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There's a BBC game show called Only Connect (pretty sure my cousin's been on it. He's been on a few), which is essentially the same game.

Sometimes it's really hard, other times it's so easy you think it must be a trick.

Nice batch of entries guys. Well done. I'll have the voting set up soon.

@eri0o Your last post about your game was v6. Is this officially a finished entry?

[Mathilde's Dream]

Theme: Sing a Song of Sixpence
Guidelines: by jfrisby and Babar.

	Mathilde's Dream by Speksteen
	Blackbird Pie by Radiant

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing.
Wasn't that a dainty dish
To set before the king?

The king was in his counting house,
Counting out his money.
The queen was in the parlour,
Eating bread and honey.

The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes,
When down came a blackbird
And pecked off her nose.


Pick a line, character, setting, inventory item, element, myth about or something related to the nursery rhyme.




Raising a child I've been exposed to a lot of nursery rhymes lately - I thought this one of mysterious origin and meaning had potential as a theme, and was always absent from mixed-up-mother-goose and similar games  

See also:
https://youtu.be/Dksg19eCAv0?si=J4LpMkBhROLQOUF0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sing_a_Song_of_Sixpence
https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/families/rhymes-in-time/sing-a-song-of-sixpence

I can definitely see myself entering this round.

Well done to Breakfast Requiem. Congrats to @jfrisby and @Babar. Check your PMs soon.

Thanks to everyone who participated. You make MAGS amazing

I'm happy to go to a tie-breaker too.

*drumroll*

@Sinitrena

Spoiler

This story progressed so well and I liked how we are slowly dripped the information about the burnt down house and what happened there. I found myself deeply disappointed that she chose to murder the guy. It is a drastic measure, so points for outlandish-ness there. I think more could have been made of her own role in what happened, and the extent to which she blames herself or not.

[close]

@Baron

Spoiler

The premise is interesting, with the grandfather communicating as the boy's imaginary friend (I think), but I honestly couldn't get what was going on. Who was trying to call on the phone? Why did she suddenly dash to her feet at the end? And What is the monster referring to? I feel like those questions are all connected and I'm missing some detail which would answer them all, but after three reads I still can't get it.

[close]

My vote goes to:

Spoiler

Sinitrena, for a nicely-paced, if depressing, story.

[close]

[Paul Party: A life inside and out]

Paul Party: A life inside and out
A memoir

Spoiler

Chapter 6 - The Brown House

Well, this is it. The reason you bought this memoir in the first place. I'm going to keep it short though, if that's okay. It's the one thing everybody knows me for, and the one thing I didn't want to ever think about again, but always knew I would need to at some point. Everything I ever have to say about the so-called "Schwarzkopf Incident" will be contained in this chapter.

For the few readers who may be unfamiliar with the basics of this portion of my life, my editor has insisted I include a content warning.  There is reference to self-harm, sexual misconduct, and some scenes of a gross nature.

In 2013 Claire Dickens at Guffaw Productions approached me to collaborate on a rival to Big Brother. The concept she had in mind was summed up in four words: "Big Brother but boring". She needed no more words. I knew exactly where she was coming from. Big Brother had long forgotten the beauty of its own format – watching a group of relatable people just living in a house.  Very quickly, they started introducing all the self-described "characters", the crazy outfits and the sassy attitudes and the hunger to be noticed. And as the years went by, the tasks got more elaborate and manipulative. The producers just wanted to make these people cry, to traumatize them. It wasn't fun; it was a shameless, tragic freakshow.

The first series was fun. Of course, it had the novelty factor. But the housemates were, for the most part, normal people. They could have been any of us or our friends. And we got the amazing opportunity to live in the Big Brother house with them, through them. Of course, even season 1 was not without its fair share of scandal. Everyone remembers Nasty Nick, who did something so devious as to smuggle a pen into the house and use it to manipulative effect, playing all the other housemates off against each other.

So, when Claire came to me and said, "Big Brother but Boring." and I immediately said "yes". We spent the next year developing the show, building the house and holding auditions for housemates.

We had a strict set of audition guidelines, which basically boiled down to this: anyone with any personality, any drive to be famous, any sign of life behind the eyes, was swiftly rejected. When we had a shortlist of 50 candidates, we interviewed their families and colleagues exhaustively to make sure they weren't secretly interesting in some way or other. Hours and hours of recorded interviews about their average jobs, and their half-hearted hobbies. We then had physical and mental evaluations conducted, so that there might be no surprises. And finally, we found our 8 housemates: Nigel, Eric, Chandra, Leo, Marigold, Soo, Brenda, and Olivia; each decidedly uninteresting.

