Messages

AGS is first and foremost a hobbyist adventure game software. The handful of people who have made any decent money from their games are (above company included) generally people who got plenty of freeware games and a decent reputation under their belts long before they took the plunge and started charging money for their games.

Id have to spend 2-3  years on making a game and i would hate that only 500 people buy it.

For most people, 500 sales would be called a success for their first commercial project, and is not an insignificant chunk of income if they charge a proper price for it. But if you’re looking to actually earn a living you’re going to need people to know who you are, and you’re going to need them to want your game before it’s released. So you’ll be marketing, you’ll be engaging with the community (here on these boards, and in the wider adventure community). You’ll be playing other people’s adventure games, talking about them publicly, entering jams and contests, sharing your learning process on blogs and social media, and hopefully building a network of fellow enthusiasts.

You’re gonna have to be enthusiastic about the genre if you want people to believe that you made a game for them and not for the money. If money is your main motivation, that’s fine, but I don’t think it’s wise to admit that to your potential customers.

Others have said “start off small”. I would add to that “start off even smaller”. Things will take much much longer than you think…. no, longer than that, especially as you’re still learning the software. I recommend starting off with a little one-room escape game, as they contain all the elements of a classic adventure game (puzzles, items, dialogue, menus, maybe a couple of animations, if you’re able).

Best of luck. I see you’ve already been around the forums with questions . Keep doing that, everyone round here is pretty friendly.

At least 12 visits are mine  but I don't vote in competitions I participate. Thanks for your comment Baron, I'll think about it.

Unlike some situations where it might be seen as unfair to vote in a competition in which you participated, here we encourage participants to vote (nobody else does, so we kind of have to). Also, it’s good practice if we all try to vote to avoid any skewering of the results. We generally do not vote for ourselves though. I’m certain that myself, Mandle and Baron will all be voting, but will not award points to ourselves. So, it would be helpful if you could do the same.

I am going to have way too many ideas for this one. Really grand ideas in scope too, but I need to do something simple.

Scope creep is the evil that sometimes wins. But there are ways to beat it. Set yourself strict limits in terms of number of rooms, character, items, etc. You can always expand your world with your bigger ideas once the MAGS is over.

Good luck if you do decide to make something.

[Sometimes Evil Wins]

Theme: Sometimes Evil Wins
Set by: Lapsking

	The Stinker by Slasher
	Siren by GOC Games
	Unfair by ZapZap

Never Tom can eat Jerry. Always cops put bad guys behind the bars at the end. Always good defeats evil. But only in stories. The reality is countless cats have killed countless mouses. The reality is Countless thieves, murderers and rapists could run away from justice. In fact through history most of the time Purple Tentacles rule the world and there isn't much Bernard and his friends can do. Real life is far from Hollywood. Sometimes evil wins.




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.[/size]

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hooray! Three entries!

Now it's time to play the games and vote for your favourite one. Please vote using the poll above.

	Cutman by GOC Games (ddavey1983)
	State of Mind by Slasher
	The Potion Master by CaptainD and Kastchey

Ok try not to laugh

Yeaaaah, I failed this challenge.

Are we supposed to input an answer to the question rather than a command? If so:

> This person is your apprentice sister.

[My Friend, Joanna.]

My Friend, Joanna.

I stepped toward the automatic door and waited longer than I was happy with for it to open, then I stepped into the coffee shop. Its beautifully conditioned air quickly made me forget about the door. Though it was still early (only 7:50 a.m.), it was already a hot and sticky morning, so the air inside was bliss.

My friend Joanna, sitting by a window, stood up and waved me over. We said our hellos and then sat down and waited to be waited on.

The thing about Joanna was: she was twitchy. Really twitchy. She never told me why, but always insisted it wasn’t Parkinson’s or something. And to her credit, it never seemed to affect her all that much.  Often the spasms were barely perceptible (a nose-flicker here, a finger-tremble there) but occasionally she would shudder violently. It was constant. But despite this, she functioned surprisingly well.

Nevertheless, despite her insistence that she wasn’t sick, I could never help shake the feeling that one day, maybe soon, she was going to fall seriously ill or worse.

“Nice café” I said, shaking off my negative thoughts.

“I come here nearly every day.” She pointed her chin to the window. “See that lady there?”

“With the pushchair?”

“Yeah.” Joanna’s ear was twitching now. “You know. Every time I come in here, she’s out there walking that empty pram.”

“Weird. I wonder why.”

“I reckon she always wanted kids, so she walks around pretending she has one.” A shudder in the neck. A jolt of the thumb.

