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[Farsley's Very Good Coffee]

Puzzle-making contest – making movies.

Sorry, everyone. I forgot completely that I was supposed to come up with a new topic here, but later good than, no, that's not right. (I actually typed that. Will let it stand just for the heck of it.)

New topic! You are a movie director.
You have: Fairly standard set of movie technical equipment, cameras, microphones, artificial lighting etc. Let's work from the premise that you have what you need in this area.

Three possible locations: A western saloon, a small ferry and someone's living room.

Five actors:
 

• Laura (50+) is a diva that not quite has accepted that she may not be the star anymore.
• Gregory (40s) is a typical type-cast guy who is often getting roles as a henchman, bodyguard, the tough sergeant. However, he's got a wish to evoke feelings in people, and would most of all have liked to be able to sing.
• Hannah (20s, but can look older or younger) wants all her movies to break taboos or in some other way get her the attention she needs to become a rising star.
• Paul  (20s, but can look older or younger) is the epitome of political correctness and wants all food to be organic, no animals to be harmed, and the movie to be wholesome and family friendly.
• Grumpy the wonder dog (Ageless) wants dog biscuits.

You need to shoot a scene that meets the following criteria:
   

• All actors need to be satisfied. This equals 3 out of five on a satisfaction scale. (They all need to score 3 or higher. Feel free to include how their score goes up and down with every decision taken.)
• The scene needs to have high emotional content.
• You need to include products from your sponsors in the scene, including Farsley's Very Good Coffee, Tents R Us, Guns & Buns & Puns (& Sons), Karate Sam's Breakable Furniture (no guarantees!) and the board game A Woman's Touch.
• To satisfy your producer, there needs to be a development in either the inter-personal relationships or personal growth for the main characters.
• There must be a twist or a cliffhanger.

The Rules!

Participants respond to the set-up by writing entries that must do the following:
1. Use at least 3 of the provided elements (inventory, NPCs, a piece of the room like a cabinet or faucet etc.)
2. Give a step-by-step walkthrough of your puzzle solution.
3. Don't add new elements. For example, if the room is a forest, breaking a thin branch off a tree makes sense unless the host said the trees were huge and tall. But adding a hollowed-out stump with a bear sleeping in it is too specific. Assume all important elements have been mentioned by the host.
4. Keep any dialog elements summarized rather than typing out the whole conversation (for example, "threaten the mailman", "ask the child for advice", and so on, instead of giving every spoken line).

Each contest runs for two weeks to allow for a good number of entries, and then it switches to voting for one week. The participant whose solution gets the most votes gets to come up with the next scenario! (Please also provide a link to these rules).

Voters use the criteria of:
a) how logical the puzzle seems
b) how creative or unexpected (but still sensible) is the use of elements
c) how satisfying is the solution (Is it too simple? Way too complicated? Or just right?)

Note: These are the standard rules, and this month's contest deviates slightly.

Deadline: Tuesday 10th June

[have]

@Kara Jo Kalinowski @pell

Damn, that was difficult. I guess I need a hint or two.

I'm in the trap room.

This is what I have tried:

Spoiler

I have used the poker in a hole, read the plaque, dusted the platform with my hand and found out that if I weigh less than 120 lbs, the trap won't spring. I know what I and my items weigh. I haven't found a way to leave the first room without the hat, or to get rid of it before stepping on the platform. I have found a way to get rid of it inside the trap room, though. So in theory, the trap should disappear if I can fool the sensors to think I'm dead. I've tried standing still and not doing anything, which doesn't seem to work.

[close]

Questions. If possible, give hints instead of full solution to the problem.

Is there a way to leave the first room without the hat? (I think not.)

Is there a way to lose the hat before entering the trap room? (I think not.)

Is the solution to

Spoiler

somehow alert my mother by doing something in the first room, so that she may come to my aid?

[close]

Hi there, people.

I was wondering if anyone have been in contact with TheTMD lately. He has not been active in the forums since late August, and frankly, I'm worried. He's not answered PMs either. Any of you Italians, perhaps? Or the collectors/archivists?

