MAGS April "Frame" (RESULT)

[OneDollar]

Sadly no, it was supposed to have saving and loading but I ran out of time to add it. I got caught up in deciding whether to make a custom save/load so that updates wouldn't break save files, or to just use the in-built one and ended up with neither.

[WHAM]

A new month, a new batch of games! As always, play the games yourself if able, but if you just can't find the time before the vote, check out the videos and consider voting anyway!
I messed up during the stream and so the latter third of The Expedition is missing visuals. My bad!

'The Year of MAGS' by OneDollar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji8xOL-obfc

'The Expedition' by Soulstuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMtQ9UQD5ZY

'The Twilight Zone - The Lost Episode' by Repi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7I1OPv7Pi4

[Stupot]

Voting is over and we have a winner:

The Twilight Zone - The Lost Episode by Repi

Congratulations, Repi.
I will PM you soon about setting a theme for June.

Thanks to all participant and voters.

[heltenjon]

My May was filled with RL stuff, so I was late playing and didn't get a vote in. But here are my thoughts, anyway.

The Twilight Zone - The Lost Episode by Repi:

Spoiler

So, the only point and click game, and the only finished game in this competition. I like the writing, and from what I can remember of the TV show, it's spot on. The game itself reminds me thematically of my own Batman game, and like that one, I guess the story works best if the player is familiar with the lore. I was not, but I could get the gist of it anyhow. The puzzles are really searches for the triggers to move the story along, like in a VN. The stylish TV framing it all would not be strictly necessary, but is in accordance with this month's theme, and it also adds up with the meta-story told. There are some bugs - the player can repeat actions that are supposed to happen only once. All in all it's a nice entry that succeeds in what it sets out to do.

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The Expedition by Soulstuff:

Spoiler

I am, unfortunately, not really a fan of dungeon crawlers. This demo seems well made. I made it to the final confrontation, but will need more goes before I can win it. (If I can, at all.) This looks like a promising prototype, and I can only guess what the remaining resources are used for, but it all hints that if the game is eventually completed, it will be far more complex than what we see now.

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The Year of MAGS by OneDollar:

Spoiler

This game is playable, but according to the author, not finished. Most of all, it needs a save game mechanism, as playing through a full year takes a long time. While graphically bare-bones, and soundless, the game is still captivating enough for me to play it through to the end. (I scored 14593 points. My best game got 4006 points, and 4 of my 12 games scored 0/negative.) There doesn't seem to be any win criteria, and failing to balance the player's needs led to funny side effects that I don't know if was intended or not.

Spoiler

If my social needs were neglected, suddenly, my character decided to spend time with his friends instead of sleeping or eating, which in turn made him ill or out of energy.

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I tried to make a game every month, but even with the scope rather low, I struggled to finish. Now I wonder what would happen if I used the first months learning and improving my stats before trying to make a game. I did discover the trick to double effectiveness, though!  The game doesn't follow its own advice, and will need testing, possibly making it less hard (if it's not just me being shite at it), adding bells and whistles and the possibility to save. Nevertheless, I could possibly have given this game my vote if I had been in time.

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[Repi]

Thank you, @Stupot, and @heltenjon for the reviews!

Heltenjon summarized my game perfectly. This game was my attempt to see an episode I always wanted to see, and which to me was an obvious choice: Rod Serling himself as the protagonist. I struggled to come up with the story, but this "Frame" theme really sparked the inspiration. I dived deep into the metaplot, as I integrated it basically into everything including the "puzzles", but also wanted to keep the story somewhat universal too. And hopefully somewhat fun or suspenseful.
 
A couple of embarrassing bugs sneaked in, as @WHAM and heltenjon pointed out, so the staff will be stripped of their Christmas bonuses.

The Year of MAGS

Spoiler

I initially wanted to put my vote on this for the idea alone. Very creative, but in the end, it's not a fully explored idea. I immediately started thinking hybrid of an app and game, where you could integrate it into the real world. Perhaps within the AGS engine?

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The Expedition

Spoiler

I voted The Expedition purely for the fun factor. The expectation to go on an adventure is there right from the beginning. Setting up dangers, suspense, gathering stuff, and team etc. And Sally, she could be developed into a great, sassy character. "Well shit" caught me off guard. The potential is there.

