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I've been looking forward to this one: The Will of Arthur Flabbington by Gugames. I'm a great fan of Guga's games, and this one is no exception. The game is made in unity, and it's a demo of a larger story (I hope). If you have played any of this author's games before, you know you can expect humour, solid and original puzzles and fluid animation. In addition, this game features very good voice acting, as well. Highly recommended!

Thanks for the kind words and feel free to upload it to archive.org - that's actually a great idea!

Done! All of the above files are now available on archive.org Sorry about the weird music/sound preview in the header - I'll iron that out another time.

Could it possibly be made a part of the "Adventure Game Studio Depository" collection at the same site, as well? To make it easier to find? i don't know how others search archive.org, but I usually start there if I'm looking for anything AGS.

I played Tales from the Outer Zone: The Construction, which is an entry in the Outer Zone series. I've had Cyborg Seppuku on my hard drive for a while without playing it, but will definitely get back to the rest of these games. I like Dune, and this game world  is heavily inspired by that. It manages to put a lot of lore/background into a few descriptions and conversations, and it also has some nice robot programming puzzles. And it's an AGS game, added to the database today. 

I played The Package, chosen because I had almost no time and the blurb said it was very short.  And it is. This is basically a demo, or perhaps the first chapter in what the author hopes will become a longer story. The game is a single scene where a clueless new agent/spy meets his handler for the first time. We don't get to know much about the story or why the protagonist seems so uninformed about what is going on - that's clearly intended to come later. The game is made in unity and looks beautiful with the characters being animated shadows in the dark. Difficulty level: tutorial. Play length: you can try all three scripted variations in a couple of minutes. Looks like a nice beginning for a longer project, at least graphically. There's not much to say about the story yet.

[don't]

I don't have any free time coming up, quite the opposite. But if I manage to draft my kids into doing the artwork for me, perhaps we can make a family project. I have the basic idea in place.

... but I should add it to the database and grab some Demo awards nominations The way this works is to make a new database entry for the demo and then another one for the full game?

If you want the Demo awards nominations, you should do that. Only games/demos in the database are eligible for the awards. Most people only post their demos in this (games in production) thread, though, which means they miss out on potential nominations.

I guess that Commercial games, which automatically has a "download demo" option could possibly get demo awards nominations, but they seldom do.

Let the right one come in?

I played two very good and totally different AGS games:

Ossuarium by Honza and his friend is a strange tale that I enjoyed very much. I won't tell about the story in detail for fear of spoiling it, but we're in the 1300s, and the art looks like wood carvings. It's very stylish! This one looks good, sounds good and tells a good story. Difficulty level is fairly easy. Recommended.

Contact by Ukz530 is a horror story. His games are getting better and better technically, and monster fans will like this one. It's an engrossing and a bit ambiguous story, with fun action sequences and logical puzzles. It's short, but there's a lot in there anyway. Also recommended.

Great game! There's a good story that's open for interpretation, very effective storytelling through the cutscenes, excellent use of your fast action scenes, logical puzzles in the midst of a less than logical world, creepy sound and scary monsters. And some real emotion. Very, very well done!

I haven't played Contact.EXE yet, but I did play the dev's ARG game from last year's jam and I thought it was excellent.(snip)
Maybe I just enjoy codes too much, but it felt like giving you a chance to do the kind of raw detective work that adventure games often don't give you the freedom to do.

Yes, I'm not saying this one was a bad game, simply not my cup of tea. Please post about this one, too, if you play it!  Raw detective work is about right. In the Rumpus room game I mentioned, different people solved different clues, which is why I imagine this may be funnier if played with a group. EDIT: Link to the Crime Team Investigation thread: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=58218.0

I've never tried an ARG before, so I gave Contact.zip a shot. This isn't an adventure game. Inside the zip file there are an assortment of files that can be opened in various office programs. I managed to sort it and read the story, and I understood how I was supposed to decipher a code, turning sound signals into an alphabet. But this didn't look like any fun to me, just work. Later, I needed that alphabet to crack a password for another file, and I decided not to spend my time on that. This sort of game will appeal to someone who thinks cyphers and codebreaking are fun in themselves. It wasn't my type of game. Perhaps it's funnier if you do it together with someone, like we did with the Crime Investigation Unit game in the Rumpus room of this forum.

Too bad. There were a couple of ARGs submitted to last year's AdvX as well, Aenigma and The Haunted Track. Now I don't think I will ever try them, unless maybe in cooperation, like a party game.

Thanks for your help. I finished the game. 

Ah, sorry for not helping with the key problem. You see, when you edit a post instead of posting a new one, it doesn't show up as a unread/new post for other users, and is easily missed. (I was told this by Mandle when I asked something about one of his games in an edit, which he didn't discover until the same question came up in another setting.) I thought you were still looking for the cards. 

The deadline has passed, and 19 entries are in. There are some familiar names among the entrants here.  Looking forward to playing the games!

Because my daughter is learning Spanish and has the day off from school tomorrow, I checked out Language Spy first.
This is a short adventure where you have to play in another language than English (being a spy who's supposed to pick up the language of the neighbour city). The real intention is to have a fun learning tool. It's not a beginner's game, though, you have to have some knowledge of the language chosen in order to understand the game. The game itself is fairly easy and fun to play. I had to choose German in order to understand everything - my low level Spanish didn't cut the mustard. The game is made in Unity by StandOffSoftware (host of the $105 Adventure Game Challenge).

In fact, the game does not take place in Cordoba University, it's on Granada University!

I'm so sorry, this is probably me connecting the Cordoban Caliphate and Alhambra and mixing it up somehow...I've been to Alhambra and loved it!

Heltenjon, you can achieve all 237 points in the demo version (the complete version has a total of 999 points). Some of them are not necessary to finish it (and they are very well hidden).

Ah, that's interesting to know. It says something about how large the full game is compared to the demo.

And yes ... the professor is a true professor at the Granada University

And now a celebrity! 

lighter fluid:

Spoiler

Have you checked the jeep closely?

[close]

Spoiler

And have you opened the lighter thoroughly?

[close]

I finished the demo with 206 of 237 points. I'm not sure if the 237 is the max in the full game or in the demo - I probably missed some points by choosing the dialogue options that advanced the game before doing everything else a couple of times. The end credits just about confirms that this is a student project. Pretty cool!

Ah, been a long while since I've played this one!

Conquests of Camelot: A Search for the Grail

Yes, that's it! One of the first games I played on a PC, probably back in 1990, it's remarkable because of the point system. Many puzzles had multiple solutions, but if you chose to be violent or sinful, you could end up with finding the Holy Grail and not being worthy of taking it. I also loved that the help system was to talk to Merlin.

More screenshots for those who thought it looked interesting: https://www.giantbomb.com/conquests-of-camelot-the-search-for-the-grail/3030-19759/images/

Josiah, you're on.

Okay, let's try this:

The first game for 2021 is in, and it's...a non-narrative platformer without an ending (I think).  Which fits the name: The Unending Story. Let's hope for more elaborate entries in the next two days.

Hacker?

No, the game's universe isn't really tech oriented. It has more of an adventure/Indiana Jones' vibe imo.

Ah! This is how Hacker looked like, apparently:

Spoiler

[close]

Perhaps it's a DuckTales game, then?