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I will definitely not reveal anything - this activity was based on the premise of anonymity, so let's wait for people to reveal which story they wrote, should they feel like it.
But I can tell you that it's rather even, especially between the top three entries, so a lot can happen before it closes tomorrow

Yeah, I can reassure everyone that nobody got zero votes except for myself, hehe. That's what I get for trying to sneak in a story in my own competition

Btw, do you guys want me to just present the three finalists, or do you want to see the full break down of the votes? Don't know if it might be a sensitive thing to some.

Yeah, I've seen these before. There are plenty of cartoons from this era that have remarkably good background art.

Feel free to discuss the competition here, but please don't write anything that could break the anonymity of the authors. If you've spotted an obvious error in your own story, PM me to have it corrected. I'll only edit spelling mistakes or grammar errors - no stylistic or aesthetic adjustments (unless I messed up when putting the stories here, somehow).

Happy reading/voting!

55-word story, voting time

Here are this week's entries. Read them through and then vote for the best 3. The authors of the three best stories will go on to a final round, where they will write new stories - still anonymous - and then we'll elect the final winner. This is because of the large amount of stories submitted; it felt right to award more than just one writer.

NOTES:
1. Titles that weren't included in the word count have been removed.
2. It turned out to be harder than I thought controlling the word count, since the English language has a lot of contractions that can count as one word or two, depending on how you look at it. If anyone wants to object against how a specific story meets the criteria, just let me know. 
3. I have preserved linebreaks, spacing and spelling unless the writer asked me explicitly to correct it.
4. If a writer contributed with more than one story, without saying which one has precedence, I have chosen the one I think is best.
5. There's no #11. Deal with it.

1

You know those movies that start in the middle of a life threatening action scene without context? - And just as our hero is supposedly going to die we're treated with a voice-over explaining how we got into this mess. An hour later he survives anyway.... the bullet in my chest calls that false advertisement.

2

It is a fear unlike any other, a despair that destroys the mind, flays the senses and induces sickening dread into the hearts of those who experience it.  But face this challenge I must, ere all is lost and disaster strikes!

Slowly, reluctantly, not daring to look… I raise the seat of the public toilet.

3

At night, there are two places I visit; the old world, and the new world. In the old world, we didn't always fight. In the new… well, I think you can guess how that sentence ends. Actually, I can't tell which one I prefer - I tend to linger in both.
Then the day breaks.

4

He blamed his mother for making him this way.

His sweaty, overweight client was waiting in the next room, as he carefully climbed into his dress.
“I'd rather have no life than this one”, he pondered.

Which was, he remembered thinking to himself at the time, a remarkable thought for a 13 year old.

5

She was writhing in agony and would be dead within half an hour. As a medical practitioner the decision was easy. I pushed the needle one last time. Her convulsions receded. Her eyes looked into mine and through foamy lips said something that sounded like 'thank you'. The kids are going to miss you, Soya.

6

Irresistible Force

The kitten clung ninja-like to the drooping branch as flower petals fluttered loose around him.  He was the master of acrobatics; the sultan of scaling!  Surely he could spare just one paw to bat at them....  No, bad idea!  His slaves cooed and gushed at his latest predicament.  Take the damn picture already!

7

A gun, held by a trembling hand, dropped instantaneously, clattering on the concrete, the sound resonating. The body convulsing from pain, followed thereafter. The assailant fell to her knees weeping. Her father lay dying... for the greater good. None shall govern this nation, a country of thieves and murderers. It was the Land of Do-as-you-please.

8

Nearly midnight, shotgun in hand, hearing noises in the attic, I cautiously ascend the stairs.  “What's that?” I wonder, releasing the safety.  “Is it groaning?”  Barely seeing, I shoot wildly.  It's still groaning!  Is it living?  No.  It's undead.  It bites!  My life fades and returns, but different: I'm hungry, groaning, in the attic, undead.

