[MAGS] Chance Of The Dead

Started by , Tue 26/07/2011 10:22:45

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Ghost

Lost Craft proudly presents:
CHANCE OF THE DEAD
an Interactive Night Shift
by Ghost

THE STORY
Five years after her demise, Janet Burdie is granted a "night out" to make her greatest wish come true: Submitting her signature cake to the famous C3 baking competition.
Unfinished business is tricky business, though, and the teenage zombie may find there's even more to this very special night shift...

THE GAME
Chance Of The Dead is my second AGS release yet, and my first MAGS game- it has been great fun to work to a cruel deadline!
Featuring cake, a cute zombie, lots of coffee and tongue-in-cheek humour, it'll keep you busy for maybe half an hour. It started out as a simple "one-room" game and then
expanded a little, as games sometimes do, yet it is a pretty tight and linear affair. But I am rambling, just go and see for yourself!

MAGS
This game was made for the MAGS competition of July 2011 (yeah, this very month!), themed "A second chance".
If you like it, why not vote for it at MAGS ?


THE TECHNICAL STUFF
* 320x240 "totally retro resolution", at 16bit colour
* five lovingly hand-crafted rooms drawn by an actual human holding an actual mouse and having no idea of shading
* a quirky cast of zombies, etheral special agents, late-nighters and one very suspicious dog
* simple "SCUMM" interface
* made with AGS 3.2.1
* music by Mods!


TEASING

Befriend The Zombie!
Help Janet on her quest to make the best cake ever, run a full night-shift and get some post-humous fame!


Become The Zombie
Your resources are limited, and you seem to crave braaiinns, but with a friendly GUI and some wits, you're bound to see it through.


Understand The Zombie
Will Janet survive lethal caffeine overdose? Why is it so hard to get a good sandwich these days?  Who left that big blue cup in the kitchen?
Is the service line guy really a vampire? Where's Waldo, and can zombies really resist eating braaiinns?

DOWNLOAD
Get it here while it's fresh!
(a small update corrects some typos, and increases Janet's walking speed)

Buckethead

Oh wow a game by Ghost!  :D Looks great I'll give it a try.

arj0n

After a loooong time a new ghost production, yeey!

Chicky

Super! You never get to play as the zombie!

Matti

Quite a nice and cute game there, Ghost. The walkcycle is awfully slow, but that's what you get from being a zombie I guess  ;)

I'm stuck though:

Spoiler
What do I do with the exhaust pipe? The other pipe doesn't fit and I can't seem to figure out what to do with it.
[close]

Oh, and there were two typos in the dialog at the beginning. I think "arrangement" and something else, can't really remember right now.

bicilotti

Quote from: Matti on Tue 26/07/2011 14:27:38
Spoiler
What do I do with the exhaust pipe? The other pipe doesn't fit and I can't seem to figure out what to do with it.
[close]

Matti, hint 1
Spoiler
it's a bit of a pixel hunt
[close]

hint 2
Spoiler
look closely at the cupboard
[close]

solution
Spoiler
top right corner of the cupboard, there is a rubber glove here!
[close]

LUniqueDan

I'm starting to be way below in my to-play list right-now. Welcome back to civilisation, Ghost. Now that you're alive, we will maybe answer your last tokbox vid call.  :=

As usual, gorgeous graphx. Surely good gameplay too. Now you can start working on Once Upon a Crime II, and while you're there, kick Spaceboy out of that Island-of-the-missing-AGSers where you were hiding since 2 years.
"I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe. Destroyed pigeon nests on the roof of the toolshed. I watched dead mice glitter in the dark, near the rain gutter trap.
All those moments... will be lost... in time, like tears... in... rain."

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens

#7
Oh my, ghosty mcghosterson made a new game for me to play! :D

Edit:  Cute game all around, and only one of the puzzles seemed a bit odd:

Spoiler
I'm still not sure why sticking a rubber glove in a metal pipe made it fit into another pipe, especially since it needed to provide ventilation....That would effectively be clogging the pipe, wouldn't it?  Personally I'd just replace the glove with some good old duct tape.  That fixes EVERYTHING.
[close]

Aside from that and some spelling issues, it was a really charming game and far more upbeat than I expected.

Well done!

