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Now I need something fresh from the river.

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I assume a fish but you can't interact with the river or use any inventory item (I actually thought of fishing using the rope and hook to no avail). I am thinking that maybe you can get the seagull to get you a fish but you can't really interact with that either. No new dialogues so that approach isn't helping.

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You need to

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combine two objects to get the bait you need. What two objects? It's

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the knife and the apple.

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It's really weird that there is a "strange object" near the dwarf's shed but you can't do anything with it!

Well...

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You can pick it up later, when you need to gather tools for building a vessel.

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Doesn't make much sense, I know.

Now to something unexpected
(...)

One more thing

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The map of the island vanishes into thin air. You must talk to Mr. Santos, but you cannot go to the town square. Click around the harbour building and eventually you are teleported to Mr. Santos.

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Ah, thank you. Finished it now. As for the last bit:

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There is a hotspot there, marked "Go to the Hills".

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If this is a demo, and you will release a "better version", then this isn't really a complete game (I assume you will have a complete game at one point, but this isn't it). IMHO this should be posted in the WIP instead.

Agreed. Posting the demo in the games section is fine, but a better place for this thread would be in "Works in Progress", marked "Demo available".

I have

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the cheese but neither give it to the mouse nor put somewhere in the cellar or Santos' house. Failed to combine it with other items or open a dialog about mice and cheese

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There is

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a hotspot near the mouse. A tile or a stone or something (piece of the floor). I missed this for a long time, so I'm not sure if it's visible all the time. There is a bug here. You're supposed to use the cheese, but can use any item on the tile, and the game will recognize it as the cheese.

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I'm stuck right after this. I'm gathering stuff for the vessel.

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I have the hammer, saw, nails, sewing kit, cut fabric. Don't have the planks, the paddle or the two meter rod. All these are plainly visible, but tells me that I need to get all the tools first. I suspect either that there's some kind of trigger that I'm missing, or perhaps a bug. I got the saw by just picking it up, but perhaps it's supposed to be inside the shed? And that I have to do something with the seagull first?

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The official voting is over, and some games were placed too high and some too low, as usual. 

I played The Cavern Echoes. Nice idea to pop in and out of your body. This entry was designed a bit differently than the engine works, giving a description when the mouse pointer hovers over something, and saying that description isn't interesting when I right-clicked.  The intention was clearly to use left button only. The game wasn't finished, and the ending is text only in the version out now. Short, okay game with decent pictures and easy puzzles.

And after I saw the results, I also played The Telwynium. This gave me vibes back to Conquests of Camelot. There is a lot of fantasy setup with names, titles and areas, but after some minutes it works very well. Very well-written, good character interaction, great world-building and also very good use of what isn't really that many locations. The story finds a balance between darkness and humour without feeling strained. A bit on the easy side, perhaps, but quite a long story. Even though it's not my number one pick, I can easily understand why this one was the overall winner. It's a very good jam game.

Does the demo have an ending? 

The information given is indeed that this is a demo of a commercial title. Unfortunately, after playing a bit, I feel it's not ready for commercial release just yet.

The positive first. Graphics are nice. I like that we see the same buildings in the background from other perspectives, which makes the "geography" feel right. The standard is to play in windowed mode, though, and some items are very small. The writing is a bit small for me, as well, but not unreadable.

The design of the game is very linear. This leads to the player wanting to do something, like pick up an object, but not being allowed yet. At times, I know what to do, but I need to find the trigger first. For instance, when I needed to get into the tailor's house:

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First, someone needs to tell the main character that there may be something interesting in the house. Then, I need to look at the door so that Lisa knows it's locked. Then I need to talk to yet another person to tell him it's locked before I am allowed to take the key (which I had already located), because Lisa needs that person to tell her to look for a key before she wants to pick it up.

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I think this ought to be changed. The player should be allowed to pick up objects in the order they find them. If not, then Lisa should turn and tell the player what needs to happen next. There are also times when Lisa is sent to gather some items, but it's not specified that she's supposed to pick them up in a certain order. You find out through messages when you try to pick something up in the wrong order. This may be a design choice, but for it to work, Lisa should turn and say something like:

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Tools first. I don't want to carry the heavy planks around before I have to.