On July 25th, 2015, we opened the doors and welcomed our guests to The Brown House. There would be no big opening ceremony or fanfare. Just a chess set, some books, and some basic supplies. We debated long and hard about whether to even allow them alcohol. A young intern suggested they should have to earn the booze through a series of games, and Claire fired him on the spot. In the end, we decided that a small amount of alcohol would only be allowed on eviction nights.

Now, I should add a note here about our intentions. If it is not already clear, we did not set out to create a "boring" show. We set out to create a show that would be "interesting" to perhaps a different audience than Big Brother – an audience who would appreciate the social science experiment that Big Brother always should have been, as opposed to the mindless funny farm that it became.

So, no booze for the first night in The Brown House. It was going to be a thoroughly awkward and dull evening watching these pleasant but plain-dressed normies getting to know each other, and it was going to be great; a return to what nearly made Big Brother so genuinely interesting in the first place.

If you're reading this, then I presume you already know what happened in the days that followed – and how I ended up in prison. But let me take you through events from my point-of-view, and explain why I did what I did.

Day 1. The entrance sequence went without a hitch. We watched as the housemates shared pleasantries for the first hour. The most exciting thing that happened in that time was when Nigel invited someone to play a game of chess with him, but no one accepted. Brenda and Soo seemed to get on well and found that they were both owners of Jack Russel dogs. While they were comparing notes, Eric and Nigel went round the house inspecting the quality of the set design. Chandra, Olivia, and Marigold stood in the kitchen area talking about their favourite biscuits. Leo sat awkwardly alone for a while and seemed to be muttering something to himself.

Behind the scenes, there were some slightly panicked faces. We didn't need a nutter talking to himself on the first night. Far too interesting. I, too, felt a nervous stirring in my belly. It didn't help that I was running on caffeine and meat pies from Greggs. As a distraction from Leo's mutterings, I made the decision to roll some of the pre-recorded family-and-friend videos. Leo's father talked about how Leo was a quiet man, kept himself to himself but always visited most weekends but usually had no gossip, and that he had recently broken up (amicably) with a woman he had met at church the year before.

We also played the interview with Olivia's best friend, Sarah. According to Sarah, Olivia, who was 35 at the time, had never had a proper boyfriend and was still a virgin. In hindsight, perhaps virgins are not the best fodder for a "boring" TV show. Turns out they are actually gagging for it, and putting them together on live TV lowers their inhibitions, even without booze.

It was about 03:38 am when my phone rang and woke me up. It was Claire. Twitter was on fire. We were trending, but for all the wrong reasons. Olivia and Eric (also a virgin until that day, by all accounts) were fucking each other's brains out live on camera and Leo had carved "¡ᗡO⅁ ƜⱯ I" into his own chest with a razor blade... barely 8 hours after the Brown Door had closed behind them.

Day 2. Leo was swiftly removed from the house. He was taken care of and is now, thankfully, doing fine (you will have seen his successful mindfulness videos on social media, I'm sure). We were ordered to stop the cameras until further notice. We had to break the rules and let the police in to talk to the housemates. We also decided to let the housemates each have a family member come in and offer some comfort for one hour. None of the housemates were smokers but Olivia's mum needed a cigarette and we let her have one in the garden before ushering all the non-housemates out again. So, Leo was out. Soo was too shaken up by it all and opted to leave at this point, and we didn't stop her. Chandra, Nigel, Eric, Marigold, Olivia and Brenda remained.

Claire and I agreed we had made one big mistake. We hadn't informed the housemates that they were supposed to be normal. We'd just assumed that they would be, based on their usual characters. But Eric and Olivia were already favourites on Twitter and the cameras weren't even rolling. Eric's sister later said that she had never known him do anything so out of character. She was both disgusted by, and proud of, her brother's outlandish on-screen behaviour.

Day 3. I woke up with the most terrible gut-ache from the caffeine and stress. But there was good news. I don't know what Channel 4's lawyers did, but they managed to get us back on the air on Day 3. It came with a caveat, though: we had to agree to a 30-minute delay in broadcast. And the kill-switch was to be manned at all times, which we all agreed was common sense.

