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One thing that might help you is anything with a simple level editor, rather than a full game editor. For instance, many puzzle games let you make more levels without scripting.

Run, Cuppit, Run!!!

Yay! Well done!

Rock Rock Rock by SSH
Magical Whatever Girl by Eggie
Erk - Adventures in Stone Age Real Estate by OneDollar

Very nice entries! That's going to be a tough pick...

Aren't team efforts sort of not accepted or something..?

Sure they are accepted, I can think of plenty of MAGS games that were team efforts.

Google up "Slouching Towards Bedlam". It's awesmoe.

[having more categories dilutes the purpose of all of them]

Wow, lots of suggestions here.

I don't really think we need so many new categories.

"Best newcomer" sounds more like a FOREGO award, besides we seem to be unable to give it a meaningful definition. If Mr. A releases a short demo-ish game and then a big one, whereas Ms. B starts a handful of projects and abandons them without releasing anything, before doing a big game, why would A be less eligible?

I don't think "best parody" or "best remake" is necessary either, considering neither is at all an under-appreciated genre (and besides, we don't get enough submissions to fill those extra categories). Likewise, I don't see the point of adding a category to give an award to the (few) commercial games we get each year, as those are hardly under-appreciated either. Unless the point is to omit commercial games from the other awards, which I don't think is a good idea.

And the "best innovation" category strikes me as rather arbitrary. Doing some clever scripting trick is really best programming instead (and likely won't be noticed anyway); doing a feature that simply hasn't been done in AGS before is hardly innovative either.

I think my point here is that having more categories dilutes the purpose of all of them, which I don't think is a good thing.

Gameplay is definitely distinct from puzzles, though. For instance, LOOM has great gameplay but barely any puzzles.

Personally I'd like bringing back the P3n1s award, but restricting it to games made as a joke. But given the flame wars we've had on the subject, I can see why people wouldn't want to.

The main problem with that GUI is that it uses up too much real estate.

But since we're talking about PFGs anyway, one of the suggestions I've heard at Mittens was indeed doing an AGS platformer again, so I might just write up a super mario clone at some point

Nice idea, Jet!

Especially the speedrun there

Well, that was a broken contest

Leon and SV, thanks for your feedback. I think I'll do a KATA-deluxe version some time in the future, considering there's numerous Windows functions I haven't parodied yet...

Sounds good.

On the last mittens some people mentioned going on a cruise near Miami, is that still in the plans or is it not mittens'y enough?

As these games are more than just having sex with characters....

Yes, really. I play them for the articles, honest.

The font editor (see my siggy) can import other kinds of font if you want (through copy/pasting them)...

[KATA]

Ah. And just to prove I'm slightly more serious than that,

KATA

From the twisted mind that brought you META comes another exercise in surreality. Remember the buggy game Awesmoe Quest? It has a sequel, Amzaing Quest, which as the name suggests is really amzaing! Only, it's a fundamentally broken game: you can't get it to install.

I'm sure all of you have fond (?) memories of getting some freakin' game to work on your particular system setup while it worked fine at your neighbor's, and all your friends had already completed level five while you were still clicking furiously on installshield dialogs. KATA recreates that atmosphere, as you get to maneuver through Softromike Skylights (an operating system by the makers of BHT) in order to get it to work.

If you don't understand what I just said, play the game to find out. It's without doubt the best thing since sliced milk.

[Put in a funny narrator(a funny not too funny or boring)]

Put in a funny narrator(a funny not too funny or boring)

Which reminds me...

Be careful about witty narrators, because they can quickly become tedious if they're not actually funny. Putting puns everywhere tends to quickly fall flat; and getting twenty textboxes in a sequence when LOOKing at a TREE also gets old really quickly.

You don't have to try to make everything funny. Your jokes will stand out better if the entire game is not already covered in a glop of low-grade humor. This is why Monkey Island is so much funnier overall than Leisure Suit Larry.

Okay, I dropped you three a PM as well.

I've received two sets of voices in good order (Grundy's and Joel's) - thanks guys!

So... what goes onto the checklist? "Don't write bad puzzles"?

What should go on the checklist is that "it's much easier to be a critic than to be a game designer".

Most people that say "this game has bad puzzles" actually mean "this game had a puzzle that I, personally, didn't like or couldn't figure out as quickly as I'd like to". What we put on the checklist should be based on what the adventure gaming genre is, not on what some people think it should aspire to - and the adventuring genre has been established to contain, among other things, puzzles. I've seen people criticize some adventure game because it doesn't contain feature X, even though no other adventure game contains that feature either; if you think about it, that is rather silly.