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[OneDollar]

Thanks for the competition Repi and Soulstuff, and congratulations Repi! Thanks also Wham, heltenjon, and Repi for the feedback, it's always appreciated.

The game doesn't follow its own advice, and will need testing

Believe me, I was well aware of the irony. In my head I'd pictured building the framework of the game in half a month, then spending the second half balancing it and adding fun random events and choices for the player to deal with. In reality I was adding barely thought out algorithms for generating and fixing bugs in the virtual game projects, while trying to squash real soft-lock bugs in the actual game, right up until release. The programming was a fun challenge - dodgy algorithms aside there's a lot of dynamic sprites and game-flow logic going on - and I think it's a decent foundation, but unfortunately needed more time to find the fun. Maybe I'll come back to it one day, but I was pretty burned out by the end.

I'd meant to have feedback up for the other games earlier, but life also got busy for me.

The Expedition

Spoiler

The graphics are great, the limited colour pallet works really well and contributes towards the game's atmosphere. I think the opening might benefit from some music or maybe some sound effects like waves or gulls or something (or suitably low-fi approximations of those sounds) to continue to build that atmosphere. We do get music in the excavation dungeon which I like, though depending how long the dungeon crawl is expected to take it might start to get grating.

I like that you learn some more of the story through completing the opening puzzle, rather than just having it all lore dumped in the opening text, and I like that it leaves with you some questions like why people have stopped coming from the mainland. I also appreciated how the puzzle flows differently depending whether you show Sally the gun or try and buy supplies first. Obviously there's only one puzzle sequence and one dungeon so far, but the idea of combining point-and-click adventuring with dungeon crawling is an interesting one and I think it could work well.

As a tech demo the gameplay is obviously quite limited. I'm not very familiar with dungeon crawlers, so I don't really know the established conventions. The pseudo 3D is very cool, and obviously something that took effort to pull off in AGS. You can also see two grid cells ahead (and whether the 3rd is open or a wall) so there's a reasonable view distance for mapping out the dungeon. The walls and floors are all the same though, so it can still be quite disorientating, especially if an enemy attacks you from the side and your character automatically turns to face them. You get given a map during the opening - I presume this is a map TO the excavation not OF the excavation itself as I couldn't find a way of looking at it.

RPGs aren't the easiest things to make, but the combat here looks good and works. It is fairly basic in the demo though. There are no numbers for enemy health, or how much damage attacks are doing etc which again might be genre convention. I think your character hits harder than Alan, but without being able to view stats it's difficult to tell. I also don't know whether attack damage is consistent or randomised. With two characters, and two actions each, there's not a lot of options in the battles, though presumably this would be expanded on in the full game with more characters/weapons/abilities?

I don't think you can run from a fight once you're in one, and you also can't see enemies until you're next to them, so there's no ability to avoid battles unless you are replaying the game and know where the enemies are. I don't think you can heal outside of battle either. At the moment it doesn't feel like you have a lot of agency, you just have to wander the dungeon and hope you're in good enough shape should you meet something, otherwise you're dead. The two enemies in the demo both have a couple of attacks including a status inflicting attack which adds some interest and variation to the combat.

Overall it's a good looking and atmospheric little demo, showcasing some impressive examples of doing stuff in AGS that it was never designed for. As it stands the combat's a little limited for my taste, but it certainly makes me interested to see what you do with the full game.


FYI I found some bugs:
 - On the first screen click the letter or revolver to enter interaction mode, then click on either the bar or supply shop. You'll start the dialogue with Sally or Henry as if you'd entered the building.
 - Pressing escape to bring up the menu then clicking 'Continue' stops you interacting with inventory items. The same thing happens if you click 'Load Game' when there isn't a game to load. You can fix interactions again by opening the menu then pressing escape to close it.
 - As above 'Continue' and 'Load Game' also break battles, giving you your movement back while leaving the enemy floating on the screen. This resets when you trigger a new battle.
 - If Alan dies in a fight, then you defeat the enemy and enter another fight, the game hangs after you take your first turn. Presumably it's waiting for Alan to take his turn, but he's dead so he can't do anything.

