Messages

I also solved a puzzle in a totally unexpected way. (The old lady in the queue.)

Spoiler

My son called for me and I left the game to make him a sandwich, and when I came back, it was suddenly my turn in line.

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In a way, I'd say you solved the puzzle precisely as intended, and hopefully got yourself a snack while you were at it!

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...

I don't question that aspect of it, eri0o, but the fact also remains that it's absolutely nothing new. Stolen spritesheets, colour swaps, stolen audio, video, text and other content has been a thing for as long as the internet has been a thing and beyond. I doubt anyone would claim with a straight face that no game in the AGS database contains questionably sourced assets nor that it has been a major issue for any of us, save perhaps some more bold and unique cases that I've missed over the years.

Hell, if that is the issue than my very first game here would have to be taken down for using stolen audio assets I snatched from Counter Strike and Half Life 2 sound assets without permission, hoping nobody would notice, because I was a kid at the time with no way of creating or purchasing suitable sounds.

So what these 'machine created' assets amount to in is little more than a more efficient and easy to use asset bank to draw from, with a built in toolset of muddling those stolen assets so that they begin to border between the grey area of stolen and new. If I as a human took a bunch of screenshots and videos from AGS games, drew on top of them to create "new" walkcycles, animations and sprites, I doubt many would notice anything at all, yet it'd still be pretty much exactly what the machine asset banks now do: taking a bunch of stuff I had no right to take, jumbling it all up and calling it 'new creation'.

EDIT: let me put my view a bit differently.

The cat has left the bag and is not going back into the bag.
A human can take other humans works, be 'inspired by' them to whatever degree and then 'create' new art based on that inspiration. We accept this as being fine.
A machine can take other humans works, run an algorithm that tries to mimic being 'inspired by' them to whatever degree and then 'mixes up' new art based on that inspiration.

As long as we accept one, I think we have to accept the other. And if we cannot accept either, then we've got a pretty major creative issue on our hands on rooting out the art that was illegitimately inspired by someone else's work without permission.

And, for a change, a non-judgemental look at the increase in GenAI being used in games recently released on Steam.

In a way this is quite interesting. It shows there are tons of people out there who want to make a game, but lack a team to work with. They might have a story idea but little programming skills, or they might be programmers capable of creating a game but lack the artistic talent to create even passable materials to fulfil their vision.

Sure, these people might have been able to find a group of people to work with or hired outside help, but in bringing in a group of people to work with you either need enough funds to act as an authority on the project, or you need the social skills and flexibility to navigate a team of equals that might lead to altered visions and outcomes, for better or for worse. As someone who is absolutely terrible at collaborating in projects, I can see a kind of value in there.

Now these people or smaller, more limited teams can be as antisocial as they want and create what they want, using machine generated content to patch up the gaps and release something where previously they might never have released anything. Seeing the state of Steam in the past years I do not see how the influx of games created with machine assistance would make thing any more bloated or worse, it's just a different brand of mass produced junk thrown onto the platform. And who knows, amidst that trash we might still find interesting creators and projects. A well written story does not (have to) become bad if it is acted out by machine generated sprites or 3D models, nor does a finely handcrafted visual style (have to) become bad if it is subjected to a wild and nonsensical story generated by a soulless machine.

To try and find some positive to this trend: it gives people who would not have created a finished project in the past a chance to create a finished project now. It might enable solo creators and smaller teams to achieve more than before, though this sort of broadening of the playing field always creates more trash as well, as we've seen with every step towards making art creation easier for the masses.

In this context I see this machine created content as a tool similar to AGS itself: it's a tool that enables people who lack the capability to program their own engine to create something they would not have been able to create otherwise. We might just as well scoff at one another for using AGS and not being REAL programmers who create their own engines, just as we might scoff at the creators of games who had to resort to machine generated content to patch up their project.

From "Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." to "Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is using machines to create their games instead of doing it properly themselves."

Spoiler

I have not returned the cans. He says there are not enough of them. I still have one half-empty can in my inventory, but if I drink it it's too much and the game ends.

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Spoiler

Take some time, walk around a bit, and the buzz from the previous cans will wear off. Drinking too much too fast will get Tauno drunk all over again, so he needs to be paced out a little. There is also a hidden benefit to having him buzzed earlier in the game that can make some frustrating actions easier to deal with if you figure it out, though now it's probably a little too late in the game to really benefit from it.