The AdventureX Game Jam finished Nov 30th, with some AGS-ers participating. The entries can be found here. (Wheee! Free games!)

The theme for this jam was "three rules". As this is an unranked jam, there are no winners, or perhaps rather all are winners. I'll probably play some of the 17 entries, at least the AGS ones, and comment on them here. If others want to play and comment, too, that's even better.

Inspired by @jwalt and his recent RoN games, I've begun replaying the series in order. I recently played The Postman Only Dies Once by @Dave Gilbert himself. The game is choke full with jokes and connections, and I was wondering:

When Max talks to Davy, there are three transformations where Max (once) and Davy (twice) are replaced by other character sprites. I have a feeling I'm not getting a joke here... Are the other sprites characters I should recognize? From other games, perhaps?    The sprites replacing Davy for a few seconds look vaguely familiar, but I can't place them.

There's a game on Itch now that behaves like the community games we have had here before: Players can enter a command, and the dev will update. https://cmw-games.itch.io/gorbys-weird-adventure

[the]

It's been a while since Gord10 posted on these forums, but he's been busy creating games using multiple other engines.

From his Itch page:

Omniscient God is nominated for Best Narration award in Kristal Piksel 2023, which is the award ceremony of Turkish game industry.

I don't expect it will win that award, honestly, considering the strong nominees this year for that branch. But it makes me happy to see this game earning a nomination.

(The game uses the Unreal Engine.)

You know when you are supposed to vote for the best characters for the AGS awards, and you can't remember their names? Or why you liked them?

This thread is for giving feedback to game devs about characters you liked in this year's games. What did you like? Why did you like it? This will give nice feedback about what works for the devs, and also hints for others about how to create memorable characters.

If it also helps us remember who to vote for when it's time for the awards again, well, that's a bonus.

I'll start one for this year.

The Best Puzzles award may be water under the bridge, but that doesn't mean we can't have a thread to discuss it. The question is simply: What puzzles in AGS games released in 2024 did you like? Why did you like them?

Please make the thread user-friendly with well marked spoilers, for instance like this:
Steeplejack:

Spoiler

And something about it in here.

[close]

Hopefully, this may give devs some feedback on what type of puzzles work well, and the players a chance to discuss and (dis)agree.

(In addition, I could imagine similar threads for the current year could be useful if we started them now and run them all year. It may be helpful when the year is over and we try to remember what games we liked months back and a help for nominating to the AGS awards. If the interest for such threads is there, of course.)

Though it's sad that Slasher is no longer among us, he's left a legacy of games behind. And I for one, have not played them all. But I intend to. Perhaps some of you other fine people also intend to?

Well, I'll try to play one Slasher game each month and post some thoughts here. If someone else wants to play along, that's dandy. You may play any game of his and post any thought you may have; you don't have to follow my schedule at all. Some months I may not play and post, because life is like that. But I don't intend for this to be a chore or a duty, just something fun to do, while honouring our late game machine.

This month I played Sonic and friends in: Club House. This is a MAG(S) game (Slasher always called it MAG) for October 2016, with the theme Genre Shift.

Slasher's take on the theme was to make a point and click starring Sonic and other platform heroes. The plot goes: Sonic have inherited an old house and decides to make it a club house. The house has not been maintained, and he and his friends (Luigi, Tails and Alex Kidd) have to fix it up before their grand club house opening. It turns out that they also need to raise cash to pay the lease.

The game is not polished, but it is fun to play. The two characters I knew, Luigi and Sonic, were easily recognizable. All four have different abilities, and the player can switch between them at will. They move from room to room as a team, so there's little splitting up (except for sending one of them to the roof to fix the tv antenna). They also have their own inventories, as they see different things as useful. The puzzles largely consist of finding some fault in the house, finding the correct tools and/or spare parts, and assigning the correct character for the job. Unsurprisingly, Luigi turns out to be the most versatile as a craftsman and plumber, but all have their jobs if success is to be had. The characters also are portrayed as friends, helping each other and cheering each other on. It's a feel-good game that can be solved by trial and error.

