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Some interesting entries, looking forward to playing them.

I did come up with a (totally original, not at all copyright infringing) idea for this... on the 20th. Life's too busy to finish it for the deadline so I'm just going to work on it in my own time. Here's a little teaser screenshot until then:

Sorry, I started something but didn't get very far. Not an entry (obviously).


That's a great background newwaveburritos, shame if nobody gives you any competition.

[Hannah_Banana]

It was very close but with 9 votes (and despite the threat of previously owned cocktails) our winner is Hannah_Banana's desert oasis!

Thanks for all the entries and votes everyone, and over to Hannah for the next theme...

[Concept:]

OK, entries are now closed and it's officially voting time! There's six wonderful backgrounds to choose from, but only three categories. Comment with your favourite background for each of the following:

Concept: What is the background about? What sort of mood does it spark? What is, as it were, the big idea?
Playability: What is its opportunity for gameplay like? Walkable areas, hot-spots, and so forth?
Artistic Execution: How well does the picture convey an atmosphere? How well is it executed?

You can see a summary of all the entries up in the first post.

The deadline for voting is the 9th of June (I think I've got the right month this time).

Great entries all round! If anyone else wants to join in this is your one week reminder until voting starts.

Wow that's not even this month, I must have been half asleep when I posted that. Thanks Stupot, deadline fixed.

[Background Blitz: Unexpected Shelter - voting now open]

Background Blitz: Unexpected Shelter - voting now open


You're a long way from civilisation... or so you thought. Suddenly you come across a strange structure. It looks man-made, but what's it doing here? Who built it? Are they still here?

Your goal is to draw a background suitable for an adventure game that fits with the theme of Unexpected Shelter. Use the pictures above for inspiration if you like, but also feel free to think outside of the box.

You have until the 2nd of June to get your entries in. Have fun!

It's now voting time! As per usual voting is open to all and I want to hear your favourite for each of the following three categories:

Concept: What is the background about? What sort of mood does it spark? What is, as it were, the big idea?
Playability: What is its opportunity for gameplay like? Walkable areas, hot-spots, and so forth?
Artistic Execution: How well does the picture convey an atmosphere? How well is it executed?

The deadline for voting is the 9th of June.

Entries:
[imgzoom]https://i.ibb.co/J3tQ1Bf/shelter-copy.png[/imgzoom]
by stylez75


by Mouth for war


by Hannah_Banana


by newwaveburritos

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/n6NJJOI.png[/imgzoom]
by Nr. 2698


by milkanannan

Thanks everyone, and great backgrounds all around! I'll start a new competition shortly.

I'd love to know how the story continues...

It takes three attempts to win the prize, but as you only have one golf ball you'll need to find another two. On a connected background (that I conveniently haven't drawn) there's a fellow golfer struggling to putt up a slope, a motion-activated parrot animatronic connected to a speaker and a golf hole decorated with a miniature pirate ship. Check the fountain and you'll see a discarded golf ball, but it's out of reach and our protagonist isn't about to get their shoes wet. Instead you grab the rigging from the pirate ship and combine with your golf club to form an impromptu net, then use that to fish the ball out the water. You get the second ball by turning the volume on the parrot speaker all the way up, then activating the parrot just as the golfer is about to putt making it squawk loudly and surprising them. They'll accidentally hit the ball really hard, bouncing it off the walls and scenery. It ends up in the treasure chest, so you can take it from there. Then it's just a case of using all three balls to attempt the 19th hole three times and you'll win on the third try.

It's all obvious in hindsight really.

[Hannah_Banana]

Never sure if I'm supposed to vote in things I've entered. If you want to count my votes:

Concept: Hannah_Banana - Golf in space! I imagine the bird swooping down and grabbing the ball just as I think I'm about to make the shot, or trying to bounce off the different objects.
Playability: newwaveburritos - Clear layout and large walkable area that lets you get to most of the screen.
Artistic Execution: stylez75 - I like the creepy but fun atmosphere of a deserted golf course in a forest at night.

Spent way longer than I'd intended to on this.

