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Ben and Dan

I always wanted to know how many games I could recognize in that picture, here's my chance:

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Black & White 2
The Sims
Lemmings
The Humans
Mafia
Runaway
Hitman
Jagged Alliance 2
Sam & Max
Postal 2
Bomberman
Max Payne
Enter The Matrix
Syberia
Grim Fandango
Dungeon Keeper
Duke Nukem
Serious Sam
Beyond Good and Evil
Painkiller
Bloodrayne
Army men
Final Fantasy 7
Command & Conquer
Full Throttle
Carmageddon
Halo
Commandos
Metal Gear Solid
Starcraft
MercWarrior
Oddworld
Little Big Adventure
Half-Life
GTA Vice City
Unreal Tournament
Messiah
Everquest
No One Live Forever 2
Tomb Raider
Leisure Suit Larry
Land Of Lore
Legend Of Kyrandia
Xcom UFO Defence
Evil Genius
Day Of The Tentacle
Curse Of Monkey Island
Blade Runner
Any Star Wars game in existence
Z
Mega Man
Crusader No Remorse
Bioforce
Worms
Earthworm Jim
Dune
Thief
Pacman
Silent Hill
American McGee Alice
Alien Vs Predator
StarCraft Ghost
Legacy Of Kain
MDK
Estatica 2
Resident Evil 3
Gobliins 2
Space Quest
Simon The Sorceror
Discworld
Splinter Cell
Creatures
Warcraft 3
Rayman
Doom
Mortal Kombat
Might & Magic 6
Heroes Of Might & Magic 2
Prince Of Persia Sand Of Time
Baldur's Gate
Diablo 2
Out Of This World

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82. Man I feel old.

I'm flattered, but what is with all the elephants?

Syberia.

Edit: Found 3 more

A quick search on Home Of The Underdogs reveal 5 games that were released before or on the same year as Sid's Pirate:

1982:
Taipan!

1985:
Treasure Island

1987:
The Ancient Art of War at Sea
Pirates of The Barbary Coast
Plundered Hearts

Taipan! is set in the mid 1800s and in Asia, so I don't know if it counts.

Arrrr! Thanks!

The torrent was the first place I looked at but unfortunately the latest games in it were from may.

Anyone here got a copy of Souls Quest and care to upload it somewhere? It was released for last June MAGS competition but since then the game was removed from Mediafire.

Andail's comments mirror the feelings of many others, which is why I removed that note combining interface in the first place.  The sense of "I figured this out, why isn't ROSA figuring it out too?!" really frustrated a lot of players, and they would often forget the note combining feature was even there.  After three games of using it, I realized it was not very intuitive.  Maybe it'll come back for the next game.

Interesting, I didn't see it that way. I would understand if you decide to not use it again. If it doesn't come back, I hope you will come up with a new interesting mechanic to replace it, without the note combining aspect not much gameplay remains except Oogle and Joey your way through puzzles.

Like free games and that was it. Now I'll donate something for freeware games I think are great rather than only open my wallet when a game is sold or when there's some sort of bonus for donators. I'm also going through my folder of indie games for games I previously played that I think deserved something.

Last week I stumbled on this video that made me reconsider the way I treated freeware games up until now and I figured some of you might find it interesting. Those of you who visit TIGSource have probably watched it, for the rest, here it is: http://www.destructoid.com/rev-rant-donate-141041.phtml

Best. AGS. game. ever. And I totally mean it.

Like with the previous game, it got the thousands of different messages for every action/object/hotspots possibilities, the totally awesome graphics and animations and bajillion jokes, on top of that you add the music, those awesome little emotions on Ben's and Dan's faces during conversations, and the best puzzles I have ever seen in an indie adventure game and in many adventure games from the golden days as a matter of fact, it's quite possibly the first time an adventure game actually got close to the brilliant puzzle design of Day Of The Tentacle.

My favorite moments:

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The frantic moment where Ben is unconscious and begining on Anubis the fun skyrockets and never stop 'til the end credits.
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How could I forget? Every times the Wits, Fists and Stealth path were mentionned. That was brilliant!

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I can't find anything bad to say about that game. It's flawless.

I finally got around to finish the game, great game, I liked how

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in the end, most of the weird events that happened in the hotel actually made sense. A thing that bother me in those horror stories where things suddently get weird and you start to wonder if it's an hallucination or a nightmare is when all the weird scares and stuff are completly random and make no sense at all, like in that 1408 movie. Your game didn't fall into this trap and I liked that.

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The atmosphere was great, I found myself hiding under blankets most of the game and for the first time in my life, I found myself more nervous than happy everytime I was no longer stuck on a puzzle, in fear of what would happen next.

What could have been better:

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When Dr Nazi ask you to find the receptionist, it was pure luck if I found her, the room she was waiting in had absolutly nothing interesting so I kinda marked that room as useless, it's only after being stuck for a long time that I entered that room again only to find the receptionist in it. Having the receptionist waiting at her desk or having a note there saying she would be in room 401 would have been better, IMO.

