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You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

For SQ7? Not much. If there's any franchises trading owners, it'll be limited to the KQ brand.

But we don't know if they're trading owners yet, all we know is they're in negotiation. They could be negotiating to purchase or rent the rights of KQ, but they could also be negotiating the right to release their game under a fair use clause (The game isn't called KQ9, they won't make money out of their game, etc.) in which case, successful negotiations could open the door for other Sierra fan games.

An opening to negotiation is the last thing I expected from Activision. Good news so far, time will tell whether those negotiations will turn great or if it's just a fancy way to say Activision is open to sell the right to KQ, but it's good to hear that.

I'm also very interested to see what will be the ramifications of those negotiations if they turn out successful for the canceled SQ7 game and the other Sierra fan games and remakes projects out there.

It's just me or every great adventure games in VGA graphics (or later) would look and feel awesome in AGI?

Personally, my biggest problem with Sierra games is not the lack of complex plots but dead ends. If you can steer clear from that I'll probably end up playing your game.

I don't think you should worry too much about simple plot. You don't need to have a super complex story to make a fun game. Sure, complex plots are always a plus but games with  simple plot and bucketloads of humor, or an interesting, original setting are fun too.

Regarding death, personally I don't mind dying, and if the animation and death message are funny, I'll go out of my way to find cool ways to kill the main character, but that's just me. Most people tend to gravitate between "I don't mind dying as long it was fairly obvious I was in a dangerous situation" and "I don't like dying". If you keep the number of death to a minimum, or if you implement a "Try Again" button or an autosave feature, you should be fine.

Whatever you did it seems to have worked, I search this guy's store and I can't find Cirque de Zale or Yahtzee's games.

Also Cirque de Zale is not shitty.

Arrrr! Lumberjack!

Point'n'click section? Yes please.

Only if the game feature a mouse aiming system. If the game is played entirely with the keyboard, having to switch from keyboard to mouse to interact with a couple of things will be the ultimate flow breaker. If there's no mouse aiming, the whole Point'n'click or adventure element will be better handled with the keyboard only, like Flashback did.

On the subject of Flashback and slow paced platformers, I think Flashback would have been better if it put emphasis on stealth and treachery instead of combat, where you got to hide from enemies and cameras, avoid dangerous situations and pick out enemies stealthfully, or intelligently (by triggering traps, pirating robots or luring them to fight each others). Flashback was a bit like that at the start of the game, and it's only when the game asked you to kill several unkillable enemies that fly and crawl on ceilings that the game began to suck.

It's the survey season!

The realistic platforming in Prince Of Persia was fine since enemies were fought with swords, but in games like Flashback, 1213, Blackthorne or Rocketbirds, where enemies are fought with guns, the whole realistic platformer thing somewhat goes to the trash can for me. The second guns and bullets are introduced, I wanna be able to run, jump and dash to avoid monsters and bullets, not just crouch/shoot/roll my enemies to death like in Flashback. When it comes to realistic run and gun platformers, I pick Super Metroid, Iji or Abuse over Flashback any day of the week.

Active forum users, yes. Active forum users that vote, if AGS awards are to be trusted, we don't, or we barely have.

Under water.

Infocom can deal with "eat all fruits except the strawberry, then put it in the large box".

Whether it's a good idea to make a game that relies on actions like that is a different question...

Awwww... 

* blueskirt puts Strawberry Quest: The Search For A Large Box on indefinite hold

That's strange. I don't know if it's LucasArts that spends less money on marketing or if it was the announcement of Tales Of Monkey Island that increased the coverage to the first remake but a friend of mine, who's pretty hardcore when it come to adventure games, him too had no clue about the MI2 remake nearly 18 days after the rumors and announcement.

Played it a couple weeks ago, it does a great job at making you fell like in 1988 but it's somewhat lacking in the gameplay department. Some puzzles or a little bit of Uplink here and there would have made the game better IMO.

Personally I download games before they're rated.