Nice one, and I'm glad to have played it. Perhaps you want to play it now? 

[The Rules!]

The Rules!

Participants write entries that must do the following:
1. Use at least 3 of the provided elements (inventory, NPCs, a piece of the room like a cabinet or faucet etc.)
2. Give a step-by-step walkthrough of your puzzle solution.
3. Don't add new elements. For example, if the room is a forest, breaking a thin branch off a tree makes sense unless the host said the trees were huge and tall. But adding a hollowed-out stump with a bear sleeping in it is too specific. Assume all important elements have been mentioned by the host.
4. Keep any dialog elements summarized rather than typing out the whole conversation (for example, "threaten the mailman", "ask the child for advice", and so on, instead of giving every spoken line).

Each contest runs for two weeks to allow for a good number of entries, and then it switches to voting for one week. The participant whose solution gets the most votes gets to come up with the next scenario! (Please also provide a link to these rules). Current entries until March 20th.

Voters use the criteria of:
a) how logical the puzzle seems
b) how creative or unexpected (but still sensible) is the use of elements
c) how satisfying is the solution (Is it too simple? Way too complicated? Or just right?)

Here we go!

Down the street

Premise: It seemed like a good idea at the time. You were late, and taking a shortcut through Small Street would make up the time you lost and then some. But getting through to the other side looks a bit more difficult than you thought.

You are wearing:

• A baseball cap
• Sunglasses
• A T-shirt
• Shorts. In the pockets you find
  
  • Your wallet
  • your most prized possession
• Sneakers
• A piece of jewelry
• A backpack containing two items of your choice.

In the street you see:

• The local bully
• Rows of houses with gardens.
• An angry dog. It's on a leash, but you're in doubt that it can hold the dog if it pulls hard.
• A small children's playground.
• An old man known by everyone for talking and talking and not letting you go.
• An old woman, working in her garden
• A hot dog stand
• An abondoned children's pool filled with water (in a garden)
• Typical stuff like trees, mailboxes, etc.
• A couple of parked cars.
• A ball in the ditch by the road.
• A volleyball
• The one person in the world who should not see you in this place now

Your goal is to avoid all obstacles and take this shortcut down Small Street.
Logical items (garden tools, toys in the playground etc. are allowed)

Please submit your entries in the next 14 days. You have until April 29th. Good luck!

All too often, I have no clue which game to nominate for the best music award when the year comes to an end. So why not make a thread where we can make notes for ourselves, and possibly even discuss music and sound design through the year? I don't know if the interest is there, but I think it could be useful.

In this month's MAGS, the game The Green and the Red by @Babar and @jfrisby has a piano track that I found enthralling. It's sort of dark and unsettling, making the red hills and the forest all the more ominous. At the same time uncomplicated and dissonant, if that makes any sense. But the detail that really drives it home for me, is the baby making sounds in the background. I'm sure this was not part of the plan, but those baby vocals made it even better. Are there babies (ghosts?) lost in the woods? Or possibly the children of the wood people?

[Stargate the City of Atlantis]

I'm stuck in an AGS short game that's not in the database, called Stargate the City of Atlantis or in original French Stargate la citée d'Atlantis. It is available here, in French and English:

Stargate la citée d'Atlantis by hanakin
https://adventuregamestudio.1fr1.net/t2404-stargate-la-citee-d-atlantis
in the french AGS community. The download link (from the forum)
http://dinomania.chez-alice.fr/Atlantis.zip

I have managed to do everything in my task list except for turning on the Stargate. I have found a panel where I think I need to match star constellations with my findings, but so far, my skills in pattern recognition have not been up to the task. I hope someone can offer some guidance here.

I'm stuck in this German demo. I suppose there is a puzzle with the doors in the town square with the clock, and that what the drunken pirate says ought to give me a hint of some sort. I haven't been able to do much at all, and not knowing what is implemented in the demo doesn't help. If I'm wrong about the order of things, I may be looking for an eyepatch or a CD.

