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As long as it's intentional that he's behaving a bit boorish, that's okay. There's no rule saying the lead should always be likable.

Thought about it later...perhaps a certain mustard reference ought to be replaced with mayo? 

The reason why I thought the wiggling head animation was used too often, was that I couldn't see the pattern. Does he do it when he's making progress, or when he thinks he's cool, or when he reacts to something stupid other characters say...? Mind you, I wasn't taking notes, so there may be a pattern that I didn't catch. But I think the animation (which is cool, btw) ought to mean something. It would also give some personality to the other characters if they had their own animations specific to them. On the other hand, as it is makes the protagonist stand out from the crowd more.

Indiana Jones and the Passage of the Saints isn't actually in the games page, but I've added the rest.

Thanks! I wondered about that one. It shows up in search with ratings and descriptions, so perhaps it was deleted by the authors? I'm thankful there are traces, though, or else I wouldn't have known what to look for elsewhere.

Well, that was fun. The humour involving bodily fluids may be a bit juvenile, but I'm childish, so no harm done there. I liked the graphic style with the oversized heads, although I think the main reaction animation of the protagonist happened a bit too often. The style of puzzle with a convoluted solution involving several steps also works.

I'm not too fond of the descriptions of other characters or all the dialogue choices - the main character seems a bit of a douche at times. But I liked the copy guy!

Best of luck with the project! I'll play the finished version, too. 

Extra kudos to your son for the voice acting! 

I'll repeat that I think it's a good move to add the game to the games database.

Before I became a more regular visitor to these pages, I had some years where I would be an occasional lurker, on the lookout for games to play. And where did I look? In the games database. Even now, if I want a specific type of game, I'll use the game database as the first choice. This will mean that Guest users are quite likely to grab games featured in the database, especially if they pop up regularly as recommended games. (You can see this when the download count restart every week.)

Adding the game also means that someone who plays another of your games and likes it, will be able to check out your other work. I don't know how other people think, but I frequently do this.

Come to think of it, perhaps your game would get more downloads if it had a common word in it that people search for...like "Easter". The database doesn't have the option to classify a game as a seasonal game (Christmas game, Easter game etc.), so I would simply type in "Easter" or "Christmas"/"Xmas" in the search field on the games page in order to find one. I'd reckon your game could become a game that gets new downloads every year when Easter