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[Don't Ice Your Cool]

Come and help this tiny EGA character escape from an icy predicament:




Also, throw fish in a barrel:




The original version of Don't Ice Your Cool was made in four days for the June 2018 MAGS competition "Ice". It can still be downloaded from here.

This is version 1.2 with some additional animations, puzzles, interactions and a secret after-credits scene.
It's still a very short and simple game even with the updates, but hopefully offers a few minutes of fun and enjoyment.

DOWNLOAD HERE

no assets, no code, just a plot idea that had its ending. this month i thought of extending it a bit:

I think it's perfectly fine if you enter with that. The rules even allow pre-made assets, who cares about a few ideas or plotlines.

A big thanks to all who played and commented, it was a fun little project to work on and I'll try to come up with something inspiring for August MAGS. I'm also planning a small update for the game later this week, so all the feedback has been very helpful to improve and maybe even lenghten the experience.

Also, my game is still the only one with enough votes to form a rating on the AGS games page, so go there right now and play and rate and comment the other ones.

[Groundhog]

Groundhog

Spoiler

I love time loop stories, they offer so many different opportunities for twists and surprises. This was a pretty simple and small-scale implementation of that plot device, but still enjoyable and the ending was rewarding enough. Most answers seemed to be related to the MAGS theme, so that was a nice touch.

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To the Mountains of Madness

Spoiler

Well, not much to say about it, this is indeed only an intro. The character sheets look decent, but the selection arrows blend a bit too well into the interface and it took me a moment to notice them. The board-game-like feel and set up seems interesting and I'd like to see what sort of gameplay you'll implement for this. Good luck with finishing the full version. Oh, what's the connection to the "Ice" theme?

[close]

Ice in the Air

Spoiler

A neat little game. It was interesting to see a simple pixel background mixed with a more detailed character model, usually it's the other way around. Story worked nicely with the theme and you can't really go wrong with music by Eric Matyas. Very light on puzzles, I personally don't mind that, but I guess it would add a bit more challenge if some of the items had more steps to obtaining them than simply picking them up. Well done, it was an enjoyable five minutes.

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Comet Collision

Spoiler

I like the concept, I've always enjoyed the choose-your-own-adventure type games. I agree with Mandle that this sort of format probably benefits from longer stories and having a path end only after one or two clicks felt a bit underwhelming. The restart button is a welcome addition, but it now appears on top of the text on couple of occasions. The default AGS restart button F9 also seems to be working, so I guess there was always a restart button. Music and sound effects would have also been nice too, would have helped to create a better atmosphere. It's great that you got it released (your first AGS game?) and hopefully you'll find some time to develop it further.

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[Don't Ice Your Cool]

Don't Ice Your Cool

[imgzoom]https://imgur.com/q3vBi6j.png[/imgzoom]

Download here!

Whew... Last minute, untested, lots of bugs probably.


Edit: AGS game page here!

Congrats to fernewelten and all the other participants. Good to see that it was a fairly tight race and I always love sharing victories. Hopefully this won't be the peak month and we'll see tons of more great MAGS games this year.

I did play all of them and voted, but sadly haven't left any feedback yet. I'll go over them again during this week and try to formulate some thoughts on the game pages and their respective threads.

I might jump in with a tiny weekend project to add some competition. Finished some EGA assets yesterday and set up the interface and couple of puzzles today. I'll throw in a few animations tomorrow and try to wrap it up. And if I have time during the week, I'll add some additional polish.

[imgzoom]https://imgur.com/DM4wJ4C.png[/imgzoom]

I really like the look of this. Finally an Uncharted game without all that boring combat and endless climbing
How much real and actual history are you planning inject into this? And "Trails and Traces" is a great name.

I must say that it's usually the story that motivates and pushes me forward and I do like having a proper ending in a game, but this sounds like a very interesting concept and I'm curious to see how it ends up. Looking forward to try it out in July.

Spoiler

Really sad I didn't get my ice cream.

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If you play your cards right in the full version, you'll defenitely get some

Even if the demo is linear, the interface spurs me to think that we'll have to make choices at one point - both in dialogs and in actions.

Yeah, I'm certainly planning a couple of branching paths and multiple solutions to some puzzles. There's already a bit of non-linearity in the order of doing (or skipping) some of the tasks and it will probably be even more prominent in the final version.

Thanks to everyone who have either played or watched or commented. As I said, the demo still needs some additional work and the whole game is not fully planned out yet, so all suggestions and feedback are very welcome and will help me to improve the game.

Loved the demo. How big is the final game going to be?

Hard to say at the momenent, it really depends how much time we want (or can spare) to put into it. I'm guessing that something between 30-45 minutes sounds like a reasonable goal, but we might add some branching paths, so maybe there's some replayability.

[Story:]

Story:
After her colleague is taken off station because of a mysterious illness, Alawa Velasco is working double shifts on a old terraforming station. She won't be alone for too long...

Demo: Download the MAGS demo from here.
This demo version is actually still missing quite a few puzzles, interactions and story parts. So, I'd say that it's more of a proof of concept, than an actual finished and polished sample of the game, but hopefully it will give a little taste of the planned atmosphere, mechanics and visuals.

Team:
Hobo: design, scripting, writing, character sprites and animation
Pinback: background art and music
selmiak: environment animation, sound effects, additional design and writing
Myshkin: music

Estimated release date: 2023

Screenshots:

Might be my web browser error, but can't see any screenshots in thread, had to quote it to get the link
Is that a color coded book cabinet?

Echo in the Clouds
Brought to you by Hobo, Pinback, selmiak and Myshkin

[imgzoom]https://imgur.com/Dnk5aUn.gif[/imgzoom]
Download the demo here: DOWNLOAD HERE

Edit: Here's the AGS game page link.

Somebody make it rain so I don't want to go out over the weekend!

This May has been one of the warmest and sunniest that I can remember. And I've barely had time to enjoy any of it

Great news! This helps out a lot.

Hobo: If you really can't complete the game to full justice in time I would defiantly go for the short demo. If you do that very well, and the player enjoys it they may well want to play more more more... in which case your rating will go up

Plus you will have unlimited time to really work on it...

Yes, end it with a cliffhanger
Ugh... unlimited time. I've been making Kingdom of Ehcilc with unlimited time limit and it's been in production for four years
I'd rather wrap this one up in a month or two.

Any chance of an extension over the coming weekend?

I wouldn't mind a weekend extension. I'm probably going to release an early build or a demo no matter the deadline, but a few extra days always helps.

And then I'll keep working on it over the summer to flesh it out and add some polish. I really feel like my original plans for a tiny jam game with few simple puzzles and a cobbled together story don't do justice to Pinback's and selmiak's awesome visual contributions and Myshkin's music. It definitely deserves more time and effort put into it.

Haha, yes this project has been about 14 years in the making.

Can't wait to see what the project looks like after the next 14 years
Great poster and loved the new blog post, glad to know that the game's nearly done. And I wouldn't worry too much about the promised release window, take you're time and polish it until it's perfect.

There are flaws, but at this brightness it looks like something, rather than just darkness.

It really depends on the screen settings, both entires looked fine enough for me, maybe a little bit too dark, but after your edit, Cassiebsg's pic doesn't actually look like a night scene to me anymore.