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The Twilight Zone - The Lost Episode

Spoiler

I haven't watched The Twilight Zone, I only really know it through other media referencing it like Futurama's The Scary Door (and I guess 4KbShort's The Zoo ). I'd like to say whether I thought the tone or dialogue or story matched up to the show, but without knowing the show I have no idea.

I think the graphics are nice, fairly simple but it's clear what everything is. I'm not going to complain about pixels like Wham did as I'm not confident enough in my own pixel art . The TV framing fits both the theme and story, and I like how you used the dials for the menu options. It would have been cool if you could have incorporated the inventory GUI into the TV too somehow, or maybe have it displayed inside the screen. I wouldn't normally think about it, but when the game draws attention to the framing having the GUI exist outside of it felt a little fourth wall breaking to me.

The only music is on the title screen and credits, but you've got a handful of sound effects which always helps with immersion (something I failed to manage in my own game...)

There's some nice writing, but the story did feel a little predictable. From the opening narration it was fairly obvious what was going on, and I had a good idea of how the game would pan out. There's a lot of Twilight Zone references in the game which I imagine would be fun for a fan, but mostly go over my head. I do like how the various objects in the room start disappearing as Rod gets closer to the truth and the world around him starts breaking down.

Gameplay wise it's fairly straight-forward inventory item puzzles, with a pretty easy riddle to mix things up. The puzzles are generally rather easy, and they make logical sense. The one exception is being able to break the mirror after putting the film reel in its cannister - there's nothing to link these two objects or any indication anything changed with the mirror, so I think I just found this by chance.

All in all it's short and a little rough around the edges, but it's got some nice stylistic touches and writing. I can't give an opinion on how it fits with the show, but the game has personality.


Other people have mentioned re-using item bugs to get multiple lighters and script pieces, though none of that is game breaking. I spotted a few other minor bugs:
 - When you open the book or the film canisters they no longer have hotspot names (making it seem like it can't be interacted with).
 - The baseline of the tape and the paper in the typewriter mean they're drawn behind the player.
 - The coat still has something rustling inside it after removing the script.
 - The combined script pieces are called "The taped title page" before the tape is applied.

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I also missed getting my vote in, though it wouldn't have made a difference to the result. I think I would have gone for

Spoiler

The Expedition. Maybe after a month of trying to make non-adventure games in AGS I had a new appreciation for people doing the same?

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[heltenjon]

That's really in-depth feedback, David! @soulstuff - I agree to all he says about your game, and wish I had found the words to describe it like he did, too.

and I think it's a decent foundation, but unfortunately needed more time to find the fun. Maybe I'll come back to it one day, but I was pretty burned out by the end.

It was still fun! Unlike @WHAM , I find myself one of those strange fellows who gets excited when a bar fills up.  Consider the concept proved.

And congratulations, Repi!

[Repi]

Damn, that was a really good feedback @OneDollar, thank you! Those vanishing objects did some funky things in my functions, and created some minor headaches, especially with that mirror. I keep coding and hunting feedback, and hopefully I can create smoother gaming experiences in the future.

Btw thank you all, who voted for me!

[soulstuff]

Congratulations  @Repi for winning! it was well deserved!

Also that was a lot of good feedback. I'm glad most people like the foundations cuz that was mostly what there was of the game as mid month job blew up in a way that i didn't want to touch a line of code until today. At least I managed to hack the demo and im glad i did.

About the Reviews and my voting

The Year of Mags

Spoiler

For me the game had the same problem that my demo had, it is a nice foundation but it lacked some random events or something to make it more interesting besides just grinding skills.

I loved the concept in a self referencing way of the hell of balancing doing everything with job and family on the side.

The thing that did bother me is the UI, i feel like every part of the game has the same visual importance so it would be hard for me to notice what parts of the game i should be looking at

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The Twilight Zone - The Lost Episode

Spoiler

It nails the vibe it is striving for, looks good, its kinda short and easy but also feels like the best package out of all of the games posted. It has some bugs but nothing too mayor

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My vote was for

Spoiler

The Twilight Zone - The Lost Episode

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