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Another easy (?) fix: Add some music. The demo is silent. If you want to release this commercially, the buying customer will expect music playing in the background.

There are lots of hotspots that are unhandled. These could be used to fill in the background or tell the story. When Lisa looks at a house, she could say something about it  that adds to the theme, the story or the characters. If she always says "nothing special", why bother having the hotspot? It's not necessary for everything to be important for gameplay, but it could be used to add atmosphere. The buildings are nicely drawn and deserve some descriptive text as well.

When playing in windowed mode, which is the standard, the screen scrolls when you walk near the side. Until then, exits may be hidden from view. It took me a while to find one of the exits from the town square, simply because the exits were located near one another.

When I quit earlier today, I was trying to take a hammer.

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Lisa won't take it because a mouse is looking. The mouse is hungry, and I have a cheese. But I can't simply give the cheese to the mouse. Or maybe I can, after I find another trigger.

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I feel this shouldn't be a place a player could get stuck.

I hope this doesn't sound too harsh. It's meant as constructive feedback - areas where the game could be improved. If you had some betatesters, you would get similar responses, but through PM. Best of luck with your game! I'll try to complete the demo.

EDIT: Solved the hammer problem and promptly ran out of things to do. Does the demo have an ending?

I discovered quite by accident that the author of The Florist also is an AGS-er, though last active here in 2016 (Navidad).

And the last days I have had three Germans listen to the bubble gum song in All Demons Must go to Hell, but none of them manage to make out the words following "Ein grosses Kaugummi-". Aargh! 

I played Shark Riders. This is a visual novel, or short story. The writing and graphics are excellent. I really liked the fantasy setting/world building with a tribe and their rituals involving riding a shark. Truly original and well done. Now, the interaction the player has is limited, so this will not necessarily appeal to everyone. There are some choices to be made along the way and four endings. I think I found them all (though the numbering didn't work properly on the build I was playing). I prefer normal adventure games, but in its genre, this one is pretty good. Recommended if you like VNs.

I played The Florist. This time I think I need to somehow slag off this game and praise it at the same time. The game is about providing care for the plants in an apartment until grandma comes home. Basically, you have to follow the instructions and water, spray or fertilize as much as needed per day for each plant. The graphics are nice, albeit limited to the one room. It's relatively easy to do what you want, and there's also a shelf with music and short stories from public domain to entertain you. So if you like this kind of feel-good, meditative game, then perhaps this is something for you. Personally, I found it incredibly boring. There's little or no story, save from the letters from grandma. If I want to listen to music or read a story, I certainly won't do it in the form of a game where it's totally on the side of the game's purpose, and there aren't really any puzzles, only instructions to follow. I think the game can be easily beat if the player bothers to take notes. I discovered that a spray bottle didn't work (a bug I think is fixed after I downloaded), so I quit and found out that the game doesn't seem to have any save feature. Now, I think the game is nicely done (except for the bug) and does what it intends to do, so this isn't really me saying that it's a bad game, but that it's a game that doesn't offer anything of what I enjoy about adventure games (or games generally).

After swaddling through All Demons Must Go to Hell, I see that the creators have issued some sort of challenge to other streamers (I guess) to play it, claiming it to be deliberately bad-designed and user-unfriendly. There appears to be a lot of posted videos of people "taking the challenge". So, perhaps this is a way to do PR? (I wouldn't know, I have a hard time understanding why someone would want to watch other people play instead of playing themselves, anyway. I stay away from Let's play videos in fear of spoilers.) User-unfriendly it is, but not bad-designed, simply because it is designed. While it may be a parody, it still plays better than games that are badly designed because noone thought of x or y.

I played Georgiana Bones and the Hapless Heist. This is the second Indiana Jones parody in the jam, and by far the weaker. It's still a funny short game, with emphasis on the comedy. Voice acting is pretty good, too. I'm amazed that so many of the entries are fully voiced. Perhaps ten minutes of play time. There may be an extended version after the jam, so I'll watch out for that.

