Things have been quiet (perhaps a little too quiet) over at The Dobbs Challenge and particularly in the forums, which makes us pretty sure that you're all too busy beavering away at your entries to talk! However, we'll still like to remind you all that time is now of the essence, with the contest to close in less than one month's time on June 13th. Categories still open for entry include Best Windows Game, with a $4,000 prize, and Best Windows Mobile Game, with a $2,000 prize, so there's still some serious scratch on offer!

Other categories still open include Best One Button Game ($1,000), Best Game Starring Dr Dobbs And The Defy All Challenges Crew ($1,000), and Best Total Conversion ($1,000) -- for making something that's completely different in genre/style from the original Dr. Dobbs Challenge, but still keeps 'collect Visual Studio icons' as the mechanic and starts from the same codebase.

We already awarded our first prize, for The Dobbs First Month Challenge ($1,000) which closed on April 14th - from a set of challengers that are downloadable for potential entrants to check out.

The First Month Challenge prize went to entrant Punkle for his One Button/Total Conversion mod Dobbs Derby, which turned the original platform game Dr. Dobbs Challenge into a slot car racer with all new graphics -- including a particle system.

"The Dobbs game did so much out of the box," said First Month Challenge winner Punkle. "I was surprised how flexible it was and that it let me make a totally different game quite so quickly."

If you're interested, firstly download the specially created 'Dr. Dobb's Challenge' games for either Windows and Windows Mobile. Then you can can win from a remaining prize pool of $9,000 by modifying the games using a trial version of Visual Studio 2008, in association with competition sponsor Microsoft.

Good luck!