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Finished the game a few days ago and really liked it! Lots of good-to-great puzzles - challenging, but not to the point of being frustrating or plain silly, and quite varied. Charming graphics, especially the stylish, yet grounded in reality Gothenburg locations are a pleasure to explore, and the dramatic multi-threaded plot, although not without its problems, kept things interesting and moving throughout the game and was generally pretty well constructed and, ehm, I don't want to use the word "fun", but yeah, fun.

All in all - an enjoyable and very decently-sized adventure of code-craking and accidental gonzo journalism, thanks and congratulations on the release! Hope to see more from you in the future!  

-The ending was abrupt, yes. In my case, so abrupt that I wonder if there's a bug and I missed something:

Spoiler

After finishing Ch. 3 and not knowing what to do next, I decided to go look for Sara the last place I saw her: the cabin. There I run into Veronika, and out of nowhere accuse her of having murdered Jonatan, referring to photos I have absolutely no knowledge of. (I still don't know who "Max" is or what actually happened when Jonatan was killed.) Then shooting, and the game is over. Huh. There must be something missing, right?

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That is most definitely a bug, yeah - the ending is much less abrupt and awkward in its actual form. Also,

Spoiler

Sara's cautious questions about weird things in the book softened the "twist" in the end for me a fair bit, since it was pretty much what I was expecting. And I mean it in a good way, since it didn't feel quite as random as it might've been otherwise. Didn't expect it to be delivered as a plot-twist, though.

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Yay! Much congratulations to Dave, Janet, Ben and everyone else involved! A momentous occasion in AGS history, this! Looking forward to finally finding out whodunit!

I haven't seen this game you were working on, Snarky. Was it ever announced?

I remember seeing a shot from it somewhere (Critics' Lounge, probably?), and it was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the screenshots for this, actually! Not that they are too similar, but it's a fun connection. One of those "great minds think alike" situations!

[Snarky]

Since it is now officially allowed, I'm going to vote for Snarky. Really great background with interesting sharp rendering, atmospheric colour palette and very convincing water animation - hats off!

Really like HanaIndiana's entry too - lots of cute little animated details, especially the tiny ducks.

This looks quite excellent!
Great artwork both in the background (lovely colours!) and the portrait (that hat ^_^) departments, and the premise sounds fun!

Best of luck getting this thing done!

It saddens me a bit to see how often it is assumed in these discussions that "the masses" lazily vote for the same game across the board and that's why we end up with these jackpot winners.
First of all - that happens with most awards that don't use genre differentiation for their categories, be they judged by a small committee or by democratic voting - that's just how it works - there is almost always a work that was the most striking, impressive or just came out at the right time and captured the spirit of the moment. And it's not like it has to be phenomenal in every aspect to win in every category - just better than other nominees.

Then there's this little problem - who are these imaginary "bad" voters? Isn't there about a hundred of them(us) in total? So no, I don't think there is anything wrong with the voting base and the way the voting itself is handled. Sure, not everyone have played every nominated game, and all of the games were made under different conditions, and it's not exactly fair, but nothing is. We just need a representation of generalized feelings of the community, and that's what we get anyway. No need to make the process harder. We have 12 "picks of the month" and the nominations still get you on the "Awards" page of the database, so let those singular games win their trophies - they've deserved them by definition, and they are the ones putting AGS on the map anyway.

So my position is that everything is nice and lovely as it is, and adding some fun and particular categories, while removing the clearly redundant ones, are the only things we should really be worried about. And here are my thoughts:

-Freeware vs Commercial - let's be inclusive here - AGS awards are for AGS games - how they were made and how much effort went into them is somewhat irrelevant to the final product. Adding the "Best Freeware Game" category makes the most sense here, since it's the most helpful one - you can actually go and download the games that won it and find out that even free AGS games are rad.

-SFX/Music/Voices - I'd cut it down to just "Best Sound [Design]" and "Best Music", since judging SFX by themselves is quite a challenge, and voiceacting is a pretty rare treat in AGS games still. Of course, that can give the games with voiceacting more edge in the "Best Sound" category, but then those games did put a lot of effort into sounds. As for "Best Music" - do not merge that with anything under any circumstances.

