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Hello old friends,
You may remember me from AGS classics such as Whispers of a Machine and The Samaritan Paradox.

I'm soon ready to release my next game, which won't be an AGS game this time around but still an adventure game (with some RPG aspects to).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2180800/Midnight_Margo/?beta=1

Margo, just a few years out of high school, has returned from a bout of depression. Using a coping mechanism based on viewing life more like a game, she sets out to tie up the loose ends she left behind.

Meanwhile, an unexpected letter claiming to know why she's sad draws her into a mysterious plot.

Midnight Margo is a narrative-driven roleplaying adventure with a touch of absurdity. It deals with topics such as existential anxiety and social conflict, but also offers occasionally dark humour as well as puzzle-solving.

It's super hard to get noticed these days as a solo indie developer, so if this looks even vaguely interesting, don't hesitate to wishlist on Steam.
Midnight Margo will launch on June 18th, with a demo coming on June 1st.

I'd love to make an appearance and catch up with old mitteneers, but I probably won't be able to spend a full week anywhere, with or without the wife and kids!

Very sad news!
I remember Progzmax as one of the pillars of the early Critics Lounge, and his pixel skills were a great inspiration to us all.
I will contribute to his fundraiser.

As many have noticed, Sweden is taking a very different route here.
I don't want to be another hobby epidemiologist, so I'll just try to convey what the Swedish authorities are doing and saying.

1. We don't think this is a hoax, or exaggerated. We all believe it's very real. We don't congregate and rally to protest the restrictions, like the American rednecks. A vast majority of Swedes actually take a lot of distancing measures.
2. Tegnell isn't a manic street preacher. He's the spokesperson of the national health agency. It has hundreds of scientists and experts.
3. The fundamental idea, based on their simulations and models, is that voluntary social distancing works pretty much as effectively as a hard lockdown. Whether this will turn out true or false is impossible to say at this early phase, but the numbers are quite alarming.
4. A complete lockdown has a number of bad side effects, like increased domestic abuse, children removed from the safety net of society, isolation fatigue and depressions, etc. Can you say it's worth it? Hard to know at this point. But we Swedes have a strong belief in the system.
5. We're doing much worse than our Nordic neighbours, but quite average in a larger perspective. We're not in the top ten when it comes to deaths per capita. We've also reported more deaths than most countries, and Sweden is one of few nations that haven't underreported our deaths.
6. I'm personally a bit divided, and I definitely think there are some areas where restrictions could be much harsher.

[Top 4 things I'd do differently with Whispers of a Machine]

With Whispers of a Machine turning one full year, I thought it was time to sum up my experiences, and most importantly, share with you some things I'd do differently, because learning from others' mistakes is cheap and fast.
So here are my
Top 4 things I'd do differently with Whispers of a Machine

4.
Not use AGS. Yes I did it. I posted in the AGS forum and said I wouldn't use AGS. Now, the AGS community is the best in the world. I've been a part of it for 19 years and I've made so many great friends here (although I haven't been very active lately, admittedly), so I really hope it will always be a nice play to hang around, even though its members may eventually find other ways to create their games. But what took us (read Joel) months in AGS, namely porting to various platforms, Unity can do with the click of a button. Of course, if your happy with a PC only release it's less of a problem.

3.
Not split the writing part 50/50. Again I must begin with a don't-get-me-wrong-here: Joel is an amazing writer, and has a true knack for writing dialogue - that's not the issue. The issue for us was that every single word had to be minced, ruminated, regurgitated and compromised about before it'd end up in the actual game. Even though the game surely ended up better thanks to our shared writing duties, the process itself was really streinous. I would recommend others to divide the responsibilites more, let one person design the framework/background lore, and one person write the dialogue, and another write descriptions/messages etc, if you need to have more than one person writing the game at all (Ideally one person would be in charge of writing the game and the others would merely offer feedback and the occasional suggestion.)

2.
Not branch puzzles or game content. While it's certainly one of the selling points of the game, I still wonder if the multiple-solutions puzzles were worth it. Like #4, this is a matter of saving time that could be used for other things, so it's not that I think the result was bad per see. The main issue here is that only a fraction of players will ever play more than once (and some will turn to youtube to see other solutions or endings) so for most people it holds little value. Designing and implementing some of these puzzles took ludicrious amounts of time. Some puzzles even let you use two "skills" (or augmentations) in conjunction, and since there are three skills on level three and three skills on level two, you'll do the math and find that what for most players seemed like one solution actually had a high number of possible solutions that they'll never notice, much less care about. I can't help but think of all the time we could have saved on just settling with one solution per puzzle, and use the time to expand the game's length instead of width, if you catch my drift.

1.
Construct the game world so that there's less travelling back and forth. One thing we decided early on was to design a game world that you'd navigate manually, from location to location, like Lure of the Temptress or early Sierra games, instead of having the locations scattered around an abstract map and navigated using a fast-travel screen. The drawback is, obviously, that you force the player to walk around a lot, just to get from A to B. I do believe you can design the game so that you don't encourage the player to revisit all the previous locations every time they get stuck on a puzzle, but I'm not sure we succeeded here. One contributing factor was that you could ask every NPC about every possible topic, and that meant that as soon as you got stuck somewhere, one way to kind of brute-force your way forward was to go back and talk to everyone about every new topic, for the umpteenth time. Unless the writing is absolutely stellar, this routine will quickly turn pretty tedious. One good workaround that many developers use (Dave Gilbert, from the top of my head), is to construct nodes of locations where most of if not all items or clues are gathered. So instead of unlocking one location after another, and have the puzzle-chains stretch across various old locations, you unlock a new area, with a handful of new locations at a time, and put the necessary clues, items and NPC in those locations.
This whole issue has made me question whether letting the player ask everyone about everything is really necessary, but I won't make it a paragraph on its own.

