This commentary refers to Red Maverick Zero's entry for Fenrir-Lunaris' Evil Spock contest, in which users attempted to make a game in the style of another author.

When I first set out to make this project, I originally wanted to make Vampire's Curse 2, based on Fenrir's game. As time progressed I realized, there was practically no way I could produce a Fen visual game in a month. So I gave up. A week before this contest was over I saw that no one had expressed public interest in it, so I decided to make ANYTHING to win the fifty bucks.

I started thinking of authors I could pull off making a game for. Then it hit me, what was my favorite OHR game? Walthros. And what was one character in there that never got the respect he deserved? That's right, Yuk Deluxe. So I started out drawing sketches of my versions of all of these characters and divising a story I could pull off.

I had this fantastic vision in my head to make a game just like Walrus Chef, but use surfing instead. After talking to Worthy, the vision became a lot more graphic and ended up turning into something I knew I couldn't do alone, so I had to get him to help me. The game has a fair amount of content, and is some of my best work, considering it was something that was made in merely 7 days. After I kept going more and more I realized I didn't just want to win the contest, I wanted everyone to really see how much fun I had with this game.


It's basically about Yuk Deluxe trying to find his place in the world. He tries out several jobs and just gets bored with em and runs away. He finally meets a fortune teller who says he needs to relax and take a vacation. There, he runs into all sorts of trouble, meeting a rival surfer, having to prove himself to the resident "hottie" and just having a good time. I implemented an easy enough gimmick, where you drink a certain fruit flavored smoothie, and it actually turns you a different color. Very easy, but it added a little something more to the game I think.


One thing I wanted to do that set this game apart from Walrus Chef was how you got your moves. In Walrus Chef, you basically had a giant palette of food and you had to appeal to all of the judges with the right selection of moves. In Surf's Up Yuk, you had to actually run errands for townspeople, talk to them, find stuff, gather bottles of mustard, you name it, it probally happened. There is one thing I am slightly disappointed in this game for. The judging was very easy. In Walrus Chef, your judges were randomlly selected, and your opponents score varied based on the judges. In SUY, you had the same judges, the opponent scored the same, every time you'd play that round over and over. It worked out in the end, but it would have made the game a bit more challenging I think if I had had time to do something like that.


Everyone claimed Surf's Up Yuk was the best of the submissions, but it was too much like one of my games rather than a typical Surlaw game so I lost for that I think. But either way, I was still able to produce one of the best games I have completed in a good long while.

For the people that really helped me out with this game, I actually made Deluxe box sets that I mailed to each person. Fenrir, Surlaw, and Worthy were the lucky winners of em'. There was no new content, however, there was a demo of one of my current projects.

Overall, Surf's Up Yuk was a blast to make, and it was even more enjoyable seeing other people have as much fun with it as I had making it. I appreciate everyone's kind words, and I'm gonna do my best to keep making games that are fun for everyone.