Adventure Game Studio

Paul, an especially timid ginger tom, has vanished. It falls to his buddy Blixa to track him down. To do so, he'll have to help out the garden's various resident creatures and overcome his own phobia of plastic bags rustling in the wind.

My entry for MAGS October 2017, which has a 'Room of Fear' theme and a one-room restriction.

I just played through this one. Loved it. The charm is overwhelming! Out of curiosity, how many hours did you work on the game from start to finish?

I like your style. But I gotta admit, I managed to get stuck in i one-room game. Help!

Quote from: ClickClickClick on Sun 29/10/2017 00:42:14
I like your style. But I gotta admit, I managed to get stuck in i one-room game. Help!

Shame on you (laugh) I completed it....

I somehow missed

Spoiler

the drainpipe hotspot

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downloaded it, played it, loved it, longplayed it, uploaded this, voila

THIS LONGPLAY VIDEO OF COURSE SPOILS THE WHOLE GAME
please rather play the game first and only watch the longplay if you have no time or absolutely no intention of playing the game.
Or go ahead and spoil yourself or just to get a glimpse and get interested and play it afterwards!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEsXkzA14dk

Hi selmiak,

don't you think you should 'Hide' the spoiler or maybe wait until the competitions ends?

It kind of spoils things...

It's like starting to read a crime mystery book and someone tells you who done it before you've finished (laugh)

In the Hints/Tips would be a better place anyhow...

My 2 sents:

I disagree, Slasher.
I think it's fine here, as long as such video's are called a 'let's play' or 'long play', everyone know it does contain solutions.
IMO one can simply chose by themselves to watch it right away or play the game first. So I don't see a direct spoiling situation here.

And oh, selmiak, thanx for the vid(s).

Yeah, imho when you click the play button on a longplay video it's like clicking the 'open spoiler' button in the forums. The preview of the video itself doesn't spoil anything. But I had wondered how the ags forum useres think about this myself, and my opinion is mentioned at the beginning of this post. if the majority wants to see the longplay videos of games I longplay in the hints and tips section I'll post it there.
Or as a compromise I could add an obvious spoiler warning when I post a longplay video. though this seems redundant to me. And after all we shouldn't discuss this in the thread about Moonlight Moggy :P

@arj0n: Thanks for watching :)

What a great little game Pilchard! I got a kick out of the gnome, lol.

I really enjoyed this game. The graphics were very pleasing. A number of decent puzzles just difficult enough to make them fun without making the game frustrating. I liked the application of the "fear" theme in the sense that instead of trying to creep out the player, it addresses the fears of the characters in the game - protagonist and NPCs alike.

Well done.

SO CHARMING!!!

I just played through with my 4-year-old student and she loved the cat characters as well, especially the

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cozy last scene on the sofa.

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Issue with Cat/Washing needs looking at...

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Need to get closer... This is the issue

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Quote from: Slasher on Mon 30/10/2017 08:59:22
Issue with Cat/Washing needs looking at...

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Need to get closer... This is the issue

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Spoiler

the cat needs to go on the same level as the bag

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Cute little game, I really enjoyed it!

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Durq: I'm not sure how many hours it took, precisely. Looks like first started drawing sprites on 19th October, so it was about 10 days chipping away at it most evenings. This is my fourth little game (third released) so I'm getting a bit quicker with scripting, otherwise it might have taken longer. I tried to get the game playable as soon as I could, then work on things that were 'nice to have' like the music and the leaf animation as time allowed. I'd have liked to get a bit more animation in there, but hopefully it's quite a dense one-room game with lots to enjoy.

As for the puzzle design, yes ClickClickClick

Spoiler

finding the drainpipe

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is a little tricky, and also pretty much the first thing you need to do in the game to progress...but I thought it wouldn't hurt to make people explore and look at stuff a bit. Hopefully it's not too much of a pixel hunt (we're talking big pixels, 160x120 resolution), and most people seem to stumble upon it eventually. ;)

selmiak: Thanks for recording another one of my games! I do really appreciate it. Will share the video around.

josiah1221: Thank you!

Shadow1001: Cheers! Glad you like my twist on the theme. :)

Mandle:

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Glad you and your student enjoyed the final scene, it was a bit of an afterthought but seemed to tie things up nicely in absence of a proper cutscene!

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I was rather sure I moved the cursor over the object in question, that's why I was stumped.

Quoteis a little tricky, and also pretty much the first thing you need to do in the game to progress...but I thought it wouldn't hurt to make people explore and look at stuff a bit. Hopefully it's not too much of a pixel hunt (we're talking big pixels, 160x120 resolution), and most people seem to stumble upon it eventually.

I was onto it within 30 seconds.... (nod)

I'v played games that had about a 2 x 2 pix hunt... ridiculous.

I quite enjoyed this game!

Your color palettes are awesome every time and you have such a recognizable style. I liked the music a lot but I think you should have raised the volume of SFX, so the music is in the background and the wind is the main sound, not the other way around. That's probably just a personal preference but I think it would add to the atmosphere.

Also, the game would probably benefit if you would double up every sprite and release the game in 320x240 so the letters don't cover up the whole screen.

A wonderful experience nevertheless!

Thanks xBRANEx, glad you enjoyed it and that's good feedback!

I struggled to decide on the sound mix and probably was wrong to bury the wind effect - might alter it as you've suggested for a v1.1 release.

I'm particularly glad you think my style's recognisable, I'm never sure how much of that comes through in pixel art.

Spot on about the sprite doubling. That occurred to me rather too late in the month to do anything about it, once I saw the longer speech strings were obscuring characters. The font I used, while super for low-res stuff, has some odd line-heights which I was able to adjust for in the dialog option scripting, but not in the speech display...

This looks very cool ^^

What a charming little game. I enjoyed it immensely. The pixel art adds to the charm.

Quote from: xBRANEx on Wed 01/11/2017 16:07:49
I think you should have raised the volume of SFX, so the music is in the background and the wind is the main sound, not the other way around. That's probably just a personal preference but I think it would add to the atmosphere.

I agree about the sound/music flip.

An enjoyable little game, looks charming and sounds lovely. The puzzles were quite simple and straightforward, but I actually like that in a game. Also, it was very refreshing to see an adventure game protagonist that isn't a human.

And I do agree with xBRANEx's suggestion about the text size, it was a bit uncomfortable to read at times.