Topic: The Adventure Game Challenge Jam 5th Anniversary!

[hightreason]

I just realized I forgot to post about this in here this year!

The 5th annual Adventure Game challenge jam is on right now! It just started, so you still have an opportunity to join in. Sorry for not giving more notice on this board, but would love to have you.

Make an adventure game in 2 weeks, and the one the judges deem to be the best will get $105!

Check out the jam page here:

https://itch.io/jam/105-adventure-game-challenge

[fernewelten]

What a pity that I've already just written "Castle Escape" and "Flight from the robots". 

[fernewelten]

“486 joined”!

[heltenjon]

“486 joined”!

Ahhh...looking forward to playing 486 games and posting reviews of every one...

[hightreason]

Ahhh...looking forward to playing 486 games and posting reviews of every one...

Usually somewhere around 15% of people who join submit a game judging by past years.

[fernewelten]

So, you leave me no choice. Hello to yet another escape adventure!

So Count Bumbley is a brave Englishman that is living in an English castle, and therefore this castle is probably being haunted.

And it is! So meet Eeric, the ghost that has been trapped in the castle library for centuries:

Eeric can only haunt between midnight and 1 o'clock, of course. In order to manage this haunting, he needs a theme, and here it is:

Perhaps Eeric can help Count Bumbley escape further from Lady Anemone's wiles: Bumbley's teamed up with Randy and Larry, and he's left his bedroom, but he hasn't escaped from the castle yet.

Let's hope that I find enough time for all that! 

[fernewelten]

Let's put them in the study instead of the library. It offers more possibilities, and it offers shelves with books, too.  And here is a first version of it:

[heltenjon]

Ahhh...looking forward to Fernewelten's entry.

I took a look at the competition, and so far, there's been two games (an endless runner and something else completely wrong) that were kicked out right away.
The submissions at this time include several in-development entries that aren't playable, and I have hopes that Ancient Island, Escape from Darkstein and Escape from Crapital may turn out to be adventure games.

Of the others, Little City, Exit 1.0 and Super Cap Boy seems to be crap games made by kids. They don't work properly, are bad jokes or at the very least not even close to being adventure games. Hapnotik, Stab Em and Escape from Ignorance may be all right, I don't know. But from the videos and screenshots it's very clear they are an action game, a sneaking game and a platformer, and thus have no place in this jam.

I hope the real adventures come in when the deadline approaches.

[hightreason]

It's over with 70 entries!

Did you get yours in Fernewelten?

And yes a lot of the ones that come in early are suspicious. Like that every year but sometimes there's not enough info for me to remove them right away since I don't play any of them until after the jam ends so they stay in until I get to to them after the jam to remove them. I'll be getting all the non-adventure games out of there as I play them.

[fernewelten]

Did you get yours in Fernewelten?

I'm afraid not. Mind you, I'm not giving up on it, it only wasn't ready for the jam end date.

I was struggling with several aspects, the puzzle concepts among them. So I've mainly got visuals but not much code.

It's a real shame. I don't think I would have had much of a chance of winning $105 (and besides, if I need $ 105 I can take them out of my pocket), but being part of a really large game jam would have been a big opportunity of gaining some visibility.

Oh well.

[heltenjon]

A pity that Fernewelten's entry wasn't finished in time, but if the jam made him make another game, I'm happy for it anyway.

Playing all 70 entries is probably not going to happen, but....in an earlier post I eliminated six of the games. (They were available at the time.) I actually forgot one: Ascratcher 235's adventure game, which is an unfinished prototype.

I remember the discussion about how we decide which games to play.  So I browsed through the thumbnails, and one stood out by demanding money. Nearly 8 bucks! I never wanted to play that one, just wanted to see which soul could make such a poor judgement. And so I came to try Escape from Planet Chase, which didn't cost anything, it turned out. It seems to work, but after a long and unfunny intro it makes the main character run for it in a hail of cats. Yes, cats. Difficulty level: Suicide. Clearly  not balanced at all. Recommendation level: Stay away.

After that little titbit, I cast my eyes upon an entry that had the title "Maze Dungeons". So, who likes mazes? Not me. Again, I clicked to see some details about a game I wasn't going to play, and found that the game was unavailable for download. Ahhh.

I decided that the thumbnail of Gname: One Gnome Story looked cute, and hoped I could beat the game in ten minutes, while the dinner was in the oven. Turns out I couldn't, because the controls don't work properly. (I'm on Windows 10.) This one looked nice, so I'll give it another go if there is a patch or update.

Ten down, sixty to go. 

