Adventure Game Studio

How about this?

Rules:

• Sometime this week you must go to the AGS games database and click on the 'Lucky Dip' link.
• Whichever game it lands on you MUST play. Unless:
• You judge it not to qualify as being a 'game'
• The game is commercial, and you don't want to buy it
• You have already played the game
• When you have finished playing the game, you must:
• Write a post in this thread saying which game you played and what you thought of it (or bang out a full review if you have time)
• Leave a comment on the game's page
• Leave a player rating on the game's page

Feel free to do this more than once
Happy Lucky Dipping :-D

=====================================

I got Eric the Anteater. (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1132/)
Will add my thoughts in due course :-)

Alright Rapstar 1.5, let's give this a go... (sheesh a non-adventure game (roll) ).

edit: Oh  wow, I don't think that was a proper game, uh-huh.. yeah!
Rapstar 1.5 is a turn-based rap-battle game, your opponent will rap some combination of uh-huh, yeah, come-on.. then you do the same, someone loses HP then you do it again.. I still prefer the OSD battle engine.
There is clearly some indeterminable mechanic underneath the combat, but it is fairly un-engaging. Funny little idea, but I kinda hoped for something that would hold my attention past three rounds.
May I have another spin?

Excellent idea! I'll post more after work tonight.

This is a pretty nice idea.  :)

I landed on The Lost Prince Of Lorden - Part 1 (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1605/).

I've downloaded, but have yet to actually play.  It looks good from the screenshots, and previous comments seem generally favorable.

I look forward to playing and rating this game, and will post again once I have done so.

Nice idea - I got "Plumber Boy", which looks pretty interesting!

Really nice idea!

I got A Cat's Night (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1559/). I will play it and return with news from the North.

I'll give it a try, but not making any promises about actually completing the tasks.

Got "Kinky Island - Demo" from 2006. Began wandering around the island, taking in the "scenery."

I got "Escape From the Garage" (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/742/) from 2006. I'll give it a spin tonight and report back. :)

I got the very recent A punk with wheels (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1701/).

Let's see what it is like.

Edit: Nice game! Good graphics, rather straight forward puzzles and good humour. Sadly lacking any music and sound.

I LuckyDipped "Next To Evil", and it looks very stylish. http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1364/
Will have some fun with that- apparently it's short, so I shoud be able to post more soon.

[edit]

Well- "Next To Evil" is a 2010 MAGS game by Joel Page, made for the theme "The Bad Guy".

You play Duet, sister to the World's Queen, in a fantasy setting where magic is commonplace and Duet herself has a rather unique talent;

Spoiler

she can duplicate herself (and sing with herself in perfect harmony).

[close]

Right at the start she's approached by a mysterious stranger who seems to want to see the queen dead. And while Duet apparently has little love for the vain queen, she is NOT an evil person... but how good is she?

The game's plot works nicely if you like your fantasy with a little extra drama. There's quite a bit of dialogue to read through and the relatively few characters you interact with all have their little quirks. Much is just hinted about, but that usually works for me, I tend to fill empty spaces with some guesses.
That being said, this is a game that tells a story. Puzzles are few, and, once you're in the groove, never really get very complicated. But it's clear that the tale is the important thing. You figure out how to use Duet's power, you get the usual fetch quests, and between that you get glimpses at relationships, moral values, and what makes a person evil. I'm okay with that, but it may not be everyone's cup of tea. It's also truly a serious story, with little humour and few frills. You get the point quickly, and Next To Evil does see it through.

Graphics are generally good- simple, but the game really has a stylish "flat-shaded" look, with small character sprites that look decidedly 8bit. Someone clearly put some love into the character portraits, which are stills but all rather unique.
There's background music and some singing, apart from that there's no voice over- the music is pleasant but really remains in the background, never drawing too much attention to itself.
There are a couple of odd design choices in the game, and since the readme merely covers the hotkeys for load/save/quit, it takes a while to figure out that the game basically has a BASS interface. There are some glitches like characters poking from behind a walkbehind, or pixel hunts (even for an exit that clearly should be triggered somewhere else), but that is small fry, overall the game plays nicely.