-Story/Dialogue - pretty different things, probably should be apart. Comedy games tend to rely more on the amusing dialogue, while thrillers need a good story. Both can be equally "well written", but on different merits.

-Art - currently the "Best Character Art" category seems a bit odd to me, so I'd go with "Best Artwork" and "Best Animation/Sprites"

-Gameplay - "Puzzles/Gameplay/Game Design" merged into one and "Programming" as a different, more technical award.

These cuts can also open some space for less general or genre award categories(see Baron's examples) that can help both the less fortunate, but still interesting games, and the fans of particular genres/types in their searches: Best Setting/Game World, Best Atmosphere, Best Comedy/Drama/Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy/etc, Best Experimental Game, Most Underrated(ok, this one might be too ironic and more trouble than it's worth ) and the like.

Everyone in my country knows that, so I'll pass
Wait, that was a hint, was it?
It would actually be interesting to see how well this movie is known in other parts of the world.

Yep.

Huge congratulations on the release! Looking forward to playing it very much, since, obviously, it looks and sounds amazing! Thanks, Crystal Shard team!

Lovely little game! Thoroughly amusing and charming, with a very classic Simon The Sorcerer-y feel and a fun wrap up in the end. Good job!
Also, it was especially fun for me to see what puzzles you'll come up with, because the general setup of the room and its contents felt pretty familiar to me(wizard labs with girl apprentices ftw!). Have to admit, though - you definitely did a better job in the puzzles department.

Finally got around to playing this one, and I'm really glad I did! The 90s cyberpunk feel is perfect - the colours, the music, the cheesy distortion effects, zany animated sequences, cyberpunk terminology and lore - delightful. And the world feels really well established, even if you disregard DWEF. The simple short story itself worked really well too, and the puzzling was about right. The only thing I wasn't too keen on was the interface - there was a lot of double-misclicking for me, even despite the slider, and a lot of instances of Dai covering the hotspots with his massive body and tail, which, coupled with the double-click problems, led to some frustration. Not nearly enough to ruin my experience, but still.

Thanks for this nice little treat, looking forward to seeing more!

Damn, I vividly remember the scene from the first screenshot, and I'm pretty sure that it features some well known american actor from the 40-50s(the film is from the 50s as well, I think), whose character has just escaped from something war-related and is enjoying the war-free life with a handsome gal by his side, and the second screen suggests some tropical location, and how can't I remember what it is?! This is driving me crazy...

My first reaction to getting KTX-1 was "This is perfect! I couldn't have gotten a better game if I was choosing myself!". Weeks have passed, and I'm quite utterly stumped. No idea why I can't come up with any ideas (see ), so I'll need to seriously step up my game in the next round if I want to end up with something good. Meanwhile - here's a recap of my modest progress so far in picture form.

A hilarious game, definitely my favourite game of OROW8 along with The Crystal Ball. I was sold on it from the very first slap - and from there it was all fun and lovely comedic darkness.

Actually, I liked that slap animation and sound so much, I answered several questions "wrong" on purpose. That doesn't make me a bad person, right?

Count me in!

That's the thing, though - I sort of am a freelance illustrator (and so is ThreeOhFour, which is why his opinion doesn't matter ) - I have no problem with painting whatever I'm told, and this approach would make it easier for me, while possibly pushing me out of my comfort zone in an interesting and educational way, but most people have no intention of becoming professional artists(or even not interested in trying out that role), and this is not an art class either - people can come and go as they please. Improving your drawing skills might be a big part of it, but it's still a community activity, and such activities need volunteering participants.

If there's enough people willing(or better - wanting) to participate in it when you get assigned a random game - great, I'm all for it, really, my only concern is whether we'll get enough people so this workshop can end up being as splendid as the last one. I'm trying to think from someone else's perspective here, so it's entirely possible that I'm mistaken on several of my assumptions - feel free to disregard the opinion of a person I constructed in my head.

I guess we can also solve some of the problems of random generation by allowing people to re-roll their game until they are willing to participate, although that has it's problems as well

I really like the box-art idea too - it's a fun challenge and you can approach it in many ways, which should allow pretty much anyone interested to join in. And I don't think the splash screen blitz is a problem - that one was mostly funny and silly(and awesome ) and didn't require participants to try and interpret existing characters and worlds, which, I imagine, would be a big part of this one.