[imgzoom]https://onedollarproductions.co.uk/uploads/MiniGolfBG.png[/imgzoom]
The bonus 19th hole of Captain Greenbeard's Pirate Mini Golf - get a hole-in-one and win a coupon for a free game. That's just what you need to get rid of that annoying kid who's hogging the claw machine in the arcade. It's a difficult shot though, you're never going to make it on your first try. Unless you can somehow tip the odds in your favour...

Shame I missed the awards ceremony but I just watched Scavenger's recording.  Thanks everyone, especially those who played a Christmas game in the middle of March! Congratulations to my fellow award winners and thanks again to Stupot for hosting MAGS all this time. Hopefully it won't be another 8 years until my next game...

Thanks milkanannan!

I had the CD version of Toonstruck which had an unsolvable puzzle in it. I was big into point n click games at the time so i knew some of the annoyance that could be involved within their puzzles so i spent days trying solve this Toonstruck puzzle which later on turned out to be a game breaking bug. Think i read about the bug in a gamer magazine as access to the internet back then was limited.

Curious what this was, do you remember? Toonstruck is one of my favourites.

Ages ago someone on these forums (Monkey0506 maybe?) found a soft-lock in The Secret Of Monkey Island. Spoilers for a game you've all already played:

Spoiler

In part 2 when you're on the ship you need to light an item on fire so you can light the cannon fuse. There's a few different items you can use (feather, business card, book), but the problem is you can also add most of them to the cooking pot at which point they're gone for good. The game tries to stop you locking yourself by letting you set fire to the treasure map/dance instructions from part 1, and it won't let you add these to the pot to get rid of them. The problem is it's possible to find the treasure just by walking around the forest without every needing to buy the map. So you could get to part 2 without having the map in your inventory, add all the other flammable items to the cooking pot and then you're stuck.

[close]

[Prep Time by heltenjon]

My two cents:

Prep Time by heltenjon

Spoiler

As advertised it's a blend of joke game and fan boy game. Gameplay wise there's not a lot to do, just working through a conversation tree with (I think?) no real branching or possibility of failing. I'm not a huge Batman fan so I can't really comment on the fan boy side, but I know enough to get the joke.

[close]

Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week by newwaveburritos

Spoiler

This game has great atmosphere. The backgrounds are wonderful and there's loads of them (even if two were made outside the competition). The character art is also really good, and I love all the little touches you've added (e.g. death appearing in the graveyard, Nate casting long shadows when walking by the big windows, the extra animations for things like warming your hands on the fire and climbing on the train). The music fits well too, and it all combines to make an interesting and cohesive world that I wanted to explore. The story starts intriguingly, it shows you the aftermath of an event you're somehow responsible for and it seems like you're going to have work out what you did and put it right. But instead the rest of the game is chasing a clone from scene to scene. It was funny and I wasn't bored or anything, but for my taste I'd have liked some more story about how Nate listening to a tape led to evil clone wrecking a wedding party. Puzzles are mostly go to a location or talk to a person until the next scene happens. It gives the game more of an interactive story feel, though maybe some more puzzles would have balanced out the minimal plot. Again, just my personal opinion. Anyway I don't want to sound too harsh because I enjoyed it a lot. It looks and sounds great and it kept me entertained and interested for the whole play through. Also the game with the most interesting interpretation of the theme for my money.

[close]

Castle Escape: Chapter 2 by fernewelten

Spoiler

I hadn't played chapter 1, so I played through that first. There's a definite jump in art quality between the two, the study is nicely drawn and full of intricate details and objects. The transparent cupboard doors when playing as the ghost are a cool idea, and I'm also a big fan of how he raises and lowers his head depending what height he's looking at. Being able to play as two characters with different abilities was also great. I got stuck a few times with Chapter 1 because an object I'd tried before had changed its interaction after I'd done something else, yet it wasn't always obvious the two were linked. Chapter 2 doesn't really have any of this which is an improvement, the only minor example I can think of is that ghost doesn't mention the crystal ball when looking on top of the clock. The shoes 'stopping time' puzzle was a bit out there, but I didn't get stuck on it. The secret passage puzzle was the best one. Of the three games this feels like the most rounded, in that it has decent graphics, enough plot and some good puzzles.