9

Dr. Mason was proud of his creation. All his life's work was focused on that moment. Then he finally flipped the switch.
The lights flickered for a moment, afterwards there was silence.
After thirtythree long seconds a grunt. Then it stood up.
It looked him in the eyes and bared its teeth.
It was hungry.

10

Master walks me to the forest every Saturday. I hunt with Pelusa, a lovely foxhound whose owner Raymond won't let me breed. I should get shot of him. Master could help, he is so short-sighted. Raymond could easily be mistaken for a wild boar.  Let's find a way to have him remove his safety vest.

12

I knew her since we were five, dated her when we were fifteen.

Then...

She broke my heart all those years ago, and here I am, cooking dinner for her and him.

He smiles, compliments the wine: "a fine vintage".

He coughs, lips stained with crimson.

She screams, terrified.

I smile and take a sip.

13

“Why do you troll?” she asked.

“Because I want to see everyone happy.” he replied.

“But then, how will people know you're sad internally?” she questioned.

“That's the plan: I don't want them to!” he replied.

She knew he was right in saying so. That's because those who make others laugh are often the saddest.

14

Officer Duval slid his hand across the bloody windscreen as he walked from the scene. Safely off the mega-highway, he turned to his partner saying: "These incidents are only going to get worse as the road system grows."

They walked away from the gridlocked traffic, leaving the suicide victim behind entombed in his car.

15

"Of course I used a waterproof camera during the rainstorm," he scoffed, failing to notice the M&M's melting inside his knapsack. He removed the lens and a covert dab of chocolate dripped onto the sensor.

Aeons passed and his descendants lauded society's progress, inferring that their ancestor's world was shrouded in hazy, brown decay.

16

Mister Bear was shaken. Miss Mouse alarmed him about the conspiracy. The epidemy plaguing their village came from the meteorite crashed the year prior. Their own emotionless furry peers caught the two runaways. Infected then compliant, they mutated into the final plan. From lightyears away, a dying Earth had sent their solution : virulent human DNA.

17

The Lock was the planet's most crowded conurbation.

At the terminus. she was alone in the wagon. In her puke, a shriveled piece of paper. Leaving, she cleaned up her lips as a hurried man entered. He took her seat, and the piece of paper. "Love you from deep inside". He always loved her humor.

[Edit:]

Maan I'm so lazy, even 55 words seems a stretch to me now I only spontaneously write poetry because I can't be dealing with all that commitment to anything more.

Edit: actually, do you think you could extend the deadline by a couple of days please Andail? I have an exam on the 30th and will feel super guilty wasting cramming time on trying to cobble something together!

Hehe, sorry mate, no dice! Don't write that you're lazy and request a deadline extension in the same post! That makes a teacher like me weep blood

I'm in.
Is this limited to one entry per person or are we allowed multiple entries?
Also, can I ask why 55?  Is that a random arbitrary number you chose or is the 55-word story a 'thing'?

I guess you can submit more stories, but then I'll pick one myself for the voting phase!

And FatCactus, why not take the step from lurkdom now, and participate in this activity?

The 55-word story competition

Hello.
We all know this community has a plethora of gifted writers, but most of them are much too lazy to enter the regular fortnightly writing, so this is a competition just for them.

Being concise and to the point is indeed a difficult art to master. Many an aspiring writer has failed at preventing their stories - or any text type for that matter; essays, treatises, poems - from meandering aimlessly and unreined, flooding the pages with their thick, opulent ink; sentences and paragraphs so fattened with superfluous words they are nothing less than chunks of textual foie gras; so many adverbs and synonyms stacked upon each other the actual essence is long since buried beneath the sediments of redundant, wayward letters.   

Ever since Hemmingway wrote his famous 6-word story (which, translated to Swedish, would be only three words long, proving what an efficient language my mother tongue happens to be) writing with brevity and pertinence has been regarded as something noble, something to strive for.