Not too sure about assigning random games to people, though. Personally I don't have a problem with it - I know I'll have too hard a time choosing one myself, and I'm willing to draw pretty much anything, but if someone would like to use this opportunity to make a nice cover-art for their own game, or for a game they love, or have some clever idea in regards to a particular game - I'm not sure it would be wise to stop them - it's mostly about challenging ourselves to improve our skills and having fun, not having a fair competition, after all.

I think that back of the head belongs to Cary Grant and his amazing helmet hair, but apart from that I have no ideas.

I'm all for a new workshop as well! Character design could be fun, but I feel that it needs to be a tad more particular than that to really spark people's imaginations like it happened last time. "Monster" was a great topic, because it allowed for your imagination to run wild, but at the same time gave a strong enough vector to start thinking things up. We need something similar this time as well, I think. Or maybe we should do it completely differently, either way - I'm onboard with this.

Personally I actually enjoy it way more than Fallout & Arcanum so far due to the pacing and the treatment of combat.

You are dead to me now!  I can understand where you're coming from, though - the combat is better and it has "no filler - all killer" kind of design that really carries you through the game, instead of Fallout's "it's all filler, shut up, you love it". I do miss the freedom and world exploration though, in that regard it's really lacking for an RPG. And the funny thing is - (cue segue to the next question) SNES Shadowrun had plenty of that! You could walk around the city, catch a monorail to some other part of the town, check up on whichever cryptic clues you have etc. It had inventory puzzles too, Karma and money weren't strictly rationed out at plot points and you had to prepare for upcoming events yourself: going into a gang territory - better hire yourself a bodyguard, going to meet a vampire - make sure to stock up on stakes and holy water at your closest shaman shop. And it was beautiful. Admittedly, It was also pretty confusing and not nearly as engrossing, with tons of aimless wandering around trying to figure what to do and almost impossible to deal with without a walkthrough, with most of these problems stemming from giving the player too much freedom and too little direction. But I feel that they migh've gone a bit too far in the opposite direction with Shadowrun Returns, holding your hand at every turn. I admit that it's unfair to judge something on the basis of what it's not, but could've been, though, especially since Shadowrun Returns succeeds at being a pretty great game as it is.

Couldn't agree more. There couldn't be a better influence. Well, the original is a better influence than the new one, but even the new one takes its roots from the original so it's the original either way.

As much as I loved the old X-COMs, I think the new XCOM is even a better influence - it's cover-based system and 2 part turns are truly brilliant design decisions.

Personally I think the UI is great. Don't care about its influences when it looks so nice and is so pleasant to use.

Yeah, it does feel nice and slick and shiny, I'll give you that. I was mostly reffering to the somewhat awkward Stash and equipment interfaces, but they're not too bad either.

Also, I've tried playing a few user mods, and the good news are - they work! Even when not nearly as good as the original campaign - they can still be pretty fun and captivating, so I think we are safe to expect some great campaigns from the Shadowrun community in the future.

Already finished it, and enjoyed it quite a lot! It's not at all the huge, non-linear open-world Adventure/RPG in the Fallout/Arcanum tradition I dreamed it could be, and in several ways it's even inferior to the lovely SNES game, but it's far from being a disappointment, because, despite all the issues I have with it - it's a really fun game and I desperately want more. Wiz.

The combat is great (thumbs up for ripping it from XCOM), the graphics are gorgeous (yes, they are, if you disagree - you are wrong ), the Shadowrun setting is presented in all of it's wonderful, atmospheric, silly, derivative glory, the writing is mostly very good (and there's a lot of it), and, ultimately, everything works well.
And I didn't even mind the matix levels all that much - they are a bit crap drek, but I enjoyed the idea of helping your team by being a mean hacker decker.
The overall linearity and a somewhat casual, tablety feel of the UIs, coupled with the checkpoint save system (really, guys?) did irk me a bit, but not nearly enough to ruin the experience.

Also, it's quite hard for me to imagine this game being made if not for Kickstarter, which makes me all the more optimistic about the whole thing. It's also the first released Kickstarter game I had pledged to and had high hopes for. Much to my surprise - I didn't end up disappointed!

So, if you haven't done it already - go buy it, chummers! That is unless you find the idea of a good story-driven cyberpunk RPG repugnant, of course.