[MAGS] Chance Of The Dead

[Ghost]

Lost Craft proudly presents:
CHANCE OF THE DEAD
an Interactive Night Shift
by Ghost

THE STORY
Five years after her demise, Janet Burdie is granted a "night out" to make her greatest wish come true: Submitting her signature cake to the famous C3 baking competition.
Unfinished business is tricky business, though, and the teenage zombie may find there's even more to this very special night shift...

THE GAME
Chance Of The Dead is my second AGS release yet, and my first MAGS game- it has been great fun to work to a cruel deadline!
Featuring cake, a cute zombie, lots of coffee and tongue-in-cheek humour, it'll keep you busy for maybe half an hour. It started out as a simple "one-room" game and then
expanded a little, as games sometimes do, yet it is a pretty tight and linear affair. But I am rambling, just go and see for yourself!

MAGS
This game was made for the MAGS competition of July 2011 (yeah, this very month!), themed "A second chance".
If you like it, why not vote for it at MAGS ?


THE TECHNICAL STUFF
* 320x240 "totally retro resolution", at 16bit colour
* five lovingly hand-crafted rooms drawn by an actual human holding an actual mouse and having no idea of shading
* a quirky cast of zombies, etheral special agents, late-nighters and one very suspicious dog
* simple "SCUMM" interface
* made with AGS 3.2.1
* music by Mods!


TEASING

Befriend The Zombie!
Help Janet on her quest to make the best cake ever, run a full night-shift and get some post-humous fame!


Become The Zombie
Your resources are limited, and you seem to crave braaiinns, but with a friendly GUI and some wits, you're bound to see it through.


Understand The Zombie
Will Janet survive lethal caffeine overdose? Why is it so hard to get a good sandwich these days?  Who left that big blue cup in the kitchen?
Is the service line guy really a vampire? Where's Waldo, and can zombies really resist eating braaiinns?

DOWNLOAD
Get it here while it's fresh!
(a small update corrects some typos, and increases Janet's walking speed)

[Buckethead]

Oh wow a game by Ghost!  Looks great I'll give it a try.

[arj0n]

After a loooong time a new ghost production, yeey!

[Chicky]

Super! You never get to play as the zombie!

[Matti]

Quite a nice and cute game there, Ghost. The walkcycle is awfully slow, but that's what you get from being a zombie I guess 

I'm stuck though:

Spoiler

What do I do with the exhaust pipe? The other pipe doesn't fit and I can't seem to figure out what to do with it.

[close]

Oh, and there were two typos in the dialog at the beginning. I think "arrangement" and something else, can't really remember right now.

[bicilotti]

Spoiler

What do I do with the exhaust pipe? The other pipe doesn't fit and I can't seem to figure out what to do with it.

[close]

Matti, hint 1

Spoiler

it's a bit of a pixel hunt

[close]

hint 2

Spoiler

look closely at the cupboard

[close]

solution

Spoiler

top right corner of the cupboard, there is a rubber glove here!

[close]

[LUniqueDan]

I'm starting to be way below in my to-play list right-now. Welcome back to civilisation, Ghost. Now that you're alive, we will maybe answer your last tokbox vid call. 

As usual, gorgeous graphx. Surely good gameplay too. Now you can start working on Once Upon a Crime II, and while you're there, kick Spaceboy out of that Island-of-the-missing-AGSers where you were hiding since 2 years.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Oh my, ghosty mcghosterson made a new game for me to play!

Edit:  Cute game all around, and only one of the puzzles seemed a bit odd:

Spoiler

I'm still not sure why sticking a rubber glove in a metal pipe made it fit into another pipe, especially since it needed to provide ventilation....That would effectively be clogging the pipe, wouldn't it?  Personally I'd just replace the glove with some good old duct tape.  That fixes EVERYTHING.

[close]

Aside from that and some spelling issues, it was a really charming game and far more upbeat than I expected.

Well done!

[Ghost]

Ah, thanks a lot for the cheery remarks- I'll try and be a bit more active in the future, game wise; you can't just write clever words about the stuff, occasionally you need to get your hands dirty.

Very pleased- no crashies this time; Lil' Red is already green with envy!

ProgZ:

Spoiler

Janet states that she wraps the glove *around* the pipe, though I admit that it's easy to miss. That would be like using some rubber isolation ring, and neatly fit the gap...

[close]

At least she didn't have to set a cherry on fire  

[edit]
And anything with the Fossils tune in can't be not upbeat! But it's true, I like my zombies cheerful.