I also played Yowie. I've never heard the term before, but apparently it's an Australian sort of bigfoot monster. I liked this game, even though it breaks some of my personal rules for enjoyment.  The player character walks slowly, but it's because of an injury, so I totally buy that.  There are long walking areas without anyhting, but the eerie atmosphere and sense of that something could be behind the next tree made me accept that, too. The game is a side-scroller, but the plot makes this the only logical choice, as well. I had to turn up the brightness on my screen to see anything a couple of places, so I guess this one is best enjoyed when played at night in a dark room. The game looks and sounds well - yet another brilliant voice!

And I played Pato and Lobo. This was a fun change of pace. Pato is a bird who is in love with Lobo, a wolf. Through daydreams/minigames she has to build up the courage to talk to him. The puzzles are easy, but the atmosphere and the design of entering surreal daydreams made the game enjoyable.

Ah, a new version of  All Demons Must Go to Hell has replaced the broken passwords with a bookmark-type save a la King's Quest 7. It would have been much better if they simply used the normal saves, but all right. At least I got one save slot, and that was enough to make it to the end of the game. It turns out I was stuck because

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some objects are randomly placed in the maze,

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which I suspected when

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I found something where it shouldn't be according to my map.

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The humour is really what makes this game work, though there are some decent puzzles in here, as well. But I wonder how a German takes this...to Scandinavian ears some of the German music in here is tremendously funny. My favourite has to be either the chewing gum song or the devil jingle. Some times I felt like playing this game is like being pranked by a practical joke. There is, for instance,

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an auto-map system that isn't revealed to the player until he's found the way through the maze without it.

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I played Coffin Valley. I really liked this! It's a medium long western where you have to prove to the sheriff that you're tough enough to be the new deputy. Cartoonish characters on more realistic backdrops, but it didn't really bother me. Also nice Western music throughout. The voice acting is adding immensely to the atmosphere, really great casting! The game is quite family friendly, despite the tougher-than-nails characters. And it's made with AGS.

Also started on All Demons Must Go to Hell, the last AGS game in the bunch. This is probably a game people are going to hate or love. There are ridiculously many verbs to choose from, and you must be prepared to accept that "look", "search", "inspect" and "read" may give different results. There's also a maze that I'm now realizing is so big that I'll have to map it on paper. And a monster that's going to kill you several times. And a save system by hilariously long passwords that doesn't work properly. But all this is wrapped in humour of a dark, dark kind. Add great voice acting, and I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and try to beat it. Mind you, infinite verbs and maze mapping was par for the course when I played text adventures.

Is anyone else playing anything?

I played Allie Cat Game. This one's unfinished, but works as a demo of the basic story and the first few screens. I liked the wild graphics of a kind of dream world, but the items and the backgrounds don't really match. The text was too fast to read for me, but the story wasn't difficult to follow anyhow. I'm not a fan of the verbcoin interface either. I'll say that the game looks interesting and may be worth a look later, when there's a bit more to it.

I also played Dem Villa. This is a Twine story with multiple choices. Well written, but it tries to be scary and funny at the same time. While I enjoyed some of the through-the-fourth-wall humour, it breaks immersion. There is one puzzle in here that I thought was a bit clever. Can't say anymore without spoiling it. The game can be played with speech, and the German (the mother tongue of the author) is quite good, while the English is a tad slow. Perhaps ten minutes of play time.

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I finally found the time to play another game, and this time it was  Nadir. And it's a work of art. Unsettling and story-driven. The player finds himself with little to no memory in a submarine badly needing repairs. He's got to piece it all together. There's a lot to read, and the pace is slow, so this probably won't be everyone's idea of a good time, but I liked it a lot. It's really well written, and the graphics and interface are clear and functional at a professional level.

Perhaps we need to make a game where the plot is that the killer unicorn needs to get rid of the four elephants stuck speared by its horn before it dies from the smell. 

Or angels. There was probably a reason their first line most often is "Don't be afraid."

Well, I guess the game fits the jam title...some odd humour, music that *seems* to glitch, but doesn't, and a very spaghettey walk. 

Congrats on the release!

That's some of the scariest music I've heard!