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Mechanics explanation:

Spoiler

There is an alcoholism stat that increases whenever you drink and decreases on every room transition. But as long as you have some, you can just USE most doors that would require complex fiddling around with the handles to get through otherwise and Tauno will channel that buzz to make his life a little easier and more functional. He drinks because things are just simpler for him when he does...

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Spoiler

I made my bed right at the beginning. I think I found the wallet but he just kept the coins from it. I got more money from the teens, IIRC, and spent some in the pharmacy and for the beer. I still have a few coins, but the cashier says it's not enough.

Btw, I enountered a bug: In the supermarket, my inventory was already full so I didn't see the beer I took from the shelf and was caught shoplifting. Only when I drank some of the half-empty cans the pack of beer showed up in the inventory. I think there should be arrows to navigate the inventory.

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Regarding being stuck with no money (spoilery):

Spoiler

If you got the money from the wallet and from returning the cans, is it possible you didn't actually talk to the teenagers before buying the beer? That is: is it possible you just gave them some beer for no reason? I tried to fix this bug in a minor update later on, but at least the first release builds of the game had it possible to give the kids the beers without having talked to them first, in which case you never got the money from them for buying the beers in the first place.

Not very Tauno-like to give away free beers, and thus a poorly designed (albeit realistic and thematically appropriate) game over situation if this is the case. The three ways to get money in the game are the wallet, the teenagers and the cans and all three must be found in order to win, otherwise Tauno will be out of money. Current version should have Tauno refusing to pick up the beers if he hasn't talked to the kids, which should prevent this.

Another fun way to lose the game, and not necessarily realize this, is to pay for your groceries at the shop and not pick them up before leaving. Someone else will nab them off the counter while you're away and there are no refunds, so this would also be a way to lose money and thus lose the game without Tauno ever realizing what he'd done wrong.

Just stuck in an endless loop of hangover...

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As for the minor inventory bug:

Spoiler

Yeah, the inventory space carries a small risk of running out of space to display all items if the player doesn't drink their beers, never have Tauno put aside the empty wallet and especially if they also pick up the coffee filter before leaving home. I tried to design the game so that a scrolling inventory wasn't necessary, but just barely ran out of space for it. None of the playtesters I had run the game ever encountered this issue, but I should have known someone eventually would. I think my eventual fix will be to adjust the verb button sizes down enough to make space for 12 inventory items displayed instead of 10 and try to design any sequels better in this regard.

Missing the wallet even after making the bed was the main cause for my playtesters getting stuck this way. The item is a bit small and easy to miss when it falls to the floor, but I felt it wasn't unfairly so, especially since it has an animation for keen-eyed players to spot.

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[wallet]

I'm stuck at Tauno

Spoiler

I was able to get beer and coffee with the hint above, but I don't have enough money to pay for the coffee. I don't have enough cans to return them.

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Hint 1:

Spoiler

Did you ever find Taunos wallet? That's where money lives!

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Hint 2:

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Never should leave home without it.

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Hint 3:

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As Tauno stumbled home from the bar last night, he probably went to sleep with his clothes on.

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Hint 4 - Full solution:

Spoiler

Did you remember to make your bed?

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An excellent little adventure game with a great sense of humour and now I have "It's coming home" and "Cotton Eye Joe" taking turns playing in my head so THANKS FOR THAT!

I made the game because of the lack of resources for Romanian and I thought that someone who actively wants to learn the language can try to see the phrase in English and try to guess the words as they're reading the Romanian subs.

Good to hear you got a laugh out of it! For me it was a little bit of an absurd experience, but I see what you're trying to do. What made it especially funny for me was that I did something very similar in my own game, trying to give the player the opportunity to see both languages at once and make connections on specific words, and we seem to have had rather different approaches to the same challenge. I also work with romanian colleagues from time to time, so hearing the language spoken gave me minor flashbacks of being at work.

[Three Lions by GOC Games]

A new month, a new batch of games! As always, play the games yourself if able, but if you just can't find the time before the vote, check out the videos and consider voting anyway!

Three Lions by GOC Games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey7vlRDeHzc

The Vasa Fasa by Blondbraid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NWG7hhV23s

VASILE THE TEMPLAR (DEMO1) by Weeklyjournaling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NWG7hhV23s

I didn't want to make a video of my own game, but fortunately someone else has done so already, so I'll promote that here instead:
Tuulipuku-Tauno Darrassa by WHAM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiVl0U9MVhE

Better late than never, I did a video of this game alongside the June MAGS entries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTmf1FpDuRE

I wholeheartedly support it, as the games industry shifting from selling products to selling services that can be killed off, leaving the 'buyer' with nothing to show for their money, doesn't sit right with me.