“Possible. Or maybe she lost a child and can’t let go... literally. Pushing around an imaginary baby.”

“She might be homeless, and pushes this buggy around collecting cans.”

“I don’t think so. She’s a bit unkempt, but she doesn’t look homeless... plus, no cans.”

Now her eyebrow was going for it.

“I hope she’s alright though,” Joanna said.

“So do I.”

“Maybe we could invite her in here for a coffee.”

“Nah, she might turn out to be a clinger.” I immediately felt bad for saying that and considered running out to talk to the woman, but by this point she and her pushchair had disappeared halfway down the road.”

Just then, the door opened and a man walked in. He was middle-aged and good-looking with short, dark hair, and a well-trimmed black beard, and he was wearing a black hoodie with the hood down. The man sat down and ordered a drink. He checked his watch and I couldn’t help involuntarily glancing at my own: 7:56.

We sat in silence for a couple of moments. I had learned that Joanna would often sit in silence for short periods. Her eyes would glaze over and a sadness would come over her briefly, and then she would shudder violently for a few seconds and just as suddenly return from wherever she’d been, slightly out of breath, but no worse for wear. I let the moment pass and suddenly had a thought.

“You come here every day?”

“Nearly.”

“And that woman with the pushchair. She always walks past at the same time?”

“Oh, I never really checked.”

“What if she’s just on her way back from taking her kid to nursery, and they don’t let you leave the pushchair there?”

Joanna looked at me as though I had just solved the Times cryptic crossword blindfolded.
“You know. That’s probably it,” she said. A flicker of the nose, a twitch of the pinky.

Just then, the good-looking man stood up from his table. He pulled his hood over his head and started approaching us, somewhat nervously. I wasn’t sure if Joanna had noticed him or not. He reached his arm out in front of him and extended a pointy index finger in her direction. I shouted “Joanna, look out!” But I was too late. He had touched her on the shoulder.

Then he said “You are free now.”

I looked at her, I looked at him. I was fully expecting her to keel over. Instead, she lifted her head up, smiled at the man and said “Thank you.”

It was then that I noticed Joanna was no longer twitching. But the man was. His cheek buckled, his shoulder convulsed. He didn’t look quite as used to it as Joanna had been, but he turned and twitched his way back to his seat, where a fresh coffee was now waiting for him.

I looked at Joanna again. She had her head down, avoiding eye-contact with me.

Suddenly she seemed to remember something, stood up, and walked over to the man. She removed something from around her neck and handed it to him. “I’m supposed to give you this.” He said “thanks” and she put a gentle hand on the man’s twitching shoulder before coming back to the table. The man put the item around his own neck and I saw that it was a necklace with a gold pendant. I recognised it as a small scythe.

I looked at my friend as though she had just taken a copy of the Times cryptic crossword, rolled it up, smoked it and then snorted the ashes. “What on Earth was all that about?”

She just took her bag and said “Let’s go shopping. I need a new necklace.” And so we did. It would be the last time either of us mentioned it.

Later that morning, in the shopping arcade, we walked past an electronics store. The large TVs were all showing the same breaking news story. Joanna quicky walked on ahead, avoiding the images. A large passenger plane had crashed in the Swiss Alps this morning. Time of crash was 7:56. There were no survivors.

[The Will]

The voting is over and the winner by a long stretch is The Will by Lapsking.

Well done, Lapsking. You’ll be contacted soon about choosing a theme for September.

Thanks to everyone who entered and to those who played the games and voted.

Don’t forget to rate and comment on the games’ respective AGS pages, where possible.

@cat Yeah that winds me up too, especially when they’ve put text over other text, or when they put some text at the bottom and the closed captions go right over it. And you can’t pause them either.

@Snarky

An "artist-slash-art director" is someone who is both.

Why not just use “and”? That’s what it’s there for.

[edit - actually I can think of a reason why not. Using “and” could be ambiguous. Saying “an artist and art director saw the post” could be interpreted as two people. But I don’t think that’s very likely as long as you don’t put “an” before “art director” (“an artist and an art director saw my post” definitely sounds like two people.)]

Better yet, they could have used “artist-cum-art-director”. True, it tends to includes the sense that he became an art director after being an artist for some time but it also allows for him to still be an artist as well. Maybe they just wanted to avoid using the word “cum”.

Congratulations Honza. I’m sad to say I haven’t had a chance to check out any of the entries yet, but I will definitely get around to The Witch’s Lullaby as soon as I can.

I know several people who do stuff like accessing facebook by typing "Facebook" into google, and clicking the first link, so... 