Viewing figures went through the roof. Word had got out about all the self-mutilation and the hanky-panky. Our experiment seemed to have failed, but I was determined to bring things back to some level of normalcy.

So, I decided to go into the house myself. After all, I'm the dullest person I know.

I pressed the green button and addressed the six remaining housemates.

"Housemates. This is Producer Paul speaking. After the events of the last two days, we have decided we need a reset. As of 2pm, I will personally be entering the house as your new housemate."

The six  of them all looked at each other with surprise and confusion. Claire shook her head. "We've failed, Paul. Let's just pull the plug."

But I was a man possessed. I honestly thought going into The Brown House myself was a stroke of genius. God knows why. It was a terrible idea... as you know.

I gathered a few changes of clothes and gave some instructions to the team, and then, despite my worsening bowel condition, I entered the house through a secret door in the Diary Room.

An unintended consequence of being a producer of the show and a housemate, is that I immediately became the "leader". It was quite something. The others were sucking up to me from the minute I showed my face, wanting to know behind the scenes details, trying to better me up in case I might have some sway over the results of eviction nights. I was the patriarch of the family.

But I had to keep things boring. This was my job now. I suggested we talk about dreams. Everyone hates listening to other people talk about dreams.

Brenda's eyes lit up. "My dream is to try dogging," a mischievous glint sparkled in the 62-year-old's eye. "Just once."

"No, no! Not that kind of dream." I said quickly. "I mean, any dreams you can remember, like, night time ones?"

They all shook their heads, "Not really," Eric said, and they all nodded agreement.

That's the spirit. I thought to myself. But then that cheeky glint returned to Brenda's eye.

"Well, there was one I had once," said Brenda, lowering her voice, as though her husband might be in the next room. "I was having an orgy in a car park with some strangers. One man was whipping his Wotsit against my face. But when I woke up, it was just my Jack Russell was licking my mouth."

Why now, Brenda? I despaired.

I suggested we all get a thoroughly early night, and nobody fought me on that. I arranged it so that Eric and Olivia could sleep in a separate room with the cameras off. Not so much for their privacy, but to avoid it becoming a spectacle.

Day 4. At five o'clock in the morning there was a terrible scream. It was Brenda. I turned on the light and Chandra was sat over her head, whipping his Wotsit against her lips.

"What?" he said. "I thought she liked it."

I actually thanked God for the 30-minute delay and shouted to the camera in the corner of the room to cut the broadcast and roll another interview. I don't know which one they played. I flashed back to the interview with Chandra's father. "A good little Hindu boy," he had called him. And until this moment, I had no doubt that he had made his father very proud. But now, in a moment of madness, he was a sex-offender. We had no choice but to evict him from The Brown House and let the police handle it.

Brenda walked out as well, too. Who's to blame her?

So, by lunchtime on Day 4, we'd already lost four housemates. With myself included, we were five. I locked myself in the diary room and took the secret door into the behind-the-scenes area. Claire's hair had turned white overnight and she burst into tears. "What the fuck have we done?"

I hugged her and assured her that things were going to get better (which, of course, they didn't). Channel 4 told us we could turn the cameras back on to record, but that there would no longer be a live stream at all. They would put out a measly 20-minute digest every evening and that was final. We were told in no uncertain terms that if anything else happened, they would pull the plug. Claire and I both knew that our careers in TV were already over.

When I returned to the communal area, the mood was heavy. I decided to challenge Nigel to a game of chess. He thrashed me and I didn't want to keep playing. It was Marigold who suggested we play a game of cards, and for a few quiet hours we did a good job of pretending to enjoy a game of Texas Hold'em, using dried lentils as betting chips. Marigold proved to have quite the poker face, and did very well out of us.

Eric and Olivia were still inseparable, but they made a sweet couple and after the past few days, it seemed crazy that I'd been upset about them getting together on the first night. I wished them luck.

After the poker, Marigold made a point of giving us all our exact number of lentils back, saying that she felt guilty about taking them from us, as if it had been our life-savings. We humoured her and gratefully pocketed our lentils.