Any help would be appreciated.

The Best Puzzles award may be water under the bridge, but that doesn't mean we can't have a thread to discuss it. The question is simply: What puzzles in AGS games released in 2023 did you like? Why did you like them?

Please make the thread user-friendly with well marked spoilers, for instance like this:
The Sleeping Castle:

Spoiler

And something about it in here.

[close]

Hopefully, this may give devs some feedback on what type of puzzles work well, and the players a chance to discuss and (dis)agree.

(In addition, I could imagine similar threads for the current year could be useful if we started them now and run them all year. It may be helpful when the year is over and we try to remember what games we liked months back and a help for nominating to the AGS awards. If the interest for such threads is there, of course.)

I'm at a standstill in Pirate Theme Park. I have found three of the four items required, only lacking the hard object to cut the key with.

I have a teddybear, a battery and a magnet. I suspect

Spoiler

that I am supposed to use the battery for helping the guy in the drink costume to cool further down, somehow.

[close]

Am I missing a hotspot or something somewhere?

 I think it's best to open up a question thread for this one right away.

@Manc - Feel free to answer, but if not, we players may compare notes here.

Theory - This game has no ending, but is a collection of minigames. (Manc?)

Has anyone figured out how the skating works? Most of the time, the dog is on the skateboard, and I can't seem to get the player character to use it.

What language is this when it's not English? What clues or instructions do we miss when we don't understand it? Are all parts of the game playable for us who don't understand the language?

Is there something to do in the cafe?

Fish game: Does the fish grow eventually, or is the aim of the mini-game simply to get as many points as possible?

The Pac-Man hotspot is marked "Don't work". But it is playable...so, is it broken somehow?

I have more questions, but let's start there.

I am stuck in Sorrow of a Furry Father.

I am trying to find items for the kids to play pirates. So far I have found

Spoiler

fool's gold, a hook, and an eye patch.

[close]

What else do I need?

The slingshot is stuck in the mud. How can I get it? The Fox is already strong.

[NOT recommended]

So, while we wait for https://itch.io/jam/107-adventure-game-challenge ... I thought, why not check out that other adventure jam on Itch, https://itch.io/jam/advjam2023 or Adventure Jam 2023?

And I did, just to find that it had 332 entries! 

No way am I playing all those, I thought. But just as devilish, I wondered, what kind of game actually comes last in this? So I decided to check out the one on the bottom before actually looking at the good games. Thus this first post (if there are others) is just about NOT recommended games.

Card Investigation - Didn't work because of missing files.
Memory Magic - No game to download.
Trek in the Woods - Missing files again.
Harrys_Friends - Game in quarantine, not downloadable.
Space Asteroids - Clearly not an adventure game from the screenshots, so I didn't bother. A comment says ads fill the screen.
Byte Adventure is a platform game. Not recommended, although I did play it and finished it in a couple of minutes.
Fall on Monster Bomb Attack - also quarantined.
Wildwood Nightmares actually is an adventure game, but it is not finished, so it's more of a tech demo now. Not fully playable, unfortunately.
Cool and Slimey Adventures- this looks like it is the same game entered twice. Kind of a short platform game. I played it and beat it in a few goes, so it works, at least.
Rocket Bouncer - This looks like it is made with love, judging from screen shot and description. However, it is clearly a platform game and very far from an adventure, so I didn't want to play it.

So there you go. I wanted to just check out the last one, but ended up checking out the ones placed from #316 to #306. There are clearly some really good games here, too. I hope to play some of them next. 

I seem to be stuck at 20 points on the crime scene. One of the screenshots on the game page shows the police station...and 21 points. I guess that means there is only one more thing to do on on the crime scene.

Is it possible to somehow mark the second body? Chalk or tape somehow? Is there a special word command that needs to be used to tell Chester to start taking photos? Is there a way to mark the graffitti as interesting? Or am I missing something else? Any help will be appreciated.