My personal take on what the stop killing games initiative should actually lead to, legally speaking:
- Mandate that games with online requirement are clearly labelled so (is online required for single player, are there also offline game modes etc.)
- Mandate that games with online requirement are labelled with a pre-planned minimum lifespan and end of life date, so a buyer can clearly see how long the game has left in its lifespan
- Mandate that games with an end of life date clearly label what happens to the game at that date: what functionality will stop working, what will remain
- If the game is killed off before that end of life date, consumers are entitled to monetary compensation paid by publisher or legal rights holder in case of bankruptcy or acquisition
- Dev/publisher can extend the end of life date and may update any online storefronts with the new date, but the date cannot be reduced without compensation to consumers
- Any content packs, DLC and expansions that may lose functionality should also be clearly labelled with either the same end of life date as the main game, or have their own separate date to indicate when the newly sold contents function will come to an end (paid limited time events, gameplay modes, cosmetics etc.) This also applies to content purchased for free-to-play games that have no main game end of life date assigned.
- Storefronts selling digital game licenses (Steam, Gog, Epic, EA, Nintendo) must provide an end-of-life date for their store, at minimum, 3 years prior to any end of life. If none given, then 3 year minimum mandated. Storefronts must also have a reasonable plan for providing post-termination access to sold content.

In my view the main goal of all this is for consumers to have a chance to know what the limitations of the license they purchase to access content has before making the purchase. How long can they be confident that the money they spent will continue to provide access to content and when can they expect to lose access. Ensuring consumers retain access to offline variants of previously online experiences could be a way to mitigate any compensations that might otherwise need to be paid out, pushing publishers away from games that are designed to stop working when server connectivity is lost and instead, hopefully, going back to releasing games that can support features like player hosted servers (at least after the official ones go down) and such.

I'm trying to understand

Spoiler

the logic of the supermarket maze. For the beers I just walked straight in front of me. But this doesn't work to find coffee.

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Fairly major puzzle clue below:

Spoiler

At each step, try to look for one of the four directions that is the odd one out, that's different from the others somehow.

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And the outright spoiler for said puzzle:

Spoiler

Coffee is never on sale or discounted when you need it.

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[Tuulipuku-Tauno Darrassa]

My MAGS entry for the June 2025 contest: Tuulipuku-Tauno Darrassa  (Windbreaker-Willy has a Hangover)

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

This game aims to showcase what it feels like to be Finnish, up to and including how difficult even the most simple activities in life can feel when you're hungover, exhausted, confused and in pain. Help the protagonist regain control of his life by brewing a cup of coffee. This should be a simple task, right? What even could be complicated about it...?





Key features include:

• Really annoying-to-use doors (though there may be a trick to making Tauno more capable of dealing with them for a while)
• Authentic Finnish ambience
• Bilingual: all text displayed in both Finnish and English
• 640x360 resolution: hand drawn ultra high-definition graphics
• A secret bird

Warning: contains mild nudity in the form of hairy legs and thighs (no, you can't see Willy's willy).

Much appreciated! I was also now able to add the missing images via editing the remaining entry.

Wow, that's... not great, I will stop tinkering with the page now so it doesn't happen anymore. The error message had me thinking nothing had been submitted and I had no idea I was screwing up this badly.
Sorry.

EDIT: I took a look and it seems the images have not been added, so maybe the issue was related to those, though I'm just guessing. I won't touch any of those right now. At a glance it seems I am not able to delete the extra copies myself, so I'll wait for some guidance on how to clear them out so that only the one copy remains and then I can try to add the missing images to it later on.

[Tauno is now released]

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

Target URL: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/create/game-submit/add-game/

500: Internal Server Error
"It looks like something's gone wrong on our end. Sorry about that!
Please post on the Site & Forum Reports forum, giving as much detail as possible about what you were doing when the error occurred."

I've filled out the form for adding a new game and as far as I can tell all mandatory fields are filled. There are 3 images attached in .png format, 2 download links. Not really sure what I could provide that'd be more specific. I am still able to go back on my browser to find it all pre-filled out so I'm holding on to that page, but the "Save your game" button sends me instantly to the error page.

EDIT: I followed those handy notifications to try and rate some of the games I've played and it seems adding ratings also doesn't work. The button just doesn't do anything, so perhaps that is related as well. Noting the observation here just in case.

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!

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.