Then, at around 4pm, a voice I didn't recognize came over the speaker system. "Housemates. It's time to make your first eviction nominations. Eric, please come to the Diary Room." I had completely forgotten that today was nomination day. The other four looked at me as if I had been secretly keeping that information from them, but I had genuinely forgotten. It occurred to me that they might start to distrust me once they realised that I could just ask my producer colleagues to tell me the results, or even fudge them myself. So, I promised them that I would forfeit my own vote, and that I wouldn't go anywhere near the Diary Room until the eviction announcement the following day. They accepted my word.

One by one, Eric, Marigold, Olivia and Nigel went into the Diary Room and returned, avoiding eye-contact with everyone else.

The rest of the afternoon seemed to be going by with a remarkable lack of hitches and the dust was settling on the shitstorm of the past few days. The nominations also seemed to have put a downer on the proceedings, which hopefully meant an end to the outlandish nonsense we'd had to endure.

I was wrong, of course. Marigold suddenly pulled one of the pastel pink drapes from the window, wrapped it around her like a dress, stuck her bare leg out of it and decided to start singing some sultry number to Eric. She could sing as well, which she'd managed to keep quiet during auditions. We'd made a point of rejecting anyone who looked like they had ever been anywhere near a microphone. Indeed, her husband, Ralph AND her best friend Phoebe, had both told us in interviews that Marigold was categorically not the type of person to ever burst into song.

And then she burst into flames.

Olivia was standing there with a flamethrower made from a can of Schwarzkopf hairspray and a lighter, which I recognized as the one Olivia's mum had used on Day 2, and was torching Marigold's face and hair.

"HE'S MINE!!!" Olivia shouted, like something out of the Jerry Springer Show. We tried to calm her down, but she was a woman possessed. The smell of Marigold's burning flesh flooded my nose and lungs as I tried to position myself to grab the weapon safely, but none of us could get anywhere near her.

Then... I felt the familiar pang of IBS in my gut. The one that says "now or now". I chose "now", and shook my trousers off, my poker lentils sprawling every which way.  Then, I released everything I had in an almighty bubbling torrent of diarrhoea, gushing to the backdrop of Marigold's piercing howls and the whoof-whoof of Olivia's Schwarzkopf flamethrower. Half of it sprayed onto the sofa behind me, the rest cascaded down the inside of my legs, soaking my socks and forming a puddle beneath me.

Quickly, the flame stopped. It was the smell that had done it. Olivia turned to face me and immediately started retching. I felt a second wave coming on. I held my belly melodramatically and stepped towards the woman.

"Don't come any closer," she said, holding up her hairspray flamethrower. But I stepped forward again, and sharted one final shart. Olivia dropped her weapon and turned to run. But she didn't get far. I kicked some of the lentils towards her. Nigel and Eric took my cue, reached into their pockets and threw their own lentils to the floor around Olivia. She slipped, stumbled and cracked her head on the corner of the kitchen counter.

At that moment, the doors burst open and members of the backstage crew burst in with the medical team behind them. Oliva was pronounced dead at the scene. Marigold was left with burns so disfiguring that they had to blur out her head during the live broadcast of her testimony against myself and the channel, to avoid upsetting the viewers.

As expected, the show was pulled off air immediately and Claire and I were both arrested, along with the director of the channel and members of the production team.

I won't go into the whole court case, since the Amazon Prime dramatization is surprisingly true to the reality, and you've probably already watched it.

Eric is doing all right for himself, now. He was approached by Schwarzkopf to become a brand ambassador in a deal worth a reported 15 million Euros.

Nigel has since become a close friend of mine. He came to play chess with me a few times during my 3-and-a-half years in prison. He won every single game.

This is all I will ever say on The Brown House.

[close]

[Reply to Baron]

I think it's a good idea to put the story title outside the tags.

Spoiler

...But not anytime soon, as I've completely run out of runway on this competition.  Any chance of an extension?

[close]

Reply to Baron
by Stupot

Spoiler

I might benefit from an extension too. I have actually written a 2500-word draft but it is unpublishable at this point in time, and I'm not exactly sure if I'm gonna have a chance to bring it to a readable state.

[close]

This looks really good. Keep the updates coming.

This looks fun. All the best.

[MORT: Manageably OK Response Team]

Voting is now OPEN!

Please vote using the poll above.

	MORT: Manageably OK Response Team by RootBound
	Pod Dwellers by Mandle
	Breakfast Requiem by jfrisby and Babar

As always, please let me know if I've made any mistakes or missed anything out.

