Messages

[CREDITS]

When an office party and a missile attack intersect, Oomla the engineer has less than a second to prevent disaster. Which, fortunately, is all the time he needs. A short traditional point-and-click, originally created in 3 weeks for AdvXJam 2020, updated and polished in 2024. Features:

Alien invasion!
Workplace politics
Time manipulation
Extraterrestrial nudity

Check it out here:
ITCH | AGS database

CREDITS

Design | Art | Code | Writing
Honza Vávra

Voice
Duffy Weber

Music
Paco Diago
Adam Halpin

Sound
Maxim Grachev
Adam Halpin


December 2024 - Off the Clock 2.0
I've significantly updated the game. The changes include:

voice acting by Duffy Weber
updated graphics
updated and some new animations
new music by Paco Diago
new sound design by Max Grachev
one new puzzle
hotspot highlighter
vertical parallaxing + smoother camera movement
updated responses, the puzzles should be better signposted now
new guis, some cosmetic stuff I'm probably forgetting
and of course the biggest change: "the" in "Off the Clock" is now NOT capitalized

Thanks, but I already explained here why I don't want to do that: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=57487.msg636622831#msg636622831

I'd seen that, that's why I tried the charity angle . Never mind, I'm happy to get a great game for free of course.

Holy sh*t does this keep looking better and better! Love the title screen and the new screenshots.

Might be a dumb idea, but have you considered monetizing it and donating the money to charity? At least for a few months before a free release. That way you'd have your cake and eat it too... or, rather, you'd have no cake but others would get to eat . It feels like a shame to give out this much labor and professionalism completely for free.

Quite agree!  Lovely. I always love to see these "making of"...

Just one remark... you forgot to post the time...  So... how much elapsed time does that gif cover? 

27 hours since I started counting, so about 30 total I'm guessing, + smoking breaks and pointless wall-gazing... yep, I'm slow .

Happy people like the graphics, thanks everyone! I was taking snapshots while drawing one of those backgrounds to see how much time it actually takes me, so here's a bit of making-of:

Thanks everyone for the positive feedback and encouragement! Feels good to finally have something to show - people were starting to give me weird looks when I claimed I was spending weekends "making a game" for two years .

I'm frankly afraid, wondering how this game will run in AGS...

I was worried too and it does seem to be on the edge of AGS capabilities, but so far it runs okay (only lags a bit here and there) as long as I close other applications and preload bigger animations. I tried Visionaire for a bit but couldn't get used to it, so I decided to go with AGS and hope for the best. We'll see what happens once the game gets bigger - worst-case scenario I release a downgraded low-res version and make a "remastered" one in another engine. Hope it doesn't come to that though, AGS has served me well so far .

[TRUTH BE TROLLED]

TRUTH BE TROLLED

The Story:

When an attempt on her life is made, princess Mirabelle realizes there is no one she can trust. Except, perhaps, a troll. Widely regarded as the missing link between a human and a broom, trolls are the latest fad in the kingdom of Glenmore. Buy a troll egg, boil it, and you get the perfect servant.  With their sturdy constitution, efficient brains and none of that “free will” nonsense, trolls make ideal cleaners, cooks and clerks - and, as Mirabelle is out to prove, investigators.
And thus Mirabelle’s troll enters the messy world of humans. He has to search for clues and ask uncomfortable questions, all while being treated as a glorified home appliance. He has no power here, but he has a sturdy constitution, an efficient brain, and maybe even a tad more of that "free will" nonsense than anyone suspected. Feathers will be ruffled, secrets uncovered. Truth will be trolled.

Mirabelle's cat is acting suspicious.	Behold the kingdom of Glenmore!
A bit of world-building.	As medieval toilets go, this is a fancy one.
Deep in the forest, in a secluded hut, a man knows what others don't want to know.	The local journalist is all about the naked truth. Expect some cheeky parallaxing.