I literally accessed Instagram this way today… only it was Bing, not Google.

This is petty, but it grinds my gears when people literally write "something-slash-something" or "quote unquote". Those expressions are meant for spoken communication, but it makes zero sense to write all that when the keyboard you're typing on already has slash and quote symbols. "She's a developer-slash-game designer", no, you mean "developer/game designer". "He's a quote-unquote genius", no, you mean "He's a 'genius'". 

I can’t say i’ve come across this but it would grind my gears too. It’s not like typing “period” or “full-stop” at the end of a sentence because that actually performs a function beyond just typing the actual symbol. But the examples you gave don’t do anything that just typing the symbols doesn’t already do, so yeah, that would annoy me too.

I’ve drafted a short one by hand and typed it up. Gonna sit on it for a few days and give it another once over.

Congrats on getting this released. It’s a very cool game.

[Sinitrena]

Sorry for the delay in wrapping this up, but as you all are aware the winner is.... Sinitrena for her emotional story May Day.

We'll be eagerly awaiting the next topic, Sini.

Brief bit of feedback:
I really enjoyed both stories. Mandle's was three posts long but never felt like a slog. The writing was good and I could really visualize the set pieces in almost a graphic novel style. A few more examples of the misinterpretations would have been fun. My vote went to Sinitrena though. I felt this story had a little more tension and definitely more feels. I had a couple of problems with believability (like why she would listen to the radio feed in the first place when she didn't really seem to care about what the voices were saying), but they are nitpicks in what was a good read.

Over to you Sini.

I understand that “nucular” is easier to say than “nuclear”, and I’m not surprised a lot of regular people mispronounce it… but why do even people whose very JOB is to talk about these issues STILL get it wrong?

This is just one example of a phonemenon that grinds my gears. People who pronounce words differently or wrongly, even though (or sometimes even because of) their job is directly related to the word in question.

My beef is not with the mispronunciation of “nuclear” itself. It’s a very common mispronunciation, but last time I checked it was not yet considered an accepted alternative. So at the very least those people who are in fields such as international affairs, physics, etc, where having to say the word frequently is part of their job, should make an effort to say it properly on TV, podcasts, etc.

[vote using the poll above]

Okay, let’s close this bad-boy. Sorry if you were working on something, Baron.

As there are only two entries, we won’t have any special voting system. Just pick your favourite of the two. The story with the most votes wins.

No need to PM me, you can vote using the poll above. You have 5 days to read the stories and vote. I will do so too, and I will not look at the voting tally before I place my own vote.

Enjoy the stories.

[The Will]

Thanks for the entries guys. Let's get the voting show on the road.

I count 3 entries.

	The Will by lapsking
	AGS Werwolf by Kastchey
	Masqerade at the Con by heltenjon

[The Good Thief]

I’ve never read the 1001 Arabian Nights. Really should correct that.

I recently finished The Good Thief by Hanna Tinti. A charming, easy read that has been favorably compared with Dickens’ work.

As for now, I’m reading Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s own novel based on his most recent movie. I went in expecting it to be more of a novelization, but it really isn’t. It’s more of a companion to the movie, with loads of content in the book that’s not in the film (and vise versa). It also contains reams of what are essentially just Tarantino’s essays about the movie industry disguised as the opinions of his characters.

It’s a bit of an awkward read at times. In one dodgy part, the character Cliff pick up a magazine and starts daydreaming his opinions about foreign movies through the 50s, 60s and 70s… except the book itself is set in 1969 and Cliff is not a time traveler.

But once you accept it for what it is (a vehicle for Quentin to show off his encyclopedic movie knowledge and expand the world of his crazy Hollywood movie), it’s a fun enough read. I must be enjoying it as I’m making my way through it quicker than The Good Thief.

[Healing]

Healing

	Cutman by GOC Games
	State of Mind by Slasher
	The Potion Master by CaptainD and Kastchey

Currently I’m recovering with Covid-19, which apparently tore through my son’s nursery last week and left a trail of sick staff, kids, and presumably parents, as my wife and I have both been hit (albeit mildly, thank God).

So the theme of August is Healing. Interpret the theme however you want. You could make a game about a personal experience of recovery, or you could go the green option and heal the world. It is entirely up to you.

I normally discourage extra bonus stipulations, as they can limit the scope and result in crowbarred-in content that is only there to tick a box. However, this month I do have one request:

All games must be positive in tone. Hopefully this is inherent in the theme but lets make some feel-good games with a happy/optimistic message.

Deadline: August 31st






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.[/size]

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++