[edit again]
It's back to irregular net access tonight, but keep it coming- I'll check as often as possible and will adress whatever issues crop up. Due to the small size it should be possible to get this game "flawless" (in a rather subjective way...) soon.

[Matti]

Yay, finished. Lovely game!

I just think that

Spoiler

the dog could've had a bigger role. The 'bite' verb is great but I really thought that the dog would open the can. You know, somebody with TEETH. That maybe Janets teeth wouldn't be strong enough or so..

[close]

[Ghost]

Matti: I could write a BOOK (or a moderately lengthy blog article) about the things that would've been possible to do, and were planned, and thought about...
In the end I settled for the rather short version and instead tried to put detail to action and animation; my "hard deadline" was Tuesday because that was the only time I'd have access to a trustworthy, private computer. BTW, your suggestion was taken in- Janet's an official Romero zombie now, and walks at a human's speed

[tzachs]

Haven't played it yet, but I did see this and thought you might be interested:
IndieGames- Freeware Game Pick: Chance of the Dead

Looks awesome btw..

[OneDollar]

Great game, Ghost! Awesome art and animation as always (I love her laughing animation) and good puzzles. Nicely polished as well. Maybe a bit wordy in the intro, but plenty of gameplay in the rest of the game.

Oh, and I think I recognise that fresher

[WHAM]

Looks awesome! Ghost, I hope you don't mind if I record my playthrough onto youtube and post the link here later. It's sort of what I do nowadays for extra entertainment. 

[Khris]

Great game, I thoroughly enjoyed the classic style.
The walk speed was really slow, yeah, but I kept going and everything else was very well done and satisfying.

It was a bit unexpected though that

Spoiler

  we didn't get to actually bake the cake when this seemed to be the main objective of the game right from the start.

[close]

Two suggestions about the interface:
-Make the look button light up whenever the cursor is over a location to indicate the right-click action.
-Left-clicking an inventory item doesn't do anything, it seems a bit unnecessary to have to click use first.

[sthomannch]

Great game!
I enjoyed it a lot. Everything was quite right.

[Ponch]

Very fun little game. Totally deserving of that freeware pick over at Indiegames. 

[Ghost]

Yay, the thread is filling up! Thanks to everybody for commenting!

I was surprised IndieGames found this so quickly (unfortunately they found the game BEFORE I could upload the "fast Janet" version  . Still, their comments section shows the game did okay, which means a lot to me)

Khris: I wanted to have puzzles for the cake, and had two already halfway in. They were NOT very good puzzles, being somewhat illogical, and so I left them out, hoping to create something that felt completely "logical". Interestingly the "automatic cake-making" felt to one tester as if Janet was just super-good at bakery...
Your suggestions about the interface are good, I'll see what I can do.

WHAM: I feel honoured. My first youtubie!

OneDollar: Pssst! That fresher needs to keep her identity a SEKRIT! 

[Darius Poyer]

I played this and enjoyed it a lot.

At first I felt that the controls where a bit clunky because you had to use the explicit verbs to pick actions, so something like opening a door, or using an item goes from potentially being one-click actions to being three-click actions.
Because adventure games are fairly slow-burning experiences overall, I think it ultimately adds something to have such deliberate controls even though they are not streamlined.

Well done ghost.

[WHAM]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UAkBz6BHEg
Here's my playthrough, hope you enjoy. I promise never, ever to try sounding like a teenage zombie girl again! 
On a lighter note: Helluva great game, Ghost! Absolutely love the animations and detail, as well as the penis jokes!

[bicilotti]

\m/ ^_^ \m/ for Ghost.

and horray for WHAM cheerful let's play!

[Tabata]

@ WHAM: You did a real good job!
I had a lot of fun watching your video (also to hear your Janet-voice was very funny  ) and it seems to me, that you fell in love about her giggeling, like me.
I couldn't get the last seconds of the video to be working, because at 52:49 it seems to load again (for ever) and I had no (second) chance to hear/watch the rest.


So here we have a very well done and entertaining video about playing an awesome little game that comes up with the cutest zombie ever!

[WHAM]

@ Tabata: Youtube takes its sweet time in compiling the video on it's end and I posted the link right after the upload was done on my end, so the last seconds probably just hadn't finished compiling on the server. The rest should be viewable now, though you mostly just missed me grumbling about not having any cake. 

