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(...) but instead of coding/drawing we have been mainly gift shopping... (I hate that bit of Christmas).

Ah, research! 

Hi AGS community, long time no see! I'm also hoping to put something together for this month, and ideally not take all of Christmas doing it...

Alan saves Birthdays? 

I haven't started coding and won't have the time until Xmas, I think. However, my girls want to make this game with their old dad, so we will probably make the game, even if we will miss the deadline.

Great to see so many participating! Pax Amino, I checked your progress on itch, and your game looks very cool!

Great stuff!

I think perhaps this is partly because of our age, but mostly because of the media world we live in. With fewer channels on the tv and only live broadcasting, more people watched the same. Nowadays, we can pick and choose, meaning that I don't know anything about most "influencers" (which is a horrible word, worthy of its own grinding my gears post) or musicians performing in genres I don't listen to. Most tv shows with "celebrity specials" star people I've never heard of.

I played We've been trying to contact you. This is an absurdist kind of horror story. The interaction is largely to run around and try to find the next trigger to advance the strange story. Not badly made, and not a bad story if one likes the kind of absurd tales where nothing really makes sense in a logical way. Still, there's no real puzzles, and the storytelling falls a bit short compared to the great tales told in other games in this jam. Gameplay: five minutes.

And I tried Torus Trap, a small unfinished Unity game. The player runs around the space station while everyone else is in cryo. I guess we are supposed to follow the task list until something goes wrong, but this isn't possible yet. It looks like it could be fun, with bright, clean colours, but there's not much to do so far.

Then I played The Adventures of Captain Walkins. This is yet another unfinished prototype, this time a Star Trek Next Gen homage. I could play until after talking to some aliens on a planet, but not follow up on their problem. The game is made in Godot and runs in a browser, with large pixel graphics, retro style. I like the original Star Trek enough that I might check this out if it is finished. At this stage, it's a demo.

And I played Space Spy: Contact Uranus. This a really fun game made in Unity. The player is undercover at a villain gala on a space ship and has to figure out who his contact is. The characters are stereotypes - the flirt, the drunk, the gambler, the evil mastermind and so on, but it's all done intentionally for humorous effect. Good-looking, nice-sounding and funny. And the puzzles are quite fun and need some work to solve. Medium difficulty, I guess. The flaw is that there doesn't seem to be any save function, and the game is long enough to not necessarily do all in one go. There also are unintentional dead ends - I placed items on top of each other and couldn't get them back. No save meant restart. The game is still good, and I can safely recommend it. But be prepared to play for an hour or so.

101 Dalmatians? Or Gremlins?

I mostly hear Ed Sheeran's music because my kids want to listen to a top 40 channel on the radio in the car, so I'm not all that familiar with him. However, I like the songs and music videos "Perfect" and "Lego House" (starring Rupert Grint in the video)....speaking of resemblance...

Lol is Seinfeld funny outside of US/Canada? I like it, but I always thought that form of comedy didn't make it too far.

It was a big hit in Norway, at least.

Ed Sheeran

But you've got to admit you love it when he does it like that?

However, afterwards I changed it back to "english" in order to reproduce the error again, but now it keeps working correctly, both in German and in English, even with the lower case spelling in config. Go figure. (Windows 10 Enterprise.)

Are you changing default config in the game dir, or user config in the %USERPROFILE%/Saved Games/<game name>? If you save in winsetup at least once then translation is written to the user config.

Ah! I did it i the game dir.

The Unending Story, the platform game that was the first game submitted, is taken out, bringing the number of games down to 18.

I played Fixalot, which is a Unity game with large and funny characters. I enjoyed this game's inhabitants, the humour and logical puzzles, but couldn't progress further because of a bug (also reported on Itch by Hobo). People ask about things in the comments that I never encountered, so it seems clear that either the Mac version works better, or that the bug hasn't been present in all versions of the game. I hope the author manages to fix it - I want to see more of this one.

I also played Leave. This is a somewhat sad art game made in Unity. It tells the story of an alien and his contact with our world. Well worth a go for the graphics and sound and the mood it sets. Very short and not terribly difficult. The focus is on telling the story.

I tried Crimson Wizard's method on the Windows version - changed "english" to "English" manually in the config file, confirmed it in setup, and then I got the correct English title screen plus the two other instances. So that fixed it, it seems. However, afterwards I changed it back to "english" in order to reproduce the error again, but now it keeps working correctly, both in German and in English, even with the lower case spelling in config. Go figure. (Windows 10 Enterprise.)

Beautiful art, and interesting historical setting. How much is skiing, though? I must admit that part doesn't sound as appealing as the adventure bit. Is it 50-50?

That's a fascinating read and makes me want to play this even more. Liked!

I used windows when I got the "German graphics".

Thx for your information. Do you happen to remember if the name in the title screen (not in the title window) was also untranslated? There are only these two graphics that are checked for translation.

From the other thread:

There is also a note on the kitchen door that is still in German.

I did translate the note on the door, but I also had the issue that doesn't load the correct graphic sometimes. Is the title screen graphic also untranslated ("Bertholds Rückkehr" instead of "Berthold's Return")?

Yes. The intro "types" in German at first, and then switches to the English text. Mind you, I didn't touch the setup, so I may have neglected to do something.

I can't remember the details more than that.

EDIT: Downloaded again and retried. The title screen says "Ruckkehr", the typing right after pressing start is in German, but switches to the finished English text when the typing is done, and the note on the door is in German.

But I must point out that other people als had the issue that graphics weren't translated. I don't know if they were using windows or not.

I used windows when I got the "German graphics".

This is one of the best games in the jam. Those graphics really set the mood for the 1300s! The game isn't hard puzzle-wise, but it's very good storytelling. Can't really say what I liked the most without potentially spoiling it. 

I had unzipped a file called "build" by mistake when I was trying to unzip The Construction, so I tried it today. It turned out to be The Weeping Chronicler's Tale of Cursed Valaria. This is a dungeon crawler made in unity. First person, your sword in front of you-thing. The game is in development, so I just got a taste of the beginning. There are these scrolls hanging in the air, and to read them (and get to know the story), I had to fight my way past some monsters. I don't think they could hurt me in this version, at least they were no trouble. I'm not sure if the author is trying to write in an "old" style or just doesn't know English all that well, but the scrolls made a peculiar impression. There's no scripted ending so far as I could tell. I won't be coming back to this one, I think. It's in the early phase of production still, so I can't judge the quality of what it will become, but it's not my type of game. I'm a thinker, not a fighter.

And I played Hoofield, which is a Seinfeld tribute of sorts, packed with in-jokes about the developers themselves. Unity/Powerhoof game. Well worth a go for us Seinfeld fans. Ten minutes of playtime or so, fairly easy. It's one of those games where the real fun lies in clicking around the apartment and check out the descriptions.

Oh to be able to do these again...

But the idea of a "hard to deliver" gift... hmm... I could see some treacherous terrain being the obstacles for delivering a Christmas gift.

Anywho, good luck to those participating.

A "hard to deliver" gift could indeed be a game about the bold post(wo)man who braves the forces of nature to deliver a package to someone living on a mountain ledge...I can see Donald Duck Cola Skunkette in that role.  Or it could simply be finding and tracking down someone who has an unknown address, or perhaps the to and from is unreadable, so the player has to match the gift to the right person.