For the fifth year in a row, it's time to award all those scenarios and designers who the community find deserving of extra credit for their work in the past year! Since the first day of 2012, the people have been voting for their favourites in the 2011 edition of Game of the Year, and today it is time to show the results! 2011 was a rather active year with numerous big projects being released. And not only that, this is also the year when we introduce the Best Mod category, to give the modding community their share of the spotlight! So, let us begin!
Drumroll, please!
Placement: Scenario/Campaign/Member name (authour)
Of all the aspects of a scenario, gameplay is probably the most important. The better you find the gameplay, the more fun you have. Not much to say here really, so let's just move along to the results!
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Honourable mentions: Reclaiming Glory (Scibadi), The Prince, the Sword and the Gems (Joshua4missions)
While a scenario can be fun to play even if it's dull and boring to look at, having a pleasant-looking map is always a plus. The winner of this category was also the winner of the Pretty Town Contest, and that winner is
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What makes a scenario or campaign most memorable is often its story. 2011 brought us a whole bunch of works where the story was a central part of the game, while the race for the top was rather even, one campaign came out on top:
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Honourable mention: The Prince, the Sword and the Gems (Joshua4missions)
Many often glance over a scenario's accompanying score, and some even routinely ignore the sounds that come with scenarios (heathens
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Honourable mentions: Sagropireia (Lord Basse), The Broken Jade II (Hawk_kk), The Prince, the Sword and the Gems (Joshua4missions)
Named after an old AoKH seraph who continuously discovered new tricks in editor and refused to share how he'd done them with anyone else, instead forcing them to experiment themselves, this award goes to the scenario that people find the most creative. Be it a creative approach to gameplay, trigger and design tricks, or brand new scenario styles, this award encompassed all creativity. It was a close race for the first place this year, but by just one vote, Julius999's
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Don't let the number of other awards deceive you, there are plenty of high quality multiplayer scenarios being released here at Age of Kings Heaven as well as single player ones! This year's winner had two of his scenarios among the nominees, and together they received 5 out of 7 votes, or 72% of the votes! The winning scenario is Basse's
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Honourable mentions: Anatolia (Amerigo Vespucci), Hobo TD (Hobo w a Shotgun), The Hour of Teridar (Storm Saxon)
Minigames are scenarios that either have a very short story, or just a new fun game idea, jammed into a very small map. Some have more intricate stories but take place on a very limited area. Minigames allow you to experiment a lot, without having to fill up big maps. They are also good if you can't be arsed to play the 5-hour epics that come out occasionally.
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There are, unfortunately in my opinion, very few cinematic scenarios released these days. In fact, the only nominees this year were the entries to the AoKH Cinematic Scenario Contest. But worry not, despite the small number of cinematic scenarios that came out, the ones that did come out kept high quality. For a long while it seemed like there would be a landslide for Tetsuo's The Last Samurai, but My Fair Princess caught up after a while. But in the end it was not enough to steal the trophy from this year's winner,
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For the first time in Game of the Year, we are giving out an award to the best mod pack of the past year. There has been a fair bunch of high quality mods released in the past year, some very small but ingenious, others huge conversion packs. The winner this year created a flying unit that can be controlled and used in aerial combat: Hawk_Adongct's
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Honourable mentions: Light Axeman (Dave3377), RequestMod (pong676)
Now we leave the scenarios and mods and begin focusing on the people behind them: the designers. 2011 saw the arrival of many new designers, promising a bright 2012 for AoKH. Everyone in the race received a solid number of votes, even NowhereT who wasn't eligible to vote for got three votes!
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7 Devestator
5 CarolKarine
4 Scibadi
3 Thekingof555
"Practice makes perfect" is just as true for scenario designing as it is for anything else; the more you design and experiment, the better you get. The winner of this category this year started out with a solid release last year, and improved his designing a lot for his big release this year, The Successor. Give a round of applause for our very own
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And finally, we now move on the probably biggest award we hand out: the award for the overall best designer of the year. It was a very close race between Yours Truly, panel and Tetsuo Shima for a long while, but soon Tetsuo started lagging behind. In the end, the victor took the award by a single point. That victor is none other than
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And with that, we leave the designing year of 2011 behind us and fix our eyes on the new year. 2012 will likely bring us many new, great scenarios: perhaps a sequel to panel's well-awarded The Successor, the full version of Tetsuo Shima's Ronin campaign and, who knows, maybe even a third installment in the Gwyndlegard series? Only time will tell. But until then, congrats to all the winners, and thank you for the hard work you put into your scenarios and mods!
*clinks guaraná glass*
The
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The Relics of Athalën (5.0) | AoK Opus - 100,000+ downloads | StormWind Studios | "I consider the conversion of Basse to be one of the great triumphs of my modding crusade" - Matt LiVecchi