resulted in amazing prototype games. Personally, I was most excited to see teams making 3D games (Mecha Zorbak's Rampage), creating an isometric game engine (Isonian), and building a physics driven game (Battle Fruit).

These teams really earned my respect for building these games in only a week. I mean, take Isonian for example. To finish on time, Thyton had to draw each angle of every monster, every frame, by hand. Flash can be hidiously slow, so I was very impressed seeing Minimal's super smooth sprite based engine (Soothe). Instead of using any of Flash's built in movieclip controls, he created custom functions to control all of the graphics and animations which caused the game to run at incredible speeds on even old slow computers. All of the games showed creativity and a lot of hard work.

I would like to congratulate everyone who participated. That is one week that none of us will forget. Now... onto the AWARDS!

Contest Results

Player's Choice Award 1st Place: STICKQUEST!

Congratulations to StickQuest's amazing team of Xyo, Roshuno, Polistar & Ichidori. When you are the "new guys" you have a lot to prove -- and they proved it! Their game's non-stop action and "every key from A-Z is a fully animated attack of destruction and mayhem" was hands down the player favorite. Each member of the team will be rewarded with $100 worth of BattlePoints to spend on the games of their chosing. Furthermore, we are flying Xyo to the Secret Underground Lab during spring break where he will be helping with the launch of our new game, HeroSmash. (Note: I would like to make a point this is the real Xyo, not the hacker who has been posing as him - be careful!) We expect to see great things of these guys in the future. For all of you who would like to get involved with AE and create a future with us... this team is showing you how to do it.

Developer Choice Award 1st Place: ORGANISM!

Team Triple Rainbow's physics and music sandbox game narrowly won against Fat Panda by just 1 vote. Their prize... a K-Mart Rabbit Lawn Ornament (Um... it is year of the Rabbit after all.) Warlic thanked Dage, Nythera and Mido for all of their hard work in a touching speech while clenching his ceramic Rabbit with joy.

Developer Choice Award 2nd Place: FAT PANDA!

To award them, we threw boxes of creme filled cookies at them... periodically throwing something healthy like a bannana or apple. The results were almost as satisfying as in their game.

Developer Choice Award 3rd Place: ISONIAN!

We awarded them with the boxes of creme filled cookies to throw at FAT PANDA's team.

Developer Choice Award LAST Place: NINJA SHADOW ASSAULT!

Wow.... 0 votes from the staff? Really? *Chuckles* This is actually something I am very proud of. No one felt obligated to vote for my cheesy game just because I sign their paychecks. That is the sign of a good game making organization - open, honest and fair. I love this team so much.