Bytten Ernie Awards 2005

Best Solo Effort

Awarded to Aryan Mukherjee for Railway Mogul

Game development is a very difficult thing to do, and most games nowadays are developed by teams, but a number of solo developers submit games to Bytten. Lone developers need to do the game design, programming, graphics, sound and testing, not to mention the essential marketing and customer support.

Railway Mogul is at the pinnacle of a those solo efforts. The resulting game was perhaps too complicated for mass appeal, but the task achieved by developer Aryan Mukherjee is definately worthy of distinction and praise. Aryan built a virtual 3D community with animated factories, roads and farms to create a complex and very substantial train simulation.

Game developers often dream of that giant perfect project. A few start, and many get bogged down or give up working on games that take over a year to create. Railway Mogul may have been too specialised and unwieldy for an average player, but represented the best of individual talent and perseverance.

Most Artistic Game

Awarded to Smart Lines by Rototo Studio

I turned a few heads when I awarded Smart Lines 96% and a gold star. The game is little more than a simple four in a row game, but if the graphics are right, the sound is right, and the game worked as well as it could then 100% should be attainable for any game genre.

Games are as much about style as playability and it was the look, sound and design of Smart Lines that made it stand out among the other games. It's a simple game from a playability perspective, but every aspect of the game looks attractive, and a lot of thought clearly went into getting the feel of the interface and controls just right.

The measure of an artist is knowing when to stop. Adding feature upon feature can sometimes detract from a game, and the quality of a game cannot be measured in the quantity of extra features, weapons, enemies, pickups or bonus rounds. Smart Lines demonstrates that.