Only the most skillful authors know not to waste words - they realize the beauty of keeping it simple, and they learn to recognize a wordy and flowery diction as the hallmark of pretentious dilettantes and precocious novices, and they vow never to belong to that notorious group of sesquipedalian orators, those who abuse and take advantage of the written - or spoken for that matter - word as if the well whence it's drawn will indeed not one day peter and dry out, and, well, yes that is indeed actually pretty darn hard.

----

If you want to participate, PM me your 55-word story. The only rule is that it has to be exactly 55 words long. Don't put the story in this thread - I want all the entries to be anonymous. After one week I will announce all the entries here, and the voting will commence.
Good luck!

Good stuff!

Cat, your resolution issues sound very strange. Are you sure it isn't running with directdraw or something? I mean, this game is using standard 320x200 32bit graphics without any plugins or fancy tricks whatsoever, so I don't know why it would be any different to 99% of all AGS games. I don't think there's anything I can do or could have done about this, I'm afraid.

The win-early bug shouldn't be a problem anymore, but just to be safe:

Spoiler

When you learn about Jonatan's murder, try to follow up this lead until you've identified the murderer, before you start reading the 3rd chapter.

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As I wrote in the post above, the music should only turn completely off if you've already reduced the volume to below 30-40% or something.

Great paintover, Fruitroller!

Thanks, SITN
The audio goes completely silent during dialogues if you have lowered the volume to a certain level. AGS lowers the volume during speech in percentage points - i.e. not in percent - so if the volume has already been reduced enough it will reach zero. And that's not very pretty.

Next time I will definitely make sure that all the speech files are loud enough to be played without reducing the music volume at all. You live and learn.

Playing around with higher resolutions. I plan for these to be really wide (so more pictures will be added to these), and scroll sideways, with parallax effect (they're already drawn in layers).
Scanned lineart and coloured in PS. I will be more careful later on (since these lines are a bit sloppy) but this is just to try out the style.
The player character will be relatively small, and only walk sideways, so graphically it will look a bit like a platformer.




Any c&c?

Shadows are always really hard to render correctly, especially when there's a sun or moon involved, since they cast shadows in unexpected ways sometimes.

There are actually only a few things that strike me as odd, in any of the versions above.

First, the base of the house is drawn so that it appears to rest on the top of the hill, but still there's a strip of hill (the slightly brighter area) continuing behind it. That doesn't make any sense.

Second - and this becomes even more apparent in Ryan's version - the base of the hill, just like all surfaces facing away from the light source, has to be much darker. This is the tricky thing with a back-lit scene like this; few things are actually hit by light.

Third - faaaar too flat. I'm going to violate the first rule of digital painting here and apply some gradient filters here, because this picture really needs something to happen with all those vast gray surfaces.

I also straightened up the right hand wall, because if you're going to go for some exaggerated, whacky perspective, you'd have to do this equally everywhere, or it'll just look weird.

I never understood this saying because the two aren't mutually exclusive, both guns and people kill people.

kill 1 |kɪl|
verb [ with obj. ]
1 cause the death of (a person, animal, or other living thing)

The person causes the trigger to be pulled which causes the bullet to fire which causes the death. The gun and the person are both part of the chain of causation. Substitute stuff into the formula and the same can be said for anything. People toast bread by putting them into toasters that toasts the bread.

I get the purpose of the saying, but a more accurate wording is "guns kill people, but people are at the start of the chain of causation".

But what came first, the gun or the person? We may never know.

Bacon, incidentally, does kill people

Done and done!

Pretty impressive!

Hi Snarky, and thanks for your c&c!

Regarding the ending:

Spoiler

Yes, there seems to be a bug that permits the player to end the investigation prematurely, and still trigger the ending sequence. I'm working to fix this already.
I assume you have at least been presented the idea that Jonatan was murdered, since you've spoken to the detective (she's the only one who swears, afaik), and if you follow this up (by bringing it up with the shop owner, to start with) Ord will eventually find out who did it.
At least this will make the ending comprehensible

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