There's probably more I'd do differently, but on a whole I kind of like the game so I don't wanna drag it through the mud completely.
Thanks for listening and see you around!

Thanks again for all the trophies, and well done Cat and Snarky and everybody involved in making this happening. It's really a wonderful tradition, and a testament to our great community spirit.

I haven't been very active for quite some time, but I'll try to be around more now.

The new project by Faravid Interactive won't be made in AGS, nor will it be a P&C adventure, but more of an action RPG. I will keep you updated in gen-gen when I have more to show

I'll try!

Fine work, Andail! Do you planning a sequel or another cyberpunk game?
_

Thanks! Joel will likely continue on Kathy Rain 2 sooner or later, but I'll probably take a break from the traditional point and click adventures myself.

HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU IN HOW MANY DIFFERENT PLACES THAT THIS GAME IS FUCKING AMAZING?!?!?!

There's no limit really, please do keep yelling it all the time, everywhere!

[The team]

AI was embedded everywhere. In our cars, in our homes. In the clothes we wore. For some of us, even inside our own bodies.

Dreading the Singularity, mankind abruptly put an end to AI. The result was a worldwide technological collapse.

Generations later, Vera, a federal homicide detective is sent to rural outpost Nordsund to investigate a string of murders.

Vera soon finds herself pulled into an invisible war about technology and religion. While some want to awaken the Singularity, seen as a last deity in a godless world, others are vehement technophobes.

Whispers of a Machine features handpainted 640x360 graphics and an exciting story with existential twists.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/631570/Whispers_of_a_Machine
https://www.gog.com/game/whispers_of_a_machine
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whispers-of-a-machine/id1452404930?mt=8


The team
Petter Ljungqvist (The Samaritan Paradox), Writing, Art
Joel Staaf Hästö (Kathy Rain), Writing, Programming
Jacob Lincke, Music and Sound Effects
Ivan Ulyanov, Portrait Art
Dave Gilbert, Voice-over Direction
Pontus Lund, aka StillInThe90s (Camp 1), Additional Animation

The game is published by

While I think it's a good idea to be more selective about their games (Steam should be, too) it sucks that Guard Duty won't appear on GoG on release day. Let's hope it sells enough elsewhere for them to change their minds!

Last chance to write something in this thread, so I'll use it to express a big thank you to the AGS community!
Oh and buy the game, I think you'll like it, it has things you can pick up and characters and stuff!

Wow, hehe, that's a nice recovery
Well done on keeping this project alive all this time! The trailer looks great!

You might want to edit your first post, though:

Estimated Release Date:
It is currently anticipated that the game will be released in late 2013.

Thanks AnasAbdin, Slasher and Riaise It warms an old man's heart.

Sure!

Name either the person who wrote the letter this excerpt is from or the person who received it:

"Swaying the wide world, I have but one aim in view, namely, to maintain a perfect governance and to fulfil the duties of the State: strange and costly objects do not interest me. If I have commanded that the tribute offerings sent by you, O King, are to be accepted, this was solely in consideration for the spirit which prompted you to dispatch them from afar. Our dynasty's majestic virtue has penetrated unto every country under Heaven, and Kings of all nations have offered their costly tribute by land and sea. As your Ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country's manufactures."

The receiver is probably a British King or Queen, but I have no idea who or when or in which context.

I'm not sure I agree with the presupposition of this thread!

"The festival of death", if it's Halloween you're referring to, is not exactly celebrated widely and blindly - in Sweden it's only been acknowledged at all for a decade or so, and it basically means people wear scary costumes if they happen to go out partying that particular weekend, which is far from universally practised. Our more traditional All Saint's Day means we sometimes light a candle if we can be bothered to visit a cemetary.

Conversely, one of the biggest holidays in Sweden is Midsummer's Day, which actually has strong roots in fertility rites. And Christmas is all about nativity

Second time the mods have been called out this month. If you care about the community cover yourself in ash, else you will ruin this place. If you don't care then leave so someone who does can step up.

How have the moderators been called out, and what wrongdoings would have been the cause?

But as always, the typical answering scheme of AGS Deep State. Answer in oh-so-well reasonable words but actually not to the question. Happens every time. What's next, moving this to the Rumpus Room?

This consparitorial theme baffles me. What is it that you're so dissatisfied with?

Maybe AGA disabled the AGSA forum because he believed it to be defunct and no longer needed. Maybe there was an accident involved. We moderators don't know yet.

That doesn't mean it's okay to spread this kind of negativity. Remember the group hug thread, guys? Please try to be reasonable and constructive, and give everyone the benefit of the doubt before we know what happened.

Good to hear about Ulyanov joining the project. Absolutely lovely portraits btw.

There's still animations to draw if you need work

Yayyy! Ivan is fantastic. An excellent choice.

Do you know him too?

I've only worked with him on almost every project of mine since 2014.

This topic has been moved to The Rumpus Room.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=56527.0

Alright, since Amélie hasn't asked any follow-up questions, I guess this issue is settled.
I'll move this to Rumpus, since some people seem to enjoy posting jokingly about Snarky's moderatorship. If Amélie thinks this is unappropriate, she can PM me and I'll lock it completely.