[Dualnames]

A great game indeed, Ghost. It was fun beta-testing it. Also nice let's play. I rated the game as well. Way to go, Ghost.

[Ghost]

Weeell, Janet was as happy as a resurrected corpse when she read that we won. Now we can spruce things up even further- stay tuned for that GUI fix and, well... translations?

And WHAM- that was one super playthrough. I felt so proud... and now have the urge to reinstall Discworld. You a sound a BIT like Mr. Idle!

[TomatoesInTheHead]

Nice game, a well deserved MAGS winner even if there was competition!

Haven't watched WHAM's video yet, but will do now.

[Eggie]

That was just adorable!

[Swordofkings128]

I'm a bit late to the party, but I just wanted to say this is a neat little game! Great work, Ghost. I really love the graphics; they're quite stylish. 8)

[selmiak]

I'm even later, but I enjoyed the game. Coooool stuff, now I want some braaaaaaaaaaains....

[Monsieur OUXX]

Here's my playthrough

"You forgot to place a BASELINE for that thing right there! Tat. Tat. Tat." 

Also, the good thing with your playthrough is that all that to be done now is to chop the soundtrack of your video, and then add all the dialogs to the game. Is it such a silly idea?

[WHAM]

If Ghost ever wants to release a voiced version, I would be more than happy to do the voices for the ghost with the glasses aka. Ted.  Maybe the truck driver too, but definitely NOT Janet. Oh no, no, no, no, no! 

[Tabata]

If Ghost ever wants to release a voiced version, I would be more than happy to do the voices for the ghost with the glasses aka. Ted.  Maybe the truck driver too, but definitely NOT Janet. Oh no, no, no, no, no! 

Sorry, but that's a very     !!!

Since you already proved, that Janet ist done best by you, I reserved the part of Ted for me   

[bunny-gypsy]

Just recently played this game.

Loved it!  I got frustrated in the beginning and at one point
regarding the pipe thing, but once I got it, it went pretty smoothly.

Such a sweet story. 

[TheRoger]

Heh. It seems that glove was sneaky for many of us.  In overall I liked this game, it is well made, "bugless"and fun game. 

[Ghost]

I would be more than happy to do the voices for the ghost with the glasses aka. Ted.  Maybe the truck driver too, but definitely NOT Janet. Oh no, no, no, no, no!  

Is that an offer? I'd love to have a talkie version, but I have no sound equipment at all... if we can round up two ladies and another guy I'd happily give it a shot, though!

Regarding text; bicilotti has already offered to provide an Italian translation; a french forumite will do the same for... French, and yours truly is currently making German Schniepelwitze... it's fun polishing up a solid base!

Regarding the baseline bug, I am really puzzled about it. In my version it doesn't show up- I am currently cleaning up the code and everything, and I think it has something to do with the exact order of actions... Mr. Coffee is the most tangled bit of script I ever wrote!

I am very happy to see the overall positive responses, it really means a LOT to me!

[m0ds]

@WHAM a fun video, enjoyed watching it. Grabbing a pen and paper made me chuckle - that's what I did, only to react the same way as you later on! I noticed the MIDI was having some difficulties that occur under Vista, is that what you were using? Nice job tho!

Spoiler

I did however skip through the part where you obviously needed the item to fit the pipe...Dang did that take you a long time to find

[close]

And just to add the music is now available here: http://www.screen7.co.uk/music/midi/soundtracks.htm

[HerDestruction]

I just played through Chance of the Dead and loved it! Thanks for the awesome game! 

[Calin Leafshade]

I'd happily lend my vocal talents. I can do more varied voices than just a prissy brit.

[Ghost]

I'd happily lend my vocal talents. I can do more varied voices than just a prissy brit.

WHAM, Calin, thanks a LOT for the offer! I'm currently PM'ing around for a female lead voice, but to be honest, the game *is* pretty wordy. If we get the crew together, I'll PM you for sure!

HerDestruction: Thanks a lot!

[Dr.Starky]

I adored the game, but I thought the pixel hunting was pretty cheesy.

I understand you didn't have very many options working with such a small area, but I still don't find pixel hunting any fun.

[Ghost]

...but I thought the pixel hunting was pretty cheesy.

So far mostly the rubber glove has been mentioned as extremely offensive- was there anything else? Please tell; I can only learn from that! I'd like to add that I took some care to make even small objects stand out, and make their collision boxes never too small... classic pixel hunting starts at 2x2  (Dark Seed, I AM looking at you.)