I have some expectations in a MAGS game- I expect a short and traditional game. NTE delivers and I didn't feel disappointed after the ~20 minutes I spend on it. It never felt very fresh or exiting, it was like picking up a pleasant "More Of The Same" paperback from an author you generally like.

Quote from: CaptainD on Tue 17/09/2013 11:37:22
Nice idea - I got "Plumber Boy", which looks pretty interesting!

One of the best if not the best platform game made with AGS. It's hard but rewarding!

I've done pretty poorly with my Lucky Dips so far. I first got a game that was actually just the source code for fighting sequences, my second was a demo that no longer exists for a commercial game (that still looks kind of interesting though --  Odissea (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1433/)), and my third was a find-your-way-through-the-maze game (http://crystalshard.net/?p=9&s=57), which is what I believe Hell will look like for me when I die.

Still, I persevered and got through the maze in 873 moves. I forgot, however, to find the treasure first. Oh well.

Sadly, I must report that "Escape The Garage" earned its "one cup" rating. The hotspots were hard to find, the inventory items were huge, opaque, and hard to use properly on the little hotspots. Most of things to click on had no response anyway, so I couldn't tell if I was even clicking on the right spot most of the time.

Final verdict: One of the hardest "escape the room" games I've played, and for all the wrong reasons. :sad:

Plumber Boy turned out to be a rather nice - if fiendishly difficult 8-bit style platform puzzler.  Well I say fiendishly difficult, but I suck at those games so maybe it isn't.  Has a real retro charm about it.

If you like retro platformers, you should definitely check it out. (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1051/).

(http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/images/games/1051.jpg)

Quote from: Ghost on Tue 17/09/2013 21:02:21
Well- "Next To Evil" is a MAGS game, made by Joel Page. I haven't been able to retrieve the MAGS theme, but the game's from 2010 judging by the comments.

There is a MAGS website (http://www.mags-competition.info/?page=history&only=2010-09&pagetitle=guidelines%202010-09)!

Quote from: AGA on Wed 18/09/2013 09:28:53
There is a MAGS website (http://www.mags-competition.info/?page=history&only=2010-09&pagetitle=guidelines%202010-09)!

Emberassing... Edited my post! (nod)

I got "The Simpsons Adventure" but the download link was broken. The next try yielded "El Profe", which is spanish and has no translation available.

Just now I dipped again and got Beasts (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/380/), which is a short and nice 1st person adventure. It has decent enough puzzles and simple but effective graphics.
The only two cons are that for some reason, you can't right-click to change the mouse mode, you have to use the provided buttons, and, since this game is really old, you have to play it in a small window where the action only takes up the top left quarter on top. You can switch to 640 in the setup though.

This thread is a great idea btw! Way too often, decent games slip a few pages back in the forum too quickly and stay largely unnoticed.

This is a great idea!  :-D  Nice excuse to take a break and play a game. 

I hit Cacho Quest (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1178/).  I'll give it a try latter today.   

Sweet! My next lucky dip will be Barn Runner 5: The Forever Friday 2 (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1099/) :cheesy:

I've got a feeling this game is going to be GREAT! :=

Actually, after another dip, my game will be Bob's Quest II (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/96/)

Man, why do I keep dipping these old games?  :tongue:

Look for a report soon...

A Cat's Night is a charming little tale by Pietro Turri, in which you control a big friendly cat by the name of Orazio. Your task is to save the Forli cat shelter from being knocked down by the so called 'bad humans'. Using your intuition, as well as a little help from your friends, you must help Orazio come up with a cunning enough plan to put a stop to the demolition. All the while assuming the role of peace maker, detective and hero to your feline chums.

