MAGS June "Home Country" (OPEN)

[Stupot]

2025 - THE YEAR OF MAGS!

Theme: Home Country
Set by: Repi | Deadline: June 30th

I would like to see local flavor in the form of Game Dev's home country. Latin puzzles from Rome? Choppin' trees and people in Quebec? Original Haitian zombies perhaps? Maybe Finnish people are forced to take public speaking courses by evil, babbling Americans in a dystopian Finland?

So create a game about anything, but place it in your home country.

Whispers of a Machine (Nordic countries)


Kona (Canada)


Sumatra: Fate of Yandi (Indonesia)


Detective Di (China)



What is MAGS?
Started in 2001, MAGS is a competition for all AGS users. The idea is to create a game in under a month, following the guidelines set by the previous winner. It aims to help you work to a deadline, improve your skills, and provide a kick-start into making adventure games and more. Regardless of skill, MAGS is for everyone. Voting is based on "favourite" games, and not the most artistic, or the best coded. If you want to improve you art skills, use it as a chance to do some graphic work. If you're sub-standard at coding, use it as a chance to give scripting a go. Ultimately, people will vote for the most enjoyable entry.

Rules
Entering MAGS is simple. First, conceptualize your game following the month's criteria (see above). Second, create your game, fuelled only by coffee. Finally, post your game in this thread, including:

* A working download link
* The title of your game
* A suitable in-game screenshot

At the end of the month, voting will begin, and the winner chooses the next month's theme.

Remember that this is a challenge to see what you can do in a month, so any tinkering you do after that, including fixing minor glitches, is against the spirit of the competition. The exception to this is that you may go in and fix major, game-breaking bugs only during voting. We want you to have a game that voters can actually play and that runs on their machines.

So to reiterate, during the voting period fixing major, game-breaking bugs is okay, fixing minor glitches or making cosmetic changes is cheating.

Tips
Here are some ways to make sure you have a game to submit at the end of the month:
* Make a tiny game. Plan small, then cut it in half. Find shortcuts (e.g. if making walk-cycles is time-consuming, make the characters static or have it in the first person).
* Plan to have your game playable and submittable with a week to spare. This way you have a week to fix bugs, add some flourishes and maybe even get someone to test it.
* Plan to submit it a day or so early. This way, if there are any technical issues with uploading, they can be sorted out in time.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Need a little help with graphics? Perhaps The AGS Trove has something you can use.
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Need a bit of help with music?  Check out Eric Matyas' huge stock of free music resources.
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Don't want to go it alone? Try the Recruitment board.
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[Stupot]

I decided to open up June's MAGS a little early because I envisage having no free time in the coming few days.
Enjoy the pre-extension.

[Blondbraid]

As a major history buff, does the game have to be set within the current borders of my homeland?

If you look at Swedish history, Finland, Norway, most of the Baltic states, parts of Poland, and Germany were, at different points, part of Sweden.

And that's not counting the Swedish colonies, but to be fair, nobody actually counts them in.

[Repi]

Well, I probably can't refuse as I offered an example like Detective Di investigating in Ancient China. So this is fine by me at least.

And as a Finn, it would be interesting to see how your tyranny would play out in your game 

[Blondbraid]

And as a Finn, it would be interesting to see how your tyranny would play out in your game 

Hey, at least we're not Russia! 

[Repi]

Even though this is my theme, I'm going to be evil and participate  

I can assure you I don't have any advantage, as I haven't done anything except having a small idea, which sparked the theme.

My game would be based around Finnish midsummer magic and incantations, thus the name Midsummer Spells. It's a dark comedy/satire, and horror about Finnish summer and relationships.

[WHAM]

Damn, Finland has been mentioned (torilla tavataan!) so I guess I have to start drafting something here...

[heltenjon]

Hey! Norway and Finland both belonged to Sweden at the same time! We can all make a game and set it in Finland! 

[WHAM]

Okay, I have a game concept themed around alcoholism, depression and caffeine that is inspired by Leisure Suit Larry. If this isn't going to be the most thematically Finnish game ever I don't know what will!
Now to see if I can execute in time!

[cat]

Now to see if I can execute in time!

You mean finnish in time

[WHAM]

You mean finnish in time

Exactly that!

Here's what I have after 1 evening of work:
- Tauno, our protagonist, has 2 walkcycles and 2 standing frames done.
- First half of Tauno's home has had its first pass done. Still needs posters, trash, grime and detail to make it feel authentic.
- Script outline is written, story is set and I have my list of tasks to complete for the game (7-8 backgrounds in total, couple GUI's, 2 minor cutscenes with unique art)

Challenges I've set for myself this MAGS:
- First time using a verb-based UI
- Bilingual game (all dialogue and most text is on screen in both Finnish and English at same time)



EDIT: Oh yeah, the tentative name of the game is "Tuulipuku-Tauno ja Darrakahvi" (English translation, while changing the name in order to retain the Leisure suit Larry inspired alliteration, could be something like "Windbreaker Willy and the Hangover Coffee"). I have a few ideas for this character, as he has existed as a sort of in-joke in my friend group for years and years now, so I might reuse these assets for other games in the future, assuming this one is ever finished of course.