As for the original question, while it's not a one cup game since it hasn't been rated yet (but it would surprise me if it scored more than one), I did have 2-3 solid hours of fun with All The Magical Things.

I second what Stupot said about having to select an item after every use, it's indeed bad design.

I don't have any favorite inventory system, that said, there are some guidelines every inventory systems should follow IMO.

1 - First of all, inventory items should be recognizable. I know when your inventory is shown on-screen at all time, as a designer you want it to be small so it hides as little of the background as possible. But if it's absolutly unconceivable for you hide your background with a bigger inventory window, then implement a BASS kind of inventory system (which appears when you move the cursor at the top of the screen), because I am tired of trying to make out which items is what when the inventory icons are no bigger than 10 pixels.

2 - Another thing that irk me with inventory, when I currently have an inventory item on my cursor, if I click on another inventory item, it's because I want to use them together, not because I want to select a different item. If I want to select a different item, I'll first discard the one on my cursor. You may think you're doing me a favor by not requiring me to discard every item on my cursor but the truth is I'm gonna waste more time scrolling up and down and reselecting the item I was currently holding before.

In BASS and Interplay's Star Trek games it's even worse. Not only I wasted time reselecting items, but for the rest of the game I wondered if it was actually possible to combine two items together, and I went back in the manual 3 or 4 times just in case I missed an important detail about items.

3 - Under no circumstances I should use an item on itself. I don't care the reason, whether it's to use the item or because the item can be separated in 2 inventory items, I should never have to USE CELLPHONE ON CELLPHONE to use it, or USE FISHING ROD ON FISHING ROD to take it apart. If your game feature such situation, put a HAND icon in your inventory window, like most Sierra games do.

4 - Last but not least, I want to see as many items as possible on screen at the same time.

If you go for an inventory window, like Curse Of Monkey Island, Sam & Max or most Sierra games, I want it to show all items at all time, I don't want to waste my time using scrolling arrows. Scrolling arrows have reasons to exist on an on-screen inventory, since it's impossible to show 20+ items without hogging half of the screen with the GUI or making items icons incredibly small, but when you got a window which sole purpose is to show inventory items, it should show them all and not waste my time with scrolling arrows.

If you go for an on-screen inventory like BASS or MI2, it got to show at least 8 inventory items at all time. Nothing piss me off more than those games which feature tons of items and items related puzzles but gives you only a tiny window in the corner, that shows only 4 items, to manage your inventory. What is that?! You want me to USE ITEM ON ITEM ON ITEM my way through your entire game but you only give me a tiny window to manage the 20+ items and gizmos I collected so far?!

Worst offenders are games that feature not only tiny inventory window but deselect the selected item after every use, so anytime you're stuck and want to use an item on all items, you got to scroll up and down after every combination.

Vince's article is also not be all end all. There's plenty of games where less verbs is more, but there's also plenty of games where more verbs is more. The talk, smell, lick or zipper verbs in Space Quest/Leisure Suit Larry games are completly useless 99% of the time, yet removing them and the countless of funny responses they generate would be a huge mistake.

Make the extra verbs really worth it in term of puzzles and unique responses or just lump them with other verbs. In a game that mostly involves conversation like GK1 (at least from what I recall), a move verb doesn't have much reasons to exist, in an Indiana Jones game where you invariably end up in some ruins filled with traps and ancient puzzles, adding a move verb is a no brainer.

If you think you can pull off a Time Gentlemen Please, go ahead and cram as many verbs in the GUI as you want, I'll be the first to use every verb on as many hotspots as I can, otherwise you may want to go for a streamlined GUI.

It's a shame the designers hadn't read Vince's Article.

The article was written 15 years after the creation of GK1, don't you think you're asking a bit much?

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What Questionable said.

Verb Coin, it's the perfect mix between the smoothness of the Two Buttons interface and the interaction possibilities of the Sierra/LucasArts interface. Just make it so it appears instantly the moment you press the right mouse button and so you don't have to hold the mouse button when it appears.

Darth: Because the game will feature time travel?

13 Tzameti is pretty awesome if you don't mind reading subtitles.