The game features a nice and relaxing soundtrack by Mark Clark that enriches the calm, friendly and welcoming atmosphere. The game's graphics are drawn in a sketchy cartoony style, the likes of which are seen in most of Pietro's games. Though there are some inconsistencies in the style, they work well to provide an enjoyable experience. A noteworthy example of Turri's design choices would be A Cat's Night's inventory system, that comes in the shape of a cat, allowing the player to scroll over the eyes to look at an item and likewise scroll over the paw to pick up an item. A nice quirk to compliment an all-round quirky game. 

If you like cats, playfully cute humour and a meaningful story, there's a good chance you'll enjoy this game. Whilst A Cat's Night appears to have been created for children, the writing is good and the story well rounded, making it a game for most audiences. Whilst the writing is good, sometimes it's a little hard to read ie clashing colour choices and a sometimes messy font.

What ultimately brought the rating down for me here were some badly placed hotspots. The cursor lacks a cross-hair and sometimes it's a little difficult to line it up correctly. There is also an area within the game that is at first almost invisible ie the storeroom area. The game also includes some pixel hunts and wacky puzzle solutions but nothing too bad that made me want to quit.

I give it 3 out of 5 cups.

For an AGS game released in January of 1970 (two years before I was born!), and having a download size of only ZERO megabytes, Bob's Quest II wasn't a terrible game. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a good game at all. It has no winsetup file. It has no .cfg file. It won't run on my modern machine at all and my video card won't accept a full screen 320x200 resolution. I wasn't able to even launch this game.

But it was still better than the last game I played for Lucky Dips week. So it's got that going for it. :=

I'm still playing Eric the Anteater (this game is quite big actually). I have to say I'm thoroughly enjoying it and I can't see why it's only got a 2-cup rating.  There are some really nice touches, including some nice little 3D FMV sequences.  The game is also really funny with lots of subtle jokes.  There is a cheap gag about raping corpses, which might cross the line for many players, but that's a blip in what is otherwise a really charming and fun game.

There isn't too much to do in each room, but there are loads of rooms, some more pretty than others.  At first glance, the graphics do look rather like someone's experiments with a 3D program, and that's probably exactly what they are, but they are used creatively in the game world. For example a random blob floating in space turns out to be the Walrus's space ship. Fair enough :-D

I'll add more when I've finished, but I've played enough to say that I can certainly recommend downloading this game (http://agsarchives.com/download/GameID/975/) and playing it if you haven't already.

Cacho Quest.  There's a room with a girl kissing a lizard while a Pink Floyd midi plays in the background.  It's in Spanish.  The whole game... not just the lizard kissing girl.  There's a hippy too.  I have no idea what's going on.  Well... okay... I have *some* idea, but it's more of a "I know enough Latin to know some Spanish" kind of idea.  Spanish for hippy is "hippy," but with an accent.  I think Cacho refers to illicit drugs.  Just guessing. 

Great thread!
I got "Don Spillacy's Conspiracy Quest", MAGS winner of September 2006. The theme was conspiracy, weird inventory items and 16 colors. The game sure lived up to its theme, it had all of the above.
Quite amatuerish with a very weird ending, but it kept me amused till the very end.

Quote from: Stupot+ on Fri 20/09/2013 04:46:52
There is a cheap gag about raping corpses, which might cross the line for many players, but that's a blip in what is otherwise a really charming and fun game.

Some would say those blips are exactly why the gods have created AGS.

I got Nerdy Quest (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1604/) this time. Review will follow soonish.

If you're the type of person who enjoyed the first LSL game and are looking for a way to spend half and hour, Nerdy Quest may be the game for you. With understated retro graphics, music and sfx to boot, Nerdy Quest serves up a decent dish of nostalgia perfect for any adventure gamer's lunch break. That is, if you're the type of adventure gamer who doesn't mind silly, sometimes crude humour.

