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Apparently someone else tried to make an AGS sokoban at some point but it doesn't seem to be completed: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2380-boxes/

Look at those large portraits:

Oooh I had this game as a kid, I loved it! It was especially fun for me because my father worked in a warehouse when I was a child 

Surely you've played some good games for the AGS Awards nominations. Let's share it!

Yes but I already suggested a pick of the month recently so I'll let others do it   

We are almost done creating this game. A few graphics, extra animations, and polishing sounds and soundtrack. Here is a new devlog that says more about the character design, be so nice to put a like to it! https://formosafalanster.itch.io/blmtr/devlog/347410/how-we-created-aurora-the-other-woman-that-leads-the-game

[only that one "what's up?" at the very beginning of a conversation with an NPC]

(About voicing)

- Silent games are more and more out of place in nowaday's "all-talkie" game space.

Absolutely not true at all. Plenty of games have no voice today.

- Voicing only introductory sentences. For example, only that one "what's up?" at the very beginning of a conversation with an NPC. And their very first, short greeting back.

Ewww, no, please, just... no. I don't want to hear the same voice repeating WHAT'S UP every two minutes in exactly the same tone again and again and again. There's a reason why that obnoxious fairy in Zelda with her "HEY LISTEN" has become a meme.

This is precisely what I said before: the main reason why I have ALWAYS cut off the voices in every game I played is that I can't stand hearing them repeating themselves. Games have the same sentence repeated over and over again. You try dialogues several times to see if there's something new and you cringe when you hear for the upteenth time the same voice saying the same thing. Then you stop trying to talk to characters (and thus stop enjoying the exploration of the game) because you're afraid your gonna hear their stupid voice declaiming for the upteenth time "you SHOULD look INTO the palace of the..."(cut because I finally found what I have to press to make them shut up while rolling my eyes)
(bonus points: that evening I can't sleep because in my head I hear "you SHOULD look INTO the palace" in a loop)
(epilogue: "are you sure you want to uninstall?" YES)
(epilogue 2: "We are sad you did not enjoy the game, can you tell us how to improve it?" "yes: you should look into the palace").

- Putting a lot of effort in the sound design for other things : music, object interactions, white ambient noise, wind, etc.

This, yes. Sounds do a lot for ambiance. It's already the same in movies. I think it was Kubrick who said he worked hard on the sounds for "Shining" and that he credits them for most of the creepy ambiance and not the visuals.

Videogames are not movies. Everything that tries to turn videogames in movies has always damaged them. To me it's text, text, and text only. I cut the voices in Unavowed, I cut the voices in every other games, and when a game has only voice and no text option, I uninstall and put a bad review.

There is too much of a tendency amongst fans of voices in games to think they are the right ones, that history is on their side, etc. That's bullshit. Tons of games have no voice acting and are popular. ESPECIALLY in the adventure or narrative genre. Otherwise, all these pixel/retro style of games would not be so praised constantly. I know very well I'm not the only one who shuns voice acting in games as if it were the plague. The majority of players I talk with are doing the same. It's wishful thinking on the part of devs to think the voice acting suddenly makes them better like it's 1995 and we are still impressed at the idea of digitalized voices.

Just ask yourself the question: did the most popular game made with AGS in 2021 included voice acting?

Partially because it was done in a pompous theatrical manner.

That's 99% of voice acting in games, even done by big studios.
Even voice acting in animation has diminished in quality in the recent years. So imagine what it is for videogames. Probably because it takes more than having a good social media presence where you brag about your "commissions" and have an expensive looking picture of yourself to be the next Julie Kavner.

Another option is to use babble language

That is very interesting actually. It's a personalized sound design to give dimension to a character. Spontaneously it reminds me of "Another World" in which the aliens mumble like that, you obviously don't get what they say but it adds a dimension to who they are. Or how the TV character "La Linea" is impossible to understand but still conveys a lot with his noises.

[individually]

The trouble with voice acting is that it's expensive to produce and thus provokes cost-cutting considerations that usually limit the game.

For instance, if you have around 50 inventory items then Ego can offer any of them to any NPC. It's easy to code, “player.Say("Would you like this %s", ii.Name);”, and this will work for all of the 50 items. But if you do voice dubbing, then your voice actor would need to record these 50 possibilities individually. “Would you like this old used handkerchief”, “would you like this rusty screw”, “would you like this fluffy duckling”. Nobody  does that, and so a lot of the options will be rolled together in just one verbalized “Would you like this random item from my inventory?” Which (a) is less sophisticated and (b) gives a big hint whether this NPC might find some certain item interesting at all, even in other circumstances than the current ones (if it calls up the “random item” question then no, it won't be interesting no matter what the situation).

Also, as soon as you have called the voice actors in, your game is nearly fixed for all practical purposes: If someone finds a bug afterwards and fixing it would entail having Ego say something slightly different than what was recorded, that means arranging for a new recording. This is cumbersome and sometimes even impossible. Even if it's possible, then the new recording probably won't fit seamlessly into the old recordings due to slight changes in sound levels, accents, tone, ambiance, equalizing etc. And say goodbye to the possibility of extending your game significantly at a later stage, say three years later.

These are all problems that hamper the professionals, too; but IMHO they hamper the hobbyists more.

Amen. You just summarized exactly what I thought, and why I strongly recommend against voice acting.

You are actually proving the point that it should not happen again.