@ShortWlf

A lot of people don't like where we're going with AI art and for all the good reasons mentioned in this thread. "Witch-hunt" is a bit melodramatic, but if there is any sniff that someone is trying to pass off AI-generated or assisted work as their own, maliciously or not, it will be called out.

It's the wild west out there right now and a lot of dishonesty is afoot. Personally, I'm not dead against all use of AI for personal/hobbyist-level assets. I'm in agreement that it could be another tool in the toolbox. But you gotta read the room, and most rooms would appreciate absolute transparency.

In fact, I think a nice little post/tutorial openly detailing your technique could not only provide that transparency, but could also be useful to someone who might want to do something similar. Be aware though, people are always going to point out the tell-tale signs, either way. Treat that as constructive feedback to improve the technique.

Here's another bad guess...

Spoiler

C(l)overbands?

[close]

Ahhh! That's not it, but you've crossed the ball to me and the goal is open so I'm gonna have to tap it in:

Spoiler

Sham rock

[close]

I've cast my single vote, but I don't see the point in dwelling on this. I'd rather see the next topic.

[OneDollar]

Finish Your MAGS Game
Set by: OneDollar

Voting is underway,
Please vote using the poll above.

	Barn Runner: Fashionably Late (MAGS Version) by Ponch
	Steeplejack by GOC Games
	Sherwood by Radiant
	In Our Midst by OneDollar

If you're anything like me your hard drive is full of half-finished, abandoned MAGS entries gathering digital dust. Well time to open up the vault and actually release something!

Find one of your previous MAGS games that you never completed and get it to at least a playable state. Let us know which MAGS it was for (if you can remember) and how far you'd got before you stopped working on it.

If you don't have any suitable games but you want to take part anyway, make a game about finishing something. Or ask if anyone has an old MAGS project they'd like to donate to you.



What is MAGS?
Started in 2001, MAGS is a competition for amateur adventure game makers. The idea is to create a game in under a month, following the guidelines set by the previous winner. It aims to help you work to a deadline, improve your skills, and provide a kick-start into making adventure games. Regardless of skill, MAGS is for everyone. Voting is based on "favourite" games, and not the most artistic, or the best coded. If you have bad art skills, use it as a chance to do some graphic work. If you're sub-standard at coding, use it as a chance to give scripting a go. Ultimately, people will vote for the most enjoyable entry.

Rules
Entering MAGS is simple. First, conceptualize your game following the month's criteria (see above). Second, create your game fuelled only by coffee. Finally, post your game in this thread, including:

* A working download link
* The title of your game
* A suitable in-game screenshot

At the end of the month, voting will begin, usually lasting for fourteen days, and the winner chooses the next month's theme.

Remember that this is a challenge to see what you can do in a month, so any tinkering you do after that, including fixing minor glitches, is against the spirit of the competition. The exception to this is that you may go in and fix major, game-breaking bugs only during voting. We want you to have a game that voters can actually play and that runs on their machines.

So to reiterate, during the voting period fixing major, game-breaking bugs is okay, fixing minor glitches or making cosmetic changes is cheating.

Tips
Here are some ways to make sure you have a game to submit at the end of the month:
* Make a tiny game. Plan small, then cut it in half. Find shortcuts (e.g. if making walkcycles is time-consuming, make the characters static or have it in the first person).
* Plan to have your game playable and submittable with a week to spare. This way you have a week to fix bugs, add some flourishes and maybe even get someone to test it.
* Plan to submit it a day or so early. This way, if there are any technical issues with uploading, they can be sorted out in time.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Need a little help with graphics? Perhaps The AGS Trove has something you can use.
Don't want to go it alone? Try the Recruitment board.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What kind of music do fake Leprechauns listen to?

Spoiler

Fauxk music?

[close]

[Brian Eggs is Lost in the Woods]

The winner of MAGS February is Brian Eggs is Lost in the Woods by @OneDollar.
Well done, sir. I'll PM you separately about setting the theme for April.

Well done everyone for a great selections of games and thanks to everyone who voted.

Last call for votes, gang.

I'm glad to see a few more people than usual entering because I've had to scrap what I was working on. I had a good idea, then I had another good idea, then I tried to combine the two ideas into one story, but it got too big, so I decided to stick to the first idea but then I realised it was all so bad I wouldn't even let my dog read it.

If I can pull out a cheeky micro or limerick then I will but better to assume I'm out. Sorry guys. Great theme too.