MAGS June "Home Country" (VOTING)

[heltenjon]

My thoughts this month:

Vasile the Templar:

Spoiler

Nice graphics and voice acting. The game unfortunately falls between two chairs and turns out neither really an adventure nor a learning piece. For me, the long non-interactive parts and the cooking became tedious. The basic idea for the story is good, though.

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The Vasa Fasa:

Spoiler

Escape the room-game set in a historical scenario. Blondbraid delivers high quality graphics and a good puzzle. Short on playtime compared to the other entries. I did want to see the heroine's fate later on.

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Tauno:

Spoiler

The whole Kaurismäki vibe give this an extra dimension. Solid delivery on story, graphics and puzzles. I especially liked the character-driven humour. I did not like the maze puzzles nor the difficult doors, even though the latter works well as a joke.

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Three Lions:

Spoiler

Ah, GOC Games returns! The game is filled with 96 throwbacks, music, posters, chocolate brands etc. The graphics are pixellated, probably in 96 style themselves. The story is filled with humour, fun puzzles and it all seems nicely tied together. Even though I could spot the ending, it was satisfactory - and it's one of those games that somewhat tells the difference between American and English humour.

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Who to vote for?

Spoiler

I voted for Three Lions. Both WHAM! and Blondbraid made very good MAGS games and was considered. It's great to see WHAM! put his money where his mouth is - It's easy to point out things that can be done better (re:mags youtube videos), but he actually shows how to do it better. (In a way I wouldn't be able to, for instance.) We're lucky to have you all.

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[Blondbraid]

So I finally got throgh playing all the games:

Tuulipuku-Tauno Darrassa by WHAM

Spoiler

This is one of those games that's tough and frustrating due to intentional design, and it does serve the story it's telling, but at the end of the day, I still found it more frustrating than funny to play. I'll give props where it's due though, it's a very cohesive experience with good pixel art and the best execution of two languages in game text I've seen in an AGS project to date.

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VASILE THE TEMPLAR (DEMO1) by Weeklyjournaling

Spoiler

I though the game had really cute drawings, good, funny dialogue and it was nice to see full voice acting, but unfortunatly, the actual gameplay just feel like following instructions in a very clunky tutorial with frustratingly slow animations, and an abrupt ending.

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Three Lions by GOC Games

Spoiler

Perhaps it's my love of brittish comedy showing, but I really liked the game's story and dialogues, despite not knowing anything or caring anything for sports, and unlike the other two entries I played, this felt just right in difficulty, where it's neither too hard or random, but it's not feeling like you're railroaded through it either, and all in all well crafted. This got my vote.

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[Stupot]

Well done to GOC Games ( @ddavey1983 ) for his emphatic win. I'll PM you soon about coming up with August's theme.

Thanks to everyone who entered and voted.

[WHAM]

Congrats to the winner! I certainly voted for the Three Lions as well as its sense of humour and solid design were well worth a winning spot this time around.

It's been fun seeing the feedback on Tauno as well. I said to a friend of mine while working on the game that it'd probably turn quite a few people away how I chose to portray the protagonists state through the game mechanics and that seems to have materialized much as expected, but that's perfectly fine. Trying to have the player experiencing genuine frustration is understandably not the way to make the most popular game!  As much of a hassle as it was to set up the game for bilingual support, it was incredibly rewarding seeing the final outcome. A more competent person could probably build this feature set into a module to make it easier to use for more people, while also including some of the features I left out for time, such as the ability to hide the translations if not needed or wanted and just allowing the player to toggle the display language by itself, instead of just swapping between the current two display options.

At some point I might give this game a do-over, adding more of the missing features and puzzles, adding an opportunity to visit another location, fine-tuning the design, art and audio, adding on full voice acting etc. My actual grandma agreed to do the voice of the Sweet Old Granny, so I look forward to the recording session with her.

Tuulipuku-Tauno has inspired a lot of ideas, so there may be entirely new games ahead for him outside of MAGS, though I'll probably be stepping back from AGS for a bit to work with a friend of mine on a Godot game project instead. You never know, however; if a MAGS theme as enticing as this one was comes up...

[ddavey1983]

Thank you everyone! Really strong competition; I enjoyed all of the other entries. There's some real talent in this community!