Roger Wilco being nominated in 2012 was an absurdity that should not be replicated. This is the very reason why we are having this conversation in the first place.

I oppose your proposal. Your cure is worse than the problem it is meant to solve.

What are you talking about, I am not making any proposal or any cure, I am taking part in a conversation. And we see answers on difficult cases, like said above, that should be considered individually. But when you come with "A copyrighted character created decades ago won the prize before so we can do it again", you are literaly giving the strongest argument in favour of limiting the awards to original characters. Just ask yourself: how did the people who made the effort of creating original characters felt in 2012 when Roger Wilco won it instead? LimpingFish just pointed out that one issue is the small size of the community, do you want it to shrink to a little circle of nostalgia-obsessed people, or do you want to nurture creators and attract them?

Examples of "non-original" characters nominated for this or similar AGS awards include Jimi Hendrix (2015), Ratatosk (2014), Roger Wilco (2012), characters from Space Quest: Vohaul Strikes Back (2011), Oceanspirit Dennis (2010), characters from Little Girl in Underland (styled as an American McGee's Alice demake) (2008), Satan (2002), and Mika from Reality-on-the Norm (2001)â€"the very first winner of Best NPC (in Dave Gilbert's The Postman Only Dies Once, having originally been created by Anthony Hahn for I Spy). I trust the voters knew what they were doing e.g. in naming Roger Wilco as best playable character in 2012.

You are actually proving the point that it should not happen again.

Roger Wilco being nominated in 2012 was an absurdity that should not be replicated. This is the very reason why we are having this conversation in the first place.

(just delete that)

Folklore characters can become original characters if they have been reappropriated by the author. You can use Shrek as an example: it includes fairytale characters but some have been re-written to fit the movie, such as the Puss in Boots that has become specific to the Shrek movies and has become so different from the one in the fairytale that you can consider it an original character. It's not like the fairytale was very detailed in its characterization either, beyond being a cat with magic shoes. In Shrek he becomes an entirely new person.

So if you take an old character that was more of an archetype and re-write it in an entirely new way, you can claim it as new. If you take characters that were already well-written and developped, and put them in your story, they're not yours to claim.

Sounds are fine, but I just hate voices. When a game boasts having voice actors, I mute them. I hate voices in such dialogue-heavy games as adventure/point and click games, first of all because it's horrendously repetitive: you often hear the same statement and it's very cringe to hear it all the time (who wants to hear someone saying a hundred times "I can't pick that up" or "that doesn't work"?). Also, because I like to read at my pace and imagine the tone myself. Also, because (shocking, I know), not everyone is a native speaker who will understand someone speaking fast with a fancy accent.
Last but not least, voices greatly limit the possibilities of indie developpers: they are expensive to make and difficult to record, which means once they are done they will not be modified, so no text will be changed. Text itself will be limited so as not to drain too much resources in voice acting. And it prevents the use of variables withing dialogue.
Voices sucks, don't do them. It's not 1998 anymore, no one is impressed by your game having digitalized voices. Stick to text.

A new devlog is here! And that's quite the devlog, in which we explain how we designed the lead female character, that mysterious woman you saw on the thumbnail, get read to know all about her. If you enjoy the devlog, please make sure to give it a Like!

https://formosafalanster.itch.io/blmtr/devlog/331704/how-we-created-sylvia-one-of-the-two-women-that-lead-the-game

[Play it on AGS | Play it on itch.io]

For your consideration:

Play it on AGS | Play it on itch.io

Have you ever played a game where your goal is to make the happiness of the woman you love?

Breakfast on Trappist-1 takes you in a multicultural and melancholy universe in which you must help Zheny, a refugee from a destroyed planet, adapt to her new life. If you fail, she will leave and face dangers beyond imagination. Will you let her go?

Written by FormosaFalanster with art by Lorenzo.

Please consider for:

• Best Game Created with AGS
• Best Freeware Game Created with AGS
• Best Writing
• Best Character (Zheny)
• Best Background Art
• Best Character Art
• Best Short Game

Another devlog for you to read (and like  ) and this time it's written by Lorenzo, he almost did a tutorial on how to draw good backgrounds, and even shared his sketches step by step, take a look it's interesting: https://formosafalanster.itch.io/blmtr/devlog/324485/how-we-create-our-background-art-a-step-by-step-guide

For those who prefer Gamejolt, we also put "Burn me Like the Rain" out there! You can still follow the devlog there too, and follow the game itself with a like. We are still advancing at a good pace so everything is good!

The Gamejolt page: https://gamejolt.com/games/bmltr/669657

Here comes a new devlog: creating the city was fascinating, none the least because this city under a permanent rain is pretty much the main character of the game in itself! Here is how we designed it: https://formosafalanster.itch.io/blmtr/devlog/322296/how-we-created-the-city-of-burn-me-like-the-rain If you found it interesting, give it a "like" as it puts the devlog higher!

Development is going at the right pace so far!

Lankhor's games were really cool and a great inspiration for me! I played them back when they were first released on 5'25 floppy disks on an Amstrad PC 1512, awesome memories 

We started testing the sound of the rain! It is awesome! You can read all about it in the devlog.

You can also hear the first test of the sound in this video:

Enjoy!

Don't worry, FF, Elia will have his day...or at least he'll try. 

Well there you go, Creamy, you have your picks for the next two months: "Him", then "Elia"