[WHAM]

MAGS game status update. 3 room backgrounds are pretty much finished, 4 more are required. Talking animations are added in and I have scripted the players interactions with the doors. There are three functional doors in the game so far and they take 300+ lines of code to operate! I may have been consumed by madness in my effort to create functionality to simulate how difficult it can be to operate something as simple as a door when massively hungover. There's the locking and unlocking, remembering to turn the handle, pushing or pulling in the right way... It might be easier to just get Tauno buzzed again so it all doesn't seem so complicated.

I also have all the room navigation done and all the sound effects already in place, so those rooms can now be fully explored. The rest of the room transitions in the game will be simpler interactions.

Despite my effort of minimizing animations by omitting the up and down walkcycles, I'll have to go and do those anyway since I decided to add stairs the player uses in those directions for a mini-puzzle about avoiding the neighbors in the stairwell so the pensioner living downstairs doesn't shout at you for being too loud at night. Tauno can't really handle that kind of interaction in his current state.

EDIT: another sneak peek image with a more final verb UI and a test inventory item


EDIT 2: another sneak peek to prove

Spoiler

(to whom? myself mostly...)

[close]

I'm still making progress. Don't want to do new posts on a chain.

I'm having fun toying with the dithering tool in Aseprite, but the lack of a noise generation tool for texturing large surfaces is a major issue that forces me to use a secondary software to finalize some of my backgrounds.

[Blondbraid]

I still haven't built much, but I feel I should post at least something.

So far, the game takes place in the 1600s, and features a protagonist who's setting out to join the 30 years war
(yeah, I know, killing germans is hardly threading new ground for video game heroes  ),
but soon finds out even just getting to the battlefields can be a hazard in itself.

[WHAM]

Final week of dev time is underway. I already know I'll have to scale back some ideas I'd wanted to do, and some art assets won't be of the kind of quality I'd like, but I'm fairly certain my game will be in a playable and completable state by wednesday evening, leaving me a couple days of time left to do final polish, tinkering with sound effects and music and such.

Crunch time has been booked for the weekend so I can push hard on finalizing the game for release.

So far the feedback from friends has been very positive, at least in the sense that my game does seem to capture the atmosphere, look and feel of being a certain kind of Finnish very well. What kind of an experience will that be for non-finnish players? I've honestly no idea, but I look forward to hearing what people think!

EDIT: Why didn't anyone tell me that if I make my game bilingual I have to write everything twice!? HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW IT'D BE THIS MUCH WORK!
But all in all I'm getting quite close to the game being in a beatable state now. A bit behind schedule, but not too badly. Things are starting to click into place here.

[Blondbraid]

I've stayed up late to work on this, but I finally have the game in a basic playable state.

I sort of changed directions from my very first idea, ending up with a simple "escape-the-room" game, but mainly, I wound up really nerding out regarding the regal ship Vasa, even going so far as splurging a bit to visit the Vasa museum to learn some interesting details and even use the photos I took of real-life items found on the wreck as references for the items players can use in the puzzles for my MAGS entry.

If all goes well, you can expect an entry featuring historically accurate inventory items, a not so accurate puzzle, gender roles and a warship being turned over, and a Monty Python reference.

[WHAM]

I'll be releasing the game later today or the coming night. I'm having a ton of dumb issues with the audio channels and clips randomly not working right, but I don't have time to rebuild all my sound code at this point. Having learned some new things again in this project, I'd do a few things very differently if I started this project again from scratch. Oh well, maybe in the sequel.


Fun fact: the Finnish national broadcaster YLE has a bunch of audio, sound effects and ambient sounds, available for free on the Freesoundproject sound library. So many of the sound effects in my game are actually funded by the Finnish taxpayer! This feels immensely appropriate. They even had fart noises!

EDIT: Release candidate has been sent out to a couple people and some initial fixes and tweaks were already done based on feedback. There are a hundred things I'd want to do but lack the time for, but such is the way of MAGS. Release will go out on Monday, I need to go out and buy cat food now, or else these fuzzy little bastard will eat my toes while I sleep!

[Repi]

I've learned that what I love about game development, is procrastinating.

Did you say Wednesday is the last day, @Stupot?

[Blondbraid]

I've learned that what I love about game development, is procrastinating.

Did you say Wednesday is the last day, @Stupot?

I second the question.

At the very least, I have something playable and will see if I can upload a preliminary version tomorrow.

Until then, I thought I'd share two of the photos I took at the museum for inspiration (Spoiler tag due to the size);

Spoiler

[close]

[WHAM]

Tauno is now released and moving freely in the wild! Hide any and all alcoholic beverages (it's for his own good). Check out the game page from the link below:

https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/play/game/2872-tuulipuku-tauno-darrassa/

Alternate Itch.io link: https://wham.itch.io/tuulipuku-tauno-darrassa

[Blondbraid]

Although this current version of my game feels more bare-bones than even the skeletons they dug up from the Vasa wreckage, I will be traveling away today, and despite bringing my laptop, if the Vasa ship disater has taught me anything, it's that even the modes of transport deemed modern for their time can still be unpredictable, so I might just upload what I have now, and if all goes well I'll upload a more polished verion to the AGS database properly later this week.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/vk804202gwh0z38/The+Vasa+Fasa.zip/file

The Vasa Fasa


("fasa" is a Swedish word for horror or deep fear)

A simple game celebrating the most glorious failure in Swedish history.