Messages

What about those "inspirational" memes that tout the poster as being "different", despite them clearly doing the same thing as everyone else.

It took me many years to realise how horrible "If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best" was 

Wow, that was pretty close. Thanks Root!

@Danvzare, from your description of The Witness, I suspect you haven't gotten very far into it. I don't think your portrayal is correct, and if you describe an "Adventure game" purely the way you did in your post (I personally don't consider puzzles at least from what I understand from that term, to be a "core pillar"), by that metric, The Witness WOULD be an adventure game.

Personally, I don't think it is, but am not sure I have the words to explain why. As I mentioned, it didn't scratch the same itch for me, but then I just realised, neither did Myst, so my understanding of the whole genre could be wrong.

Was hard to choose between the two other entries.

Spoiler

In the end, I just went with Gill's Party Bus, for mostly the same reasons as last month. Silly humour, and cute art and animations (and fittingly silly music this time too, although I understand it wasn't made for the game specifically).
Bad to the Coral was technically pretty cool, but I feel there's something missing in the gameplay as it is now.

[close]

Sorry for the somewhat trollish resurrection, but I just rediscovered this thread, and I have to say, for all its innovation, I don't think The Witness modernised adventure games at all.

It may have possibly participated in the creation of a new nascent genre (dunno what you'd call it- the discoveroguelike?) along with games like Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds and Tunic and the like, but however we define "adventure games" as a genre (when we figure it out),  I don't think it scratches that same itch at all.

In fact, I've had a hard time gettting into those games, as a player, but even with an academic 'game designer' perspective. With all of these games, I just flounder about at the surface level for a bit before giving up out of frustration or boredom.

Botos Do Diabo

Spoiler

So, this is quite difficult to review for me. The graphics are wonderful, again a great color scheme and lots of detailed drawings and animations (was the baby based on a photo of your baby?).
The story was flowing like the river, but gameplay felt like just clicking to trigger the next chapter. Which from a philosophical point of view fits the theme, but wasn't that much fun to play.
The atmosphere was amazing, with a great build-up of tension. However, as a climax, there was the scene with the leg. I didn't manage to solve the only real puzzle of the game in time and died. I didn't have a save file, so I had to play again from the beginning. This means that I tried to get by as fast as possible and the complete atmosphere was ruined for me and not restored for the rest of the game. Having an autosave right at the beginning of the scene might have prevented this. But the way I experienced the game, I was left with an indifferent feeling (which might be a good thing after all, since I actually don't like horror).

[close]

Thanks for the very honest feedback!

Spoiler

We went back and forth on whether the game should feature death on that scene (and the sinking and the tourniquet) several times, and only finally plugged in the death hours before the deadline. We had assumed that 50 seconds would be more than enough time to solve the puzzle, but I think your idea of an autosave is good, and something we can implement, post-MAGS).

[close]

[BOTOS DO DIABO]

Babar & I present...
BOTOS DO DIABO
A fever dream horror somewhere in the Amazon...



Download: https://jfrisby.itch.io/botos-do-diabo

This one has some violence, blood, *scares, etc.. if you're sensitive to that (*AGS level jumpscares). It got pretty experimental and weird this month. :p

Since we got no "STOP NOW CRIMINAL SCUM!" from Stupot yet, I've uploaded some final tweaks, and added a linux build as well. Same link as before. Enjoy, everyone (including me, who will now relax with the other entries).

Thanks all for the votes! Appreciate all the feedback as well.
And jwalt: It wasn't a pity-vote, I think it was a well-deserved vote, maybe because I haven't played any of your other games before, but I really did find the 3D and the animation charming.

Spoiler

The piece of quartz is gone forever, that will not be able to help you anymore. You need to find some other way to help the Sphinx

[close]

Spoiler

You actively turned off power in the course of actions, to get where you are. You need to turn it back on again.

[close]

My vote:

Spoiler

Really bad at giving detailed feedback, but while the other entries showed a lot of potential and scope for amazing ideas, I went with jwalt's game as being the most comprehendibly complete entry.
I've seen a lot of his art on the forums over the years, but I'd never played any of his games, and I've got to say, the 3d art and style of animation works really well, and is quite charming! The humour worked on me too, despite there not really being any very deep puzzles.

[close]

Finished jwalt's masterpiece, but about the other games:

@Perpetuall : I unfortunately don't know many Bible verses, but I'm not sure how the system works. I typed in "In the beginning there was the Word", but I got no reaction or response. What is supposed to happen?

@VampireWombat : I feel a bit dumb, but I can't get to the screen you shared in the screenshot. I don't see any interactable except the AC unit, and the edges of the screens don't go anywhere?

To be fair, the theme that month was "Time Warp". I dunno if it would've been more or less poetic if we ran out of time to complete it 

Something weird happened to me. After I entered the 2nd room past the lasers, and then did so again with the 2nd character, then switched back to the first character, I was unable to walk around anymore. I figured out that the walk function had switched to the right mouse button instead of the left button. I was also unable to left click to select inventory items anymore. Whatever the problem was, it persisted after a save + load. But I wasn't able to replicate it after restarting the game.

That's very weird. Hopefully it won't repeat. I'll check the game to see if I can replicate it and post a fix before the end of the submission time. If you have any further details, that'll help too!

Thanks stu!

It's unfortunate we were the only entry. I was hoping for a last-minute surprise from @VampireWombat

Also because the competition breeds lots of very useful feedback and reviews that we'll miss out on this time. So if you played it, we would appreciate comments!

Should be okay on both mobile and desktop now.

Somewhat related, so mentioning it here, I dunno if it was ok before and just recently got messed up, but on desktop, the awards icons that show below a person's avatar in a comment on the forums seems to be following some weird down then right scheme. So for example for you, it is showing 3 awards in a single column, for someone with 4, it shows the fourth on a second column on their right. This also seems to happen in combination with the icons that show what people can help with.

Cornbankle in

Abducted Intelligence


Our MAGS entry for this month. Slightly updated from the itch version jfrisby mentioned above. Hope you enjoy, and hope we see someone to have it up against!

Personally, I feel a well done conclusion is more satisfying than an endless series, and after over 10 years of having a story on mind, I'd imagine he'd want to move on.

I too would be happy to lend a hand with testing