One of the scare's timing was off, when you fall down from the roof and witness the doctor getting killed by his frankenstein killer, the timing between the lightning was too long, I had already guessed that something horrible would look at me from the window by the time the second lightning arrived which ruined the moment.

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What I didn't like:
I don't know if it's the game or my computer, but everytime I launch or quit the game, I have to go through these super long delay, nearly a whole minute, before the game launch or shut down, I've never had this sort of problem with other AGS games, only this one. It's even worst when you want to watch the multiple endings since you got to go through the very long credits sequence and relaunch the game after each endings.

Also,

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The blender scene. The game already had lot of gore but that scene was just pointless over the top, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes at that music.

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I encountered only one bug (I played the old version, I don't know if it has been corrected in the more recent versions):

Spoiler

After you explode the second Sophie, if you go straight to the broken mirror room rather than the room where the second Sophie was, there will be a cutscene showing the mirror breaking and when you will regain control, you'll be stuck in a wall in the previous room and you won't be able to move anymore. Loading the last savegame is the only way out of this situation.

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That's pretty much it, I'll play the game a second time to try different choices and see the remaining endings, I'll email you in the following days to get the latest version.

I believe this has also been tried in AGS with Dead Of Winter.

Deirdra Kiai also makes similar games, try Pigeons In The Park and Chivalry Is Not Dead. While Chivalry Is Not Dead features no puzzles, I still thought of it as a game since it throws several obstacles at you and gives you several choices regarding how to overcome these obstacles, choices which generally affect the story later on. It felt a lot like a roleplaying game to me (roleplaying as in playing a role, not killing monsters and grinding XP).

On the subject of visual novels, there is also Missing, the story is a notch above Japanese Hentai games but gameplay wise it's the same, barely any puzzles, a couple of pixel hunting moments, most of the game is spend talking with people and going back and forth in between rooms in hope that the last thing you did triggered something in another room of the hotel.

I'm personally not a big fans of such games, I prefer when games feature some sort of gameplay and not just interactivity. Your comment regarding IF only strengthen the vow I made after I played Lost Pig, to never play another IF game, because none would be as brilliantly awesome as this one.

It took a whole lot of time but my entry is finally done. You should find it in your email inbox.

It's the third time I wanted to participate to the contest but the first time I actually did.

Well, I used "Lovecraftian" in a very loose way. If you only play the first demo, you get the impression it was a horror story, a man going on a walk, discovering a strange fly, being lured to a mysterious pillar by a collective of ghosts, before being presumedly swallowed by it, and the pillar remaining there, patiently waiting for its next victim. Add to this the very strange music, it certainly had a horror vibe to it. It also kinda tainted the way I played the final game since I was expecting a downer ending the whole time I played it.

Not yet, Dave, I'm still not done drawing it. It should be done by tonight.

The remake is receiving some flak on the LucasForums, namely for the PC controls that requires you to press keyboard keys to make the verb and inventory bars appear, speech being sprinkled with many pause in between sentences and several half-assed details in the backgrounds.

You can read the whole thing here, it starts on page 6 and continue on the next page: http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php98020&page=6

Edit: Apparently the issue with the pauses in the speech can be corrected by going in the classic mode, changing the subtitle speed to maximum and going back to enhanced mode.

Great game! I somewhat miss the first demo's Lovecraftian ending however.

The soundtrack will be available for free when you purchase the game.   It's my way of enticing people to purchase on my site versus all the distribution portals.

Tempting, but I'm already living dangerously and taking my chances with the fanart contest!

I personally hate when you have to do something (worse even if it's something that doesn't look important) to trigger an event. Like in Gabriel Knight, where you have to deal with time-blocks: a day passes only if you did everything the game requires, but sometimes you'd rather just wait, and you can't. For example, if you give some ancient text to a professor, who says will give you the translation tomorrow, I want to be able to choose if I'm gonna wait or if I'm gonna do something meanwhile.

Well, let's just say that I don't like time-blocks.

I liked how Dave Gilbert got around this problem with Emerald City Confidential. One could say those little gems at the bottom of the screen listing every goals you had to achieve were only there for casual players, but at least it told you up-front what you had to do before the next time block. I wish Gabriel Knight had such thing.

It seems like it's not over yet:
http://www.gamingshogun.com/Article/4679/LucasArts_Teasing_Big_Announcement_Monday_via_Twitter.html

It could be something, it could also be nothing. My only wish is if it is adventure game related, that it's being made by one of the various team of former LucasArts employees. These games were great because they were made by the of Ron, Dave, Tim and co., Tales Of Monkey Island made by Telltale, I'm fine with that, but a sequel to FT, DOTT or MI made by a bunch of clueless noobs working at LucasArts, this I'm certainly not fine with.

But I was more talking from the point of view of players here. A lot of those hidden functions can be useful for players and not just developers, but in general, readme.txt files explain the interface but not a single word is ever mentionned on these functions.