Messages

Wow, you don't usually see a turnout this big.
Seven games!
I'm spoiled for choice.

[Black Friday]

Black Friday




Click here to download.

Summary:
Somewhere in Maine, five teenagers decided to spend the night at a farm. To goof off and have fun, as teenagers do. But little do they know that they're being watched by an evil entity intent on doing them harm.

Soon they find themselves being killed off, one by one. Will any of them survive?

Black Friday is a homage to slasher movies in the form of a point and click adventure game.

Details:

• Two-click interface: left-click to interact, right-click to examine.
• F5 to open save menu, F7 to open load menu.
• Fully voice acted.
• Contains gore.
• Completable within half an hour.

Specs:
320 x 200
32 bit color
d3d

If you like the game, why not
vote for it in the November mags thread.

Is that the Angry Video Game Nerd?
It doesn't look like a scene from the movie though.

[Top Tier]

This is my list:
I agree with a lot of your choices. There's just a few which I think needed changing.

Top Tier (unsorted because that is too hard):

• Monkey Island 2
• Grim Fandango
• The Curse of Monkey Island
• Day of the Tentacle

Middle Tier (solid adventure games that just weren't the very best of LucasArts)
5- The Secret of Monkey Island
6- Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis
7- Full Throttle
8- Maniac Mansion
9- Sam & Max: Hit the Road

Bottom Tier (some rated low for simply being too primitive design-wise, not their fault, maybe at their time they were at the top of the game)
10- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
11- The Dig
12- Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
13- Loom
14- Escape from Monkey Island
- Labyrinth

Could it be a kind of MSX party game?

Party game, yes. MSX game, no.

Tanoshii Jinsei?

Ooh, you're close.

Minit: Gameboy Color edition?

Nope. Also wrong console.
I'll see about getting another screenshot up sometime today.

EDIT:
Here we go.
[imgzoom]https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/intermediary/f/88fac950-a2fd-4283-b93c-6e649819ecad/dct9gmw-30daf770-c34d-415f-8914-d84f64b09b8a.png[/imgzoom]

Tell me if the image doesn't show up.

[2) good puzzles.]

2) good puzzles. People make rooms and write a story only to realize at the end that they didn't make an adventure game but instead tried to shoehorn a good story into a soulless succession of "FedEx quests" (use X on Y).

People struggle with that part?
Huh... I guess I must find it easy because I more or less build the story around the puzzles, rather than the puzzles around the story. (Which in turn can lead to a mediocre story in my opinion, but what're you gonna do.)
Either that or all of my puzzles are crap and I just don't realise it.

I fixed some minor bugs Slasher pointed out yesterday, and included a special thanks to him in the credits.

There's one bug where the mouse active inv suddenly comes off. I've not encountered it myself yet, and I probably won't be able to fix it before the cutoff date tomorrow because I have no idea what could even be causing it. So if anyone encounters it, please tell me everything you can, so I can try and fix it after the contest if over.

Awesome. I'm really looking forward to seeing this complete.
The art alone is gorgeous.

Artists though, thats what everyone is looking for in my experience.

And that is exactly why I spent four years teaching myself how to draw, despite hating it.
Also, agreed. That's by far the most sought after skill when it comes down to creating adventure games (or any project that requires art.)

I'd put music to a close second though. Simply because I have no idea where to even begin making music. And all the tutorials online assume that you can already make music. (Which defeats the purpose of a tutorial in my opinion.)

[Black Friday]

Black Friday




Click here to download.

Somewhere in Maine, five teenagers decided to spend the night at a farm. To goof off and have fun, as teenagers do. But little do they know that they're being watched by an evil entity intent on doing them harm.

Soon they find themselves being killed off, one by one. Will any of them survive?

Black Friday is a homage to slasher movies in the form of a point and click adventure game.

She's huuuge ! She wouldn't even fit in any game using a standard pixel-resolution.

If you're going for such a high resolution (and little detail) I wouldn't recommend drawing on a pixel-level. I'd keep the art in 3d (and maybe use some toon-shader?), draw with soft brushes or use a vector art program.

+1
Either that, or use vector art.
You generally want the pixels in pixel art to be clearly identifiable. In other words, pixel art is best suited to low-res art. You can of course make high-res pixel art, but you're either going to get something that looks terrible or that requires way WAY too much effort.

