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I think the best AGS game I've played this year was Donald Dowell and the Ghost of Barker Manor.  My all time favourites are probably Gemini Rue (serious) and Time Gentlemen Please (funny), but there are many close seconds!

To be fair, "Italian" is really just the bastard son of Latin, the vernacular of the plebians in the street as opposed to the learned patricians.  It kind of makes sense that gladiators would speak an early form of Italian to each other in lieu of the more formal language.  And I've heard that many Roman emperors did kinky things with their cross-dressing siblings, so....

But I digress.  I loved the story, kconan: a victory well-deserved!  And thanks for all the kind feedback, Sinitrena.  I felt like I was really hitting my stride in the back half of my story, but the beginning was way too muddled.  I had to edit out this great comedic bit where the "whelp of the flash-boxer mounted [the statue's] leg like a hunting hound in heat," but it just didn't suit the atmosphere I was going for, and I wasn't able in the time remaining to me to reconstruct the introduction as coherently.   Oh well, I'll get you guys next time.    I look forward to the next challenge -see you there!

I think its time to put this topic to bed. There are better minds than ours (at least mine anyway) that have discussed the right way to present humor, and I suspect we will be going round in circles if we continue.

Although I agree with you that we will never in this thread definitively nail down the essence of humour, I would be equally reluctant to trust the "experts".  Humour is a very idiosyncratic thing: what works in one context won't necessarily work in another.  Plus there's a definite shelf life to humour, so what was written at one point in a book might not still be funny.  Have you ever watched a "comedic" movie from the 1950s?  'Nuff said.  And even the best joke ever is somewhat less awesome on the twentieth telling, let alone the hundredth.  So just try humour that you find funny, and keep it fresh (multiple responses, different jokes that no one has thought of before, the unexpected, break the rules, be audacious, etc.).

I just noticed how awesome Canadian tennis sensation Milos Raonic looks when he's in action.  But... I bet you guys could make him look even awesomer!

I'd say, unlike magic, start with something really funny.  If you take too long to build that funny atmosphere, you'll lose the attention of the player.  If it's a funny game, you gotta show that it's funny right off the bat.  It's called setting the tone.  Play Ben There Dan That (or just watch the first four minutes on YouTube) to see a good example.  The dialogue is short, serving both the entertain (humour) and set the scene.  There is no time for tedium: the player is thrown right into the game and the humour all at once.

Spongebob_Nopants?!?

To be honest, I'd change my name too....

Wow.  Another clue (since the screenshots would all look more or less the same): the third letter from the end of the second word is a "P".

....im a girl btw

Sorry.  Wait, didn't you used to be called Jean_Grey_Productions?

FFFFUUUUUUUUU?

1.... 2.... 3.... That's way more than 4 letters, Selms.  Try again.

Nope.

And thanks everyone for behing honest.    The name I'm looking for starts with a four letter F-word.

Nope.  At least that's not what it was called on the C64.

[Edit:]

The crack at the back of your fridge is usually a pretty warm place. 

Edit:  btw "fridge" is Canadian slang for "bum".  I thought that was common knowledge....

One of my favourite non-adventure games from childhood:

Have we really gone so low as distilling our own moonshine?  This can only go baaaaaaad places. 

Count me in.

Technically he's not new.  Technically.  There should really be a stickied Oldies Reintroduce Yourselves Here thread, instead of random threads here and there.  In the mean time, welcome (back) Phoenix!  May you ....rise from the ashes. 

[kconan]

Character - kconan: For many memorable and complex characters, my favourite being Flavius the despicable cheating thief.

Plot - kconan: Not much of a contest, since Fitz's piece wasn't really a narrative.  But a well deserved point, nevertheless, especially because of the roller coaster of fortune experienced by each character! 

Atmosphere - kconan: The build up to the actual fight through the perspective of every character was awesome.

Background World - kconan: Very thoroughly researched, at least assuming that the "Jungles West of Egypt" was based on contemporary ignorance....

Word Choice/Style - kconan: You had me at half-starved rabid jaguars. 

Monument - Fitz: I thought the ossuary was quite thoughtful about the themes of sacrifice, remembrance and sense of self.

Is that an eyeball in a mason jar on a picnic table?  That's so cliché it's almost the lens flare of cinema.  Thus it is impossible to guess which of the thousands of movies that use this story telling device the particular movie you are thinking of is: you'll have to be more specific.

Oooo, I've played this one!  It was Yonder Tales, or something like that.

...unless either kconan or Baron object.

Ooo, it's that awkward wedding moment!  Are you going to stand up, kconan, and proclaim your true feelings for the FWC?

Of Love and Loss in Lemnos

   What is a monument?