[close]

My vote:

Spoiler

It was a tough choice. Castle Escape: Chapter 2 narrowly edged out Saturday Night for me.

[close]

Three (hopefully!) entries seems a good turnout for such a short month, good luck!

Congratulations brewton!

[Getting the Picture]

Out of curiousity, did those of you who reached the secret level in Getting the Picture reach it by

Spoiler

finding the hidden point in-game or by getting the second chance triggered by acing all the question points?

[close]

Spoiler

The second chance. I went through the game multiple times trying to brute force my way to full points and spotted the inventory GUI a few runs in. First I figured you'd forgotten to disable it, then I read the descriptions and thought that was the joke. Didn't think about trying to use them on anything until I got the second chance ending.

[close]

Looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with!

[Signal Loss by brewton]

This was a really close vote for me too.

Signal Loss by brewton

Spoiler

Very good game, and I thought it was a really interesting take on the theme. Most of the puzzles are very straight forward and feel quite guided, so the game comes across more as an interactive story than a puzzler. The recalibration puzzle was a highlight though. It was kind of fun that you could drop items on the floor, though I couldn't find any reason why I would need to. The art and presentation gives me 5 Days A Stranger vibes, though that could also be because I haven't played many horror themed point and clicks. If I had one suggestion it's that the jump from "there's something strange in the vents" to "a guy's eyes exploded and now he's dead" happens very fast. If there was a bit more build up (e.g. a character starts acting strange, another character goes missing, you see something weird but don't get a good look at it, that missing character suddenly turns up changed or dead... those kind of tropes) I think it might make the game's atmosphere even better. My two cents on the language - you drop two F bombs close together and PG-13 movies only get one (so I've heard, I'm not American) so maybe bump the language up from mild? Anyway great MAGS entry and great game, congratulations!

[close]

Little Leonardo by Racoon

Spoiler

Lovely little game! Cute story and art style, and it fits really well with the pictorial speech bubbles. Making an almost word-less game seems difficult, but you definitely pulled it off. I was going to mention your easel hint bug but I see you've already fixed it, so no bug reports from me! I got through most of the game fine, but got stuck on the last puzzle for a while. I was on the verge of looking at your walk through when I found the solution. I also really liked that you went to the effort of adding different animations depending how you solved it. Overall fun, interesting little story in a cute package, well done!

[close]

Get the Picture by Pajama Sam

Spoiler

I can see what you're going for, but in its current state it's very limited and buggy. The text is hard to read, but I think it always says 0 percent on a successful picture? Also it felt like the game lets you take the picture a bit early for a lower score, but if you're slightly late it doesn't count - I was expecting to get scored depending on how much of the eagle is on screen, so if I was late but most of the eagle was visible I'd still score something. Also I think I got a total score of -242 at the end? It's not a bad idea, it's just not quite there yet. Also I second other people's suggestions to put all your game files into a single .zip before you host them so that we can just download the one file, otherwise you'll get people downloading the .exe and wondering why it doesn't work.

[close]

Getting the Picture by heltenjon and Ingrid (late bonus game)

Spoiler

This was fun! I clearly don't know my art very well, I got 7 on my first play through and it took an embarrassing number of retries to get full marks. The music's a short loop, but it fits the game well. About half-way through my first run I discovered you'd hidden dialogue for different parts of the pictures which was a fun surprise, then the final bonus points were a nice twist too. I enjoyed it, it was a good little distraction.

[close]

My vote goes to

Spoiler

Little Leonardo. Signal Loss is a very close second and it took me a while to decide between the two of them.

[close]

Happy birthday AGS! I joined the forums in 2006, though I first found AGS a few years before that. I was scared of programming and it boasted the interactions editor on the website - no coding required! I downloaded it and had a play but I couldn't figure out how to do branching if/else stuff, and also it was only 256 colours which confused me when all my (terrible) imported art was the wrong colours. I came back after I'd learnt some programming through school and decided it was fun and not scary after all. Still kind of miss the days when I was only working part time and could hangout on the forums and Stickam and sometimes actually finish making games.