Features:

• A fantasy detective story revolving around white lies, sinister truths and the sneaky ways in which we try to control each other. The tone is somewhat comedic, but overall the game takes its plot and characters seriously.
• Princesses, journalists, voodoo priests, mad scientists and demonic cats! (alright, just one of each of those)
• 1920x1080 hand-drawn graphics
• Lots of traditional pointing and clicking â€" inventory puzzles, branching dialogue, you know the drill

Also:
a 16-direction walkcycle with stopping frames:



Detailed hand-drawn animations + jumping mechanics:

Development Status

Um... let's say "early stages". After working on this on and off for two years and more or less full-time during COVID, it's clear that I've bitten off more than I can chew by myself in terms of intended production values. So currently the plan is to release a short demo and then start spamming the recruitment section . Stay tuned!

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a proofreader/editor to help me out with the writing part of a fantasy point and click. I'm currently working on an animation which involves text (a relatively short one, about 300 words), so I need someone with a knack for writing who can help me weed out both grammatical errors and awkward language before I animate it.

I don't really have a budget to spend, but we can agree on a modest fee if I use your edits.

I haven't announced the game yet, so here's at least a screenshot to give you an idea of the style:




Please contact me at hvavra@gmail.com. Thanks!

For some reason I've been thinking of this game a lot lately.

Ok, got it Thanks! Love the short intro sequence by the way, very much in the spirit of the original games.

Spoiler

Didn't miss it, but interpreted “he's the one whose words I should follow” as “do what the scroll he's holding tells you”, not “only use the st John hint”. Maybe “he's the *only* one” would make it clearer? Or maybe I'm an idiot .

[close]

Did both of those, no idea what it's trying to tell me .

Spoiler

Here's what I was thinking:

The window:
the verb has one: if the verb is the symbol on the right, then one of the skulls on the right has to be pressed? Which one?
the soul has one: so if the soul is the symbol on the left, then one of those skulls?
the other one has three: if the other one is the heart, then three of the middle skulls have to be pressed?

The book:
Add one to the heart: so not three, but four skulls in the middle? Which ones?
The soul has one more: Not one but two skulls on the left? Which ones? Trial and error I guess?
The verb needed one more: not one but two on the right then?

Tried all possible combinations of those numbers and nothing. Oh and by the way, does it generate different hints every time? My save crashes, so started a new game and some of the hints were different... cool feature if that's what it is

[close]

Looks good! Already stuck though . Can't make any sense of that first skull puzzle.

Wow, that was fast! The workaround seems to be working fine so far, so no worries.

Thanks for checking! Sucks, seemed like exactly the function I need. Any idea for another (relatively) simple way to track walking destination? I thought I could use the mouse click coordinates instead, but I want to take advantage of the built-in system which finds the nearest reachable spot if you click outside a walking area, so it doesn't work for me.

EDIT: Thought of a clunky work-around: I send an invisible, super-fast dummy character to the mouse coordinates, then use its coordinates as destination ones. A cleaner solution would still be much appreciated though .

I need to keep track of the coordinates the player is walking to while they are walking. The DestinationX & DestinationY properties seem to be made for this, but while DestinationX works fine, DestinationY behaves weirdly. It seems to return the amount of pixels above 256, 512, 768 and 1024 if the actual destination y surpasses those values. Eg. if the player is walking to y 300, player.DestinationY would be "44", y 550 returns "38", 1000 is "232", etc. Only once the player stops, the DestinationY value changes to the player's current y value.

Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, tried to google it and search the forums but couldn't find any explanation. I'm using AGS Build 3.4.1.12

Overlooked that one, tried it and everything works now! I'm in your debt sir

That's it, thanks once more, this makes it really easy to use. Not up to writing a custom dialog rendering script just yet, still a relative AGS beginner, but might get there eventually. Too bad the version of the plugin with tinting functionality isn't available anymore :/. This is a great plugin otherwise.

Works like a charm, but manually setting up the character widths is a pain. Any chance of also getting my hands on AGSSpriteFontGen.exe mentioned in the first post?

Also if I'm using a sprite font for dialogue options, they don't highlight on mouseover anymore. Any way around this? Maybe the version with tinting... ?

Perfect, thank you!

Another attempt to bump this up, a link to a compiled version would be great! Thanks.