   The interpretive plaque at his feet suggested that it was a commemorative structure or statue, a memorial to something not to be forgotten.  Leander stared out across the diminutive, ant-like men, scurrying back and forth in long lines and playing incessantly with their flashing spark-boxes.  Most of them spoke in strange tongues and had greying hair; he supposed they must be the latest wave of conquerors to invade.  There was nothing new about the stout and virile horsemen sweeping down from the North every couple of generations, but this tribe of frail geriatrics was something novel.  There were the Scythians, and then the Goths, and then the Avars, and then the Huns, and then the Alans, the Bulgars, the Magyars, the Mongols, the Turks.... He'd probably missed a few: they were all as transient as the flashing sparks of the little men now.  A brief flicker of greatness, and then an equally quick descent into shadows that seemed all the darker next to the light that had come before.  And despite the tales, the histories and the monuments, still they scurried blindly oblivious to the essence of life.  Like insects they would dig and delve, or chirp and gawk, but rarely did they pause and reflect about the gravity of existence.  So easily were the great lessons of the past wiped from the slate of collective memory.

   Leander stared impassively, the age-weathered stone of his face revealing nothing but a serene indifference to the world.  But although he appeared even more idle than the greying tribe of flash-boxers, beneath the chipped and cracked façade his mind churned over great matters, dwarfing the frivolous thoughts of the little men just the same as he towered over them physically.  Sometimes he analyzed the events of the present through the powerful lens of wisdom he had acquired over the ages.  Sometimes he reconstructed the great events of the past, trying to tease out the causation of victories and defeats, of progress and decline.  Sometimes he indulged in the memories that still felt so raw and strong that they would easily burst the chests and skulls of the fleshy mortals beneath him.  And sometimes, despite himself, he would indulge in all three mental activities at once, just to test the limits of his insight.

   It was just that morning, when the sun still hung low and the youth of the day had barely emerged from its swaddling of mists and birdsong, that Leander was struck by the transience of time.  This day could have been a hundred years ago, or a thousand.  The way the light danced over the distant mountains and the way the smell of jasmine wafted off the fields could have happened yesterday or in his early youth, the dawn of time itself as far as he was concerned.  And in that moment of realization he was transported back to happier times, when he was young and solid, clean and whole.  A time when the smells of the earth weren't tempered by a shorn nose, and the good things in life were not beyond the reach of a severed limb.

   If he could close his eyes, in that moment Leander could imagine the feel of her at the end of his arm.  Though made of cold hard marble like himself, in his mind she felt as soft as the cherry blossoms dancing about the branch.  In his mind she was as warm as summer sunshine and as light as a feather flitting on the breeze.  Her body was a sculpted ideal of femininity, with fig shaped breasts and a pear shaped bum just barely concealed by a flowing garment so sheer as to seem more silk than stone.  And she had a beautiful soul, for the way she stared up at him with loving adoration could melt him into gooey puddle of magma.  She was Hero, and he loved her for all eternity.

   But time grinds ever onward, and a summer of happiness turns to an autumn of loss and a winter of despair as surely as the world turns.  So brief now seemed their season of happy togetherness, it seemed to flash by more quickly than a statue's blink.  Maybe he was too possessive, maybe she was too friendly with the statue of Adonis that used to stand across the arcade.  Maybe they were both too young to truly understand who they were or what they really wanted.  Whatever the circumstances, like the epic myth they had been sculpted to depict time had split them from each other: she to tumble, he to drown, still aloft but lost to a sea of sorrows.  Briefly she had lain there at his feet but beyond his grasp, in a parting twilight of yearning confused with loathing.  And then she was gone for good, packed off to the art auctions of Campania or Rhodes.  And in the wake of her departure he drifted in the wide, woeful emptiness.

   But time grinds ever onwards.  What can not be helped washes slowly past, like a flood beneath the bridge.  Like the bee and the flower they might never meet again, but still he could keep silent vigil over what they had once so beautifully shared.  He could remember, unassisted by interpretive plaques and the froggy pronouncements of petty prophets with their colourful parasols.  There was meaning in the outstretched stump of his right arm such that the ant-like men of recent times could not dare to fathom.  He possessed more in that ghostly appendage than these trinket-obsessed insects could accumulate in all their frantic days, and for him that was enough.  It was, despite its absence, the greatest monument in the world.

   And then an odd sensation struck him.  It was twisted and odd and ...almost gleeful.  In all his brooding and mourning days since she had left he had never once succumbed to the cynical allure of humour, but now it washed over him like a fresh breeze from the ocean.  Slowly and ever so slightly the corners of his mouth turned upward at the realization.  She had broken up with him two thousand years ago, it was true, but he still had his hand on her ass.