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@Falsely - The download on itch gives "invalid game" error message.

[Rebel Planet]

Oh, I couldn't resist it...I've played through the game and found the three endings. I haven't changed my mind about the game since the last post. However, I'll add some praise for the brilliant music and sound design. I think it compliments the weirdness of the graphics. It just fits. Also kudos for including an autocomplete for a code after the player has discovered how to do it. There are loads of such seemingly small design choices that makes the game easier to play. Not in difficulty, but in how user friendly it is.

As almost always, the places I got stuck was in hindsight trivial.

Spoiler

I missed the exit to the alley for a while. And I ran around town with the contents of a package instead of mailing it straight away.

[close]

Oddly enough, the game this one reminded me of immediately, was Rebel Planet from Adventuresoft from 1985. It's got to be something about the graphics, as the story and gameplay are vastly different.

With the new site, I uploaded a game yesterday, and I wanted to link to my google drive in the downloads, and it works from my PC where I am logged in, but both from my phone and from the person's computer that was helping me, the download link doesn't work (I think it's expecting a direct link to the zip and thus the redirect isn't working?). I also want to edit my submission, but clicking save isn't saving my edits.

I could download this using your link (the one on the game page), it just took a long while before responding. It looks like it's the same version that Pell uploaded on his itch page (in the MAGS thread)? At least the file sizes are the same.

I've played a fair bit of this game, and the verdict so far is "wonderfully weird". As with all the games coming from this dev, the characters are off-center, strange-looking and inhabiting strange worlds. What pulls it off, is that everyone behaves like this is totally normal. (Which, to them, it is.) The characters may well look like something out of a surrealist painting, but they still have their own hopes and dreams, which the player character has to exploit in order to get somewhere.

Given that the tech and society is alien, the best is just to roll with it and pick up the plot as it unfolds. The game is first person, and the puzzles are solved through a combo of inventory puzzles, dialogue and investigation. Helpfully, Melon Head (that's me), understands this world even if the player does not, and examining stuff gives helpful descriptions that points the player in the right direction. (There is also a hint button, which I haven't needed yet.)

I also like that as Melon Head discovers something new, locations become lit up on the world map, allowing travel to new places. This gives a clear sense of progression that is very motivating. The writing is funny without trying too hard - the humour laregely lies in the personalities and descriptions we encounter while getting to know this world.

[Stormwater]

I cannot find Stormwater on the list of games to nominate. Is it perhaps automatically blocked because of the demo release the year before, called Stormwater - Early access? I don't really think it ought to be.

I've been playing this tonight. When I played the demo a year back, I think I never got through it, so I guess I have my work cut out for me here. Have you turned the difficulty level up? I cannot recall it was this hard. 

Anyway, music and eerie atmosphere is great. The action sequences work well, although I'm sure there are more skillful ways of dealing with the enemies than what I did. After dying several times, and also having trouble with saving the game (Bug report delivered on Itch.io), I finally managed to get through level 0. I got the grade C- on the first level of the tutorial. Oh my.

As for what genre one should call this, I would say that the adventure parts are not dominating. It is clearly a hybrid, although the shooting and action parts are dominant in gameplay.

I haven't got to where all the other genres appear yet, except when I tried skipping the intro and started at level four, after the tutorial levels. I got to finish those first...

Is there an option for quitting to the menu? I couldn't find it and had to quit and restart the entire game if I wanted to start over, like when accidentally skipping the intro.

I doubt I have the skills to beat this game, but I'll try and see if I can at least reach the place where the demo had me stopped.

[is]

I've played a few hours of this game to check it out before the nominations. I think I have only visited five locations, so I haven't gotten far.

So - the first you see when starting up the game, is a type of copy protection like the old days, alt+enter to skip to a window with the manual, find the correct word on page five, skip back to the game. This must be done for nostalgia reasons, and gets old the second time you boot up the game. I'll forgive it, but don't do that again, please.

Secondly, it looks and plays like the nine-verb Lucasfilm games. As far as I have played, there is a balance between humour and seriousness, as you are playing Zorro The Scarlet Pimpernell The Black Hawk in the times leading up to the French revolution. (So I'm playing an English translation of a Spanish game about French characters. Whew!) There's a funny and well done intro before I can take the reins and explore my character's home and talk to my partner/servant/friend. There are lots and lots of items that are interactable, or at least possible to examine. This holds true for the later locations as well, making me spend a lot of time looking at spoons that are not really important or interactive beyond being possible to examine. I like this, but I do see that for other players, the amount of hotspots could be too many.