So... I guess it's my turn.

[imgzoom]https://orig00.deviantart.net/41fa/f/2018/329/e/3/name_the_game_screenshot_37_by_danvzare-dcsusg9.png[/imgzoom]

Looking up "Japanese Point and Click PC Adventure Game" revealed it instantly.

But now I feel guilty for searching for it like that.
So if no one else guesses it, I'll reveal my guess.

I've been chipping away at something. I'm not sure I'll get it done in time for the end of the month since my current work schedule is a little weird.

I think like most other people my mind went immediately to a "living" Scarecrow wandering around a farm. I pulled a history channel and went "Aliens" for the reason why my guy is moving around.

I have the art for the rooms done, walking animation, as well I have a simple introductory cutscene. I need to wire up the puzzles at this point and create the inventory objects.

Go on, you can finish it in time!

(I'm assuming the game in the video doesn't have voices, the computer I'm currently using doesn't have speakers).

It does have voices (admittedly not very good ones though, so maybe he skipped because he was irritated).

Also, I'd like to reiterate. Are we sure people are simply forgetting that there's a right mouse button?
Does anyone else have any anecdotal evidence?

Same game, different reviewer. He didn't right click at all. He actually sounded about 30 years old, so you would assume he would know about right clicking.
But he got stuck a few times, and STILL didn't right click. I mean, I can understand why some people choose not to look at things during normal gameplay, but if you're hopelessly stuck to the point that you try everything on everything, you would try looking at things if you knew it was an option.

Ok then. That answered my question.
Thanks.

So far the only solutions I've seen is to either have a tutorial which forces you to use the right mouse button.
Or have the left mouse button look, and the right mouse button use. Preferably with an option to switch for those of us who know how to use the right mouse button.
Is there any other way?
Perhaps have a few parts early on in the game where you absolutely HAVE to look to move forward. Incorporating puzzles for that look command. (Something which creators clearly aren't doing, if people are completing their games without using the right mouse button once.)
What about a pop-up message to annoy anyone who never presses the right mouse button. It could pop-up every minute until you press the right mouse button, in which case it instead waits ten minutes until you click it again (unless it pops up, in which case it's back to one minute).

Is it perhaps a strange Space Invaders game I've never heard of before?

Young enough for you?
Note that he never right clicked once in that video (not to mention the obsessive dialog skipping which you can't really design a solution for unless you're going Machinarium style).

Yep, that's young enough. Quite surprising as well. I wonder what percentage of the adventure gaming audience is made of kids that age.
Also there is a design solution to dialog skipping. It's called a voicepack (I'm assuming the game in the video doesn't have voices, the computer I'm currently using doesn't have speakers). People (especially kids) don't tend to skip dialog when it's being told to them. At least in my experience.

The alternative is verbcoin, but without having to hold. The left click opens the coin and a second left-click selects the action.

Not that there's anything wrong with two clicks. (After all, the 9-verb system requires two clicks) The real problem in my opinion, comes from the inventory. Without having hold, you can't really use the verb coin in the inventory screen in a comfortable way. And that's coming from someone who usually likes verb coins!
But we've had this conversation countless times, and this thread is about the left/right click interface.



Also, I'd like to reiterate. Are we sure people are simply forgetting that there's a right mouse button?
Because it's quite possible that kids nowadays just don't see the point in using the "look at" command. Because they just see it as meaningless fluff, like with the aforementioned dialog skipping.

I'd like to point to my little brother (who's ten), he never right clicks on anything, and he always skips dialog that isn't spoken. But if there is for example, a drawer which you can open and close with the left mouse button, he will instantly try the right mouse button once he realises that the left will just close it again. I've never seen him use a look command in any of the other interfaces where it is possible (9-verb, verb coin), and he's quite competent with a computer in general, and knows to use the right mouse button on Windows to open up a context menu (which he does do a lot to find the root folder of programs).

Does anyone else have any anecdotal evidence? (And yes, I know anecdotal evidence is practically worthless, which is why I'm asking for statements that contradict or compliment mine.)

It is a japanese game

Really! I never would have guessed.

Unfortunately, my knowledge of Japanese games only extends to the SNES console.
So I have no idea what game this is.

Serenity?