In the game you take up the role of an office nerd who is tired of his job and is yearning for more in his life. To explain what happens next without ruining the story, let's just say the game soon descends into utter madness. A good kind of madness, mind you. When you finally leave the office you travel to different locations on the in-game map by use of taxi driver. Quite a nice feature to create the idea of a more ‘open world'. There are also plenty of bat-shit crazy characters to talk to, which is always nice.

Don't get me wrong, the game is far from perfect. Just off the top of my head I could write a whole list of faults in this game eg a lack of player direction, empty interactions, default cursor graphics, no hotspot labels and a lack of music in places (although for some reason this particular ‘fault‘ actually makes the game feel more retro). It's easy to point out the bad stuff, but what the game lacks in is certainly made up for with a genuinely enjoyable experience. Again, that depends if you have the patience for such things.

Overall I'd say download this game and give it a try. My only advice would be that if you are stuck - try everything. It's never an ideal solution, but it works.

I give it 3 out of 5 cups.

Okay. Two dips. Two lousy games. But I'm game to try one more time before the week ends.
Yoda (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1217/)
Wish me luck! :sealed:

EDIT: A fun, quick little game! Hooray! Lucky Dip Week didn't end in tears! :=

I got really lucky this time and got Dread Mac Farlane (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1018/). It's a medium length adventure made by french comic artist Marion.  If you haven't already, give this a try. It's a fairly classical adventure that has you filling mugs and unlocking doors, but the graphics definitely stand out. 4/5

I got Jonah's Place (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1603/). It's a MAGS game and rated 3 Cups by the panel. I've yet to play it.

EDIT:

Played the game and it was fun. It had little bugs but that's what you expect from a MAGS Game ;-D.

The game tested my patience in the start. At first, I were about to stop playing it but I didn't and I'm grateful for that.

A very enjoyable entry, overall. It well deserved its rating of 3 Cups. I also give it 3/5. :)

I rolled RoN-The Outbreak (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/599/), rated 1 cup by the AGS panel.

RoN-The Outbreak review
RoN-The Outbreak is an strange game. Set in Reality on the Norm, and mainly using graphics from that series, The Outbreak is a short story about a plague killing townsfolk and your character's quest to find a cure. I have to admit I am not very familiar with the RoN series, but to my mind the story, combined with some unpleasant photos of people in horror make up, doesn't quite fit the colourful town setting. This lends the game something of a patchwork feel.

This mishmash of different styles and sources is continued in the game's graphics. The game runs in a 640x480 resolution which matches the main character, but almost all the backgrounds and others characters were designed for half that. These graphics are mostly shown upscaled, which makes them pixelated by comparison, though occasionally a background will be displayed in the correct resolution which means it only partially fills the screen and leaves the rest black.

Similar attention seems to have been paid to interaction with the world. There are next to no background objects to interact with, and the few objects you can click on usually only have one or two interactions that give a response. What the game lacks in objects however, it more than makes up for in locations. A large number of RoN locations are present, but most have no purpose and nothing to interact with. I guess the author is trying to be faithful to the established layout of the town, but it means that most of your play time will be spent walking. My biggest complaint about the game is that many times the exits to these screens are not obvious, which necessitates clicking up and down the pixels on the edge of the screen to see if your character can leave that way.

The story isn't bad, but there isn't a whole lot of it and you are mostly just told what is going on by other people, rather than discovering anything for yourself. Talking to characters also seems a bit broken â€" listing all the dialogue options at once instead of them becoming available as you progress further through the conversation. It's also worth mentioning that the game's text contains a lot of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, but it's never bad enough that you can't work out what's going on.

I wouldn't say the game feels rushed, but I suspect the author focused on the bits he was interested in and paid very little attention to almost everything else. While there were one or two glimmers of potential in the game, this is drowned out by poor or lazy execution. Unfortunately this isn't a game I can recommend to anyone, but then my feeling while playing was that this game wasn't really intended for a wider audience. Overall RoN-The Outbreak feels like an author creating a game for their friends or even just themselves, purely because they want to, and I suppose that's a large part of what Adventure Game Studio and the Reality on the Norm series is all about.