Messages

I can also do mass emails to all forum users, active or not.

I can taste the spam already!  Soon you will all be informed of a brief window of opportunity to acquire these amazing Bake Sale games one last time; that, and cure your chronic erectile dysfunction! 

Now Switzerland has figured out how to design a toilet that cures constipation: I've soiled myself just looking at the picture!

I accidentally sent my story off into the void and not to Andail.

Number 11 has come forward at last!  I almost voted for you, as a joke, but there were just too many deserving stories.

*places a monocle over left eye*

Hey, that's my schtick!

Congratulations to frenzykitty and WHAM!  I voted 2, 10, 12. 

I think the most compelling aspect of the Baby Shoes story for me is the emotional roller coaster.  What did happen to the baby?  Like WHAM, I believe it was nothing good; surely there's a heart-wrenching story lurking behind the advertisement.  The story has tragedy, desperation, and more than just a little ghoulishness: you know somebody is going to respond to that ad, picking up some new shoes on the cheap by essentially grave-robbing.  Like the best stories, it kinda makes you think....

Entries already!   

Let's keep 'em coming.

[Deadline is Saturday June 14]

The Fortnightly Writing Competition kindly invites you to write on the topic of....
Game Review

Jay Jonah Jepson of the Daily Bloggle has invited you to write a 1000 word review of the best game never made for his website.  This review can contain characters, puzzles, plot arcs and even spoilers, so long as it is entertaining enough to keep eyeballs on the page (and thus keep J.J.J.'s advertisers happy).  Also ol' J.J.J. isn't too fussy about the exact word count: that's just a ballpark figure he threw at you, based on his archaic perception of the media business as filling space on paper.  You have two weeks to create this fictional game review, starting..... Now!

Here's an example, just to get you thinking:

What do a witch, a walking onion, and the ghost of Ronald Reagan all have in common?  A singular bond of camaraderie in Begippered!, an audacious new adventure game from the makers of Hillbilly High and Squeeze Me, I'm Juicy.  Deliciously fresh comedy is paired with devilishly wicked social commentary to create what may well be the best game released so far this year.  The pace is fast, the dialog snappy, the locations exotic and the puzzles fiendishly silly: you'll fall in love with Begippered! at first sight, and find yourself still married to it 60 years later.  The game is that good!
     The action begins implausibly at Kim Jong Il's 50th birthday party in the North Korean presidential palace.  You play as Topaz, a spirited young woman of mixed broccoli/cabbage ancestry and an unfortunate water allergy, who is at one and the same time the best Greatful Dead fan-girl and the worst-skilled witch of all time, and at this very moment is just trying to make ends meet by working the birthday crowd in a swelteringly hot Hello Kitty costume.  She might just have pulled this mascot gig off but for the meddlesome antics of the ghost of Ronald Reagan, whose poltergeist brinksmanship initiates a small nuclear war, resulting in vegetables mutating into humanoid creatures bent on taking over the world....

Your fictional game must be a computer game, but not necessarily an adventure game.  It can be a project you've already thought of, but didn't build (or release....) for whatever reason.  As long as the game is substantially unmade, it is fair game.  The main thing I'm looking for is the ability to sell an agenda: if it's the best game ever, your review should leave me drooling into my open wallet; if it's the worst game ever, your review should be as scathing as it is cutting; if it is a beautiful game, your review should leave me with a sense of awe and wonder.  So be creative, have fun, and write, write like the wind!

Deadline is Saturday June 14.  Voting will start when I get internet access on the evening of the 15th, so if you're are one of the many AGSers who live next to the international dateline in French Polynesia, you'll still have lots of time to meet the deadline. 

Goodbye and... goodluck! 

[@Sinitrena]

Thank you everybody for your many votes.  Now if we could just get a few more stories submitted....

@Sinitrena: Man, that was close!  Great writing as always, and I look forward as always to your next story.

@Miguel: One knuckle sandwich, hold the mayo.  Got it. 

@Prospective Writers for Next Round: I'll try to get the next comp up and running shortly!

Yeah, but what happened to him after that!  You know how plots are supposed to work: you leave a gun on the mantel in act 1 and somebody ends up getting shot by act 3.  We followed Ish for so long, I figured he had to turn up again somewhere down the line, and was more than just a little disappointed when he didn't.

Unless....

Spoiler

Unless Ish was a giraffe....

[close]

I found the fact that over half the authors felt compelled to add a "dramatic plot-twist" or reveal in the last line very interesting.  I suppose this is in keeping with the suspense/thriller or murder-mystery genres that most authors chose to write in, but I wonder does the technique really make for a better story?  If you look at the 6 word story offered as an example in the original post (of the original thread: "For Sale: Baby Shoes, never worn."), the essence of the story is in the mystery created, not the mystery revealed.

I, too, was struck by the morbidity of the story collection.  Perhaps it is easier to play on simple emotions in just 55 words, or perhaps game makers are inclined towards writing about murder and monsters (no doubt because we are so happy in life that we have a morbid fascination with the "other side" ).  Or maybe we were all strategically going for shock value, so that our work would stand out in the voters' minds, except that the shocks were so frequent that the reader could not help but become desensitized, negating the strategic value of that approach.  

Anyway, it will be very interesting to see how the voting plays out.  Good luck, everyone!

But think how incredibly fertile those goolies would become.

What?

What ever happened to Ish, anyway (the survivalist/diarist that kept leaving notes everywhere)?  It seemed Joel was on his trail for a while outside Pittsburgh, but I never got any sense of closure.

....and now, presented for your consideration, the ice toilet:



I've melted my name into more than a few snowbanks in my day (and if I've had a few beer, I can usually manage to dot the i's and cross the t's as well ), so I'm a little confused about the actual functionality of this model.  Let's just say you probably don't want to be the last guy in line.     This particular model appears to be in South Korea, where apparently brown shirt-tails are very fashionable....   Still, better to crap into the back of your coat than to catch a chill, I suppose....

Sharks with frickin' laser beams! 
                               -Dr. Evil

I'm also stumped on the "Are You Certain?" level, btw....

For all you pet lovers....

I have no idea about the movie, but I think my grandparents had the exact same wallpaper.

Oh, man!  I used to have a shirt with that floral pattern on it!  I loved that shirt! 

I don't know how it works, all I know is it does.  Thank Saurabh and his spontaneous gesture of human kindness. 

I think Ponch still uses AGS version 2.54, or something like that, and publishes his games with Direct Draw.   With my graphics driver I always have to add these dll files (zipped) to the game folder of these old-style games in order for the screen to update properly.  Let me know if that helps.

Got the bundle and already had several Beer! even before lunchtime

Oh cat, you shouldn't drink so much before lunchtime.  

Baron, those techno-toilets of yours belong in a Charlie Foxtrot game.

If the power goes out, it would add a whole new dimension to an "escape the room" sequence!

The environmentalist in me likes the idea of the trough toilet: as long as there are enough tributaries, there's no need to waste any water flushing.    But, in order for it to work, folks like Snake have to step up and squirt pull their own weight.  Otherwise it's just another tragedy of the commons scenario.... 

[Edit Five Days Later:]

Hey folks, just a heads up to let you know that this game is only available for
Five More Days!!!

After the Bake Sale is done this puppy's going back into the vault, so get it now before it's too late!

---------
Edit Five Days Later: Kerchunk!  That's the sound of the vault closing, I'm afraid.  See you in another seven years!