[heltenjon]

This time, I wanted to play something that is actually an adventure game. I sorted the entries by newest first (mostly to easier keep track of them) and scrolled downwards. I noticed that The Unlikely Prometheus has a) a subtitle calling it "a point and click adventure" and b) a title that children probably wouldn't think of. So that's my game for today! Reypunk: Escape from the Martian Crypt also drew my attention with a nice comic book style thumbnail.

I also noticed that The Enemy inside looks like a shooter when I hover the mouse over it. And there's a video trailer - shooter. Game eliminated. Return to Reality describes itself as a "3d fast-paced movement parkour game" and is also eliminated.

So: Played The Unlikely Prometheus. And it's made in AGS, by Green E Games, which I now recognize as the ones behind the brilliant A Curious Pasttime. The game is about Igor, who is trying to escape an angry mob raiding the castle of his master. As expected from these creators, the humour and writing are first rate. Good puzzles, too, which I can't say too much about without spoiling the game. I don't know exactly how long the game will take, as I didn't play it in one sitting due to my daughter wanting to play Othello and a meal, but I estimate an hour. Less if you get the puzzles right away, more if you get stuck. Recommended! Let's hope it's added to our database soon, too!

[heltenjon]

I also played Reypunk: Escape from the Martian Crypt (because I liked the thumbnail). I struggled more with the keyboard controls than with the puzzles, to be honest. Controller recommended. This doesn't quite play as a point and click, I'm thinking more Tomb Raider style without the jumping. Levers, pressure platforms and stuff like that. They are still nicely designed puzzles, and the game is about ten minutes long. That's ten fun minutes. The speech adds a lot to the atmosphere.

After that I discovered that Mutiny on the Clodia is made by Gugames, and naturally have to go there immediately! I've enjoyed all his earlier games, after all. And the game is brilliant! Made in Unity again, but real point and click. Great characters, humour, music and everything Guga usually delivers. There is one puzzle in here that is SO good!  Highly recommended!

[heltenjon]

To round off my evening, I felt like playing a horror game. I saw from the screenshots that in Avulsion the player is holding a gun in FPS mode. So that's another one off the table.

I had several candidates, but decided on Voracious Eyes for no particular reason than the pixel art in the hover thumbnail and the text promising a short horror adventure. And it is. The controls were a bit fiddly, as I'm not used to the keyboard, but they seemed well thought out. The game delivered on horror and atmosphere. Easy puzzles. Worth playing for horror fans.

Seven more out today, and potentially 53 to go.  I doubt it's a project I'll finish. What are other people playing?

[heltenjon]

It seems like many of the non-adventures have been cleared away now. 

I played Stuck in a Frame because I felt like playing something about art and perhaps philosophy, and this game turned out well on both those accounts. Easy puzzles, but makes the player think. A short game well worth playing.

I also played Saddled with Debt, because the title, plot presentation and thumbnail graphic seemed nice, and I was curious why it was so low on the list when the entries were sorted by popularity. The story made little sense to me, but I think that may at least partly be cultural. A neighbourhood head? Kids lending this person their ID cards? Where in the world can this be? Easy gameplay, pretty graphics. It's okay, but not an essential game to play.

I played Wizard's Escape. This uses ready-made graphics that look stunning and makes the whole thing a bit slow on my computer. There are two endings planned, but a bug makes only one of them possible during the jam. I didn't read the game page well enough and tried in vain to get the second ending. Oh well. Nice atmosphere and plot. The puzzles aren't all that hard - the most difficult thing is to find the items. Some are a bit of a pixel hunt. And I realize it's fantasy, but it seems like bad planning on the king's part to put the forge right next to the library.  I'd rate the gameplay as average. Not bad, but not essential either.

[lorenzo]

Thanks for the reviews, heltenjon! I couldn't work on an entry this time, but they'll help me decide what to play.

[heltenjon]

Thanks for the reviews, heltenjon! I couldn't work on an entry this time, but they'll help me decide what to play.

And thanks for the encouragement to write more of them.  I often find myself reading old threads to see old comments about old games that I consider playing - those games are new to me.  So I think perhaps some musings can be of help to someone else, somewhere down the road. But it's nice to not post into a vacuum.

I played Jonathan's Adventures because it looked short, and I saw that it was made with AGS. This is a short escape-the-cell game, with charming English from Google Translate. Jonathan has been captured by an ogre and needs to escape before he's added to the soup. There are two ways of escaping. I enjoyed this short game. It's too short to earn top marks, but there's plenty to be pleased about here. Well worth playing if you've got a ten minute break.