Ghost

#8
Ah, thanks a lot for the cheery remarks- I'll try and be a bit more active in the future, game wise; you can't just write clever words about the stuff, occasionally you need to get your hands dirty.

Very pleased- no crashies this time; Lil' Red is already green with envy!

ProgZ:
Spoiler
Janet states that she wraps the glove *around* the pipe, though I admit that it's easy to miss. That would be like using some rubber isolation ring, and neatly fit the gap...
[close]
At least she didn't have to set a cherry on fire  ;)

[edit]
And anything with the Fossils tune in can't be not upbeat! But it's true, I like my zombies cheerful.

[edit again]
It's back to irregular net access tonight, but keep it coming- I'll check as often as possible and will adress whatever issues crop up. Due to the small size it should be possible to get this game "flawless" (in a rather subjective way...) soon.


Matti

Yay, finished. Lovely game!

I just think that
Spoiler
the dog could've had a bigger role. The 'bite' verb is great but I really thought that the dog would open the can. You know, somebody with TEETH. That maybe Janets teeth wouldn't be strong enough or so..
[close]

Ghost

Matti: I could write a BOOK (or a moderately lengthy blog article) about the things that would've been possible to do, and were planned, and thought about...
In the end I settled for the rather short version and instead tried to put detail to action and animation; my "hard deadline" was Tuesday because that was the only time I'd have access to a trustworthy, private computer. BTW, your suggestion was taken in- Janet's an official Romero zombie now, and walks at a human's speed ;)

tzachs

Haven't played it yet, but I did see this and thought you might be interested:
IndieGames- Freeware Game Pick: Chance of the Dead

Looks awesome btw..

OneDollar

Great game, Ghost! Awesome art and animation as always (I love her laughing animation) and good puzzles. Nicely polished as well. Maybe a bit wordy in the intro, but plenty of gameplay in the rest of the game.

Oh, and I think I recognise that fresher ;)

WHAM

Looks awesome! Ghost, I hope you don't mind if I record my playthrough onto youtube and post the link here later. It's sort of what I do nowadays for extra entertainment.  :)
Wrongthinker and anticitizen one. Pending removal to memory hole. | WHAMGAMES proudly presents: The Night Falls, a community roleplaying game

Khris

Great game, I thoroughly enjoyed the classic style.
The walk speed was really slow, yeah, but I kept going and everything else was very well done and satisfying.

It was a bit unexpected though that
Spoiler
  we didn't get to actually bake the cake when this seemed to be the main objective of the game right from the start.
[close]
Two suggestions about the interface:
-Make the look button light up whenever the cursor is over a location to indicate the right-click action.
-Left-clicking an inventory item doesn't do anything, it seems a bit unnecessary to have to click use first.

sthomannch

Great game!
I enjoyed it a lot. Everything was quite right.

Ponch

Very fun little game. Totally deserving of that freeware pick over at Indiegames.  :D

Ghost

Yay, the thread is filling up! Thanks to everybody for commenting!

I was surprised IndieGames found this so quickly (unfortunately they found the game BEFORE I could upload the "fast Janet" version  :P. Still, their comments section shows the game did okay, which means a lot to me)

Khris: I wanted to have puzzles for the cake, and had two already halfway in. They were NOT very good puzzles, being somewhat illogical, and so I left them out, hoping to create something that felt completely "logical". Interestingly the "automatic cake-making" felt to one tester as if Janet was just super-good at bakery...
Your suggestions about the interface are good, I'll see what I can do.

WHAM: I feel honoured. My first youtubie!

OneDollar: Pssst! That fresher needs to keep her identity a SEKRIT!  ;D

Darius Poyer

I played this and enjoyed it a lot.

At first I felt that the controls where a bit clunky because you had to use the explicit verbs to pick actions, so something like opening a door, or using an item goes from potentially being one-click actions to being three-click actions.
Because adventure games are fairly slow-burning experiences overall, I think it ultimately adds something to have such deliberate controls even though they are not streamlined.

Well done ghost.

WHAM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UAkBz6BHEg
Here's my playthrough, hope you enjoy. I promise never, ever to try sounding like a teenage zombie girl again!  :(
On a lighter note: Helluva great game, Ghost! Absolutely love the animations and detail, as well as the penis jokes!
Wrongthinker and anticitizen one. Pending removal to memory hole. | WHAMGAMES proudly presents: The Night Falls, a community roleplaying game

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