I've talked to about 20 characters in the five locations I have been to, and almost every one of them has a lengthy conversation tree. If you like to read, this is fine, but even I thought it was a bit much. Is every person in the tavern that important? Really? Sometimes I think I by accident have clicked away some vital information, and the line can not be repeated. Ah, let's hope it was just background. Some lines can be repeated, and I guess that must be the ones that I really need.

Puzzles? I haven't found many, but fooling the guards was satisfying, at least. I'll have to come back to that one later on.

Graphics and music are very good. The graphics mimic the style of Indy 4, yet set in another time. It's self-reliant and independent, but still reminiscent of that certain Lucasfilm style. (Well, we all recognized Maniac Mansion in The Castle, so there's no problem here.)

I guess it's too early for me to say how good the game is. I really like the main character, and all  those conversations are fleshing him out a lot. The amount of text and especially dialogue may be a love or hate dilemma. On the one hand, the story doesn't move fast if you read everything, like I do. On the other hand, it allows the player to delve more deeply into the world you are in. Isn't it nice if every character on the street actually is someone with agendas of their own? That's the main attraction of multiplayer games, isn't it?

One problem with the immersion is that the fourth wall is often broken during dialogue. I haven't found any historical inconsistencies yet, but the characters may talk like they know they are characters in a graphical adventure and in on the joke, mentioning hint books and similar stuff. I think that joke doesn't really fit with the realistic and detailed graphic style, and if it were to be used, I would rather have one character who consistently is the one to break the fourth wall, while the others played it straight. But I may be reading too much into what amounts to the opening act of the game.

I will return to the game after trying out the last few games in the FYC thread.

EDIT: I made a strikethrough to show that I was confusing you with the creator of The Castle and Legend of Skye. There are some similarities in style, but I should know better.

[Carnival of Shadows]

On the games page, Creamy's comment about Carnival of Shadows is listed as one of the last comments. He has a spoiler, and in the preview, it looks like the spoiler tag is ignored. On the page of the game, the spoiler tag works as usual.

This will be a marginal problem, but if someone was to use a spoiler tag very early in their comment, the spoiler would be shown on the preview page.

Hi everyone,
As I now assemble all on my creations on my DeviantArt accounts, all my games have been deleted from Itch.io and are now available at this URL : https://www.deviantart.com/marionpoinsot34/gallery/89233646/video-games
Thank you

Did you delete all the old games? Owww.... I liked when you had them available at one of the links.

While not the best at such games, Iska Igra includes 10+ minigames and could be useful just to see the variety.

I played this, and while short, it was atmospheric enough to make me want to play the full version when it comes out. I particularly liked the cheesy German villain, who won't match the rules well, to say it carefully.  Best of luck with the production!

The "like" button seems to be broken.

Working again! Thanks!

The "like" button seems to be broken.

As I'm playing the games in the FYC thread, the last couple of days, I've been playing this one.

I'm liking it a lot. I'll be forced to take a break if I'm to try out the rest of the FYC games before the nomination date, but it's tempting to keep pushing on this one!

So: The inspirations are clear and not hidden in any way. The mountain overview, city street with clock tower, Cartographer Wally-lookalike RPG store owner and more point to Monkey Island, and by extension other Lucasarts games. The game is a comedy and gets away with these allusions and some other gags openly breaking the fourth wall without much trouble. I haven't really fallen for Skye's personality yet, though. Her dialogue options are Guybrush without being Guybrush...but perhaps it will grow on me. (Did I forget to mention the MI-style music? Mentioned!)

The story is long and silly (as in entertaining). I think I still have a lot left, as I haven't entered the castle yet. Looking carefully at other reviews, trying not to spoil anything, I believe this means I have plenty to do yet. While I haven't fallen in love with Skye yet, there are plenty of other characters with great personalities. The naked druid is the first one you encounter, and darn if he isn't one of the funniest, too. At least until I met the baker. Puzzles involving these characters has to do with learning about them and their peculiarities, which I find to be very satisfying gameplay.

The puzzles are, along with the humour, the game's strong suit. Or its weakness. They are pretty hard. Not impossible (so far, at least), but challenging. I tried to play the game while sleepy and got nowhere. Occasionally, I was left wandering about wondering what to do next, as the game doesn't signpost all that clearly. Thankfully, there are a few shortcuts via the map that allow the player to teleport to some locations without all that walking. I guess one must be prepared to backtrack and look for extra or forgotten clues occasionally. I can see that for some players, this will be punishing instead of rewarding. Many of the puzzles are multi-layered, requiring several steps before solved. I love that kind of puzzle, at the risk of not understanding what went wrong in the fifth step somewhere. And it may be a bit frustrating to see items that are unavailable that you need to try out a solution to something else.

I'll get back to this game for sure in February.

Trying to move to page 2 (or another number) while on a board (list of threads) gives an error message. Doing the same inside a thread works fine.

I realized that I've not given any feedback on this. Now that I'm playing the FYC games, it's only appropriate to give this game some love, too.

It's strangely addictive and fun. I seldom manage to play just one level. It's got that "one more go" effect. Even with little polish and no sound, this still is a good game. I'm definitely nominating it as one of the best non-adventures this year. 

Could you give some definite examples, please?  "Sometimes" is unfortunately not very helpful... 

Examples that work like expected:

Spoiler

The latest posts in this thread.
The latest posts in AGS games in production
Engine Development
Competitions and Activities
Beginner's technical questions

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Examples that work in the unexpected way:

Spoiler

The latest posts in Completed games announcements (back until my comment on Teeth of Glass on Thursday, which works as expected. Earlier posts than this also seems to work on other boards.)
The latest posts in AGS engine and Editor releases
Modules, Plugins and Tools
Hidden forum for database maintenance
Adventure Related Talk and Chat
The Rumpus Room
Recruitment

[close]

When viewing recent posts, clicking on the thread name sometimes shows the post in its place in the thread (like earlier), but sometimes jumps to the first post in the thread (new, unexpected behaviour).

[does]

I'm trying out the games in the FYC thread, and now the turn had come to this one. I downloaded quite some time ago, started up the intro and then quit, thinking I really ought to check out the old KQ games a bit before having them spoiled. But alas, I've been busy.

So, full disclaimer: I've barely played King's Quest games, except for a bit of Dr. Slash's KQ IV: Perils of Rosella retold. I think this is important, because it will directly influence how to view this game. I've played a few hours into the story, but not finished it yet.

First of all, the visuals and the music create an excellent atmosphere. The animations are very high quality, and an obvious candidate for AGS awards. There are a lot of them, too! I felt a bit like playing a Disney cartoon at times. The interface looks very much like Sierra, with some additions. The game is easily controlled, but there are clear limits to what the player character can do. Most of my attempted actions result in some generic response.

Playing the game, it is quite linear, despite the option to "choose your path", which seems to simply be choosing the order of the chapters. The puzzles I've encountered so far, are logical and easy, with the possible exception of the "lock of the forest" puzzle, which requires a bit more work. Nothing of this bothers me.

What does bother me, is that I'm playing for quite some time and don't really feel my characters are making any progress - they're still pretty clueless. And I'm thinking to myself that the pacing seems off - why is this part of the story there? Then I realized that I am playing only the new story.

For the players who have experienced the former KQ games, they aren't playing a standalone story, but a small part in a really long one that's been on their minds for years. When they play, the characters enter a realm that is known to them, and those story bits seem to be there to tie up loose ends from the long series. What I perceive as a chapter with no progress, may be exactly the answer to something left hanging from an earlier game. The writing is quite verbose, and you get to know a lot about the npcs that may not be important for the story in this game, but is exactly what the long time fan wants.

I am clearly not the target audience for this game...yet, anyway. I will return to it and finish it later on. It is clearly excellently made, but it's a fan game in the double sense - by a fan, for other fans. I've enjoyed playing, too, but not as much as I bet KQ veterans have.

A bug report in spoiler tags:

Spoiler

As I said, I downloaded some time ago, so much of this may already be fixed.

In the very first room after the intro, I walked left instead of right. I was stuck without being able to move. I don't know if the other character blocked my way or if I somehow exited the walkable area.

In the small town with the boys in the alley - after having the exit downwards from the town square opened, I went there to the crossroad in the forest, then immediately went back to the town. I'm not sure if I also went back to the forest a second time or not, but then the screen turned all black and no interaction was possible.

Trying to use the knife on the guard boy in the alley crashed the game.

And I left the game to watch tv with my family, and returning an hour+ later, the game had crashed because it had run some hundred thousands of loops, the error message said. I was playing Edgar in the top of a tree, behind the robbers' tree hut when this occurred, in case that is significant.

Also, after using the wolf totem, the inventory cycling is a bit off. Instead of the rightmost finger, used for feeling items in my inventory, the mouse cursor looks like the wolf eye. It still works like the finger, though.

There was also a game crash with my interaction with the ghost child in the underworld, but unfortunately, I cannot remember exactly what I did.

[close]

And one more complaint, since I'm letting it all out today Does the constant use of hyperbole on the internet (as in how everything is always "the best X EVER") get on anybody else's nerves? Doesn't it feel exhausting?

Yeah. It's the worst EVER!

I guess hyperbole goes hand in hand with the misunderstood Darwinism you wrote about:

as if art were a linear progression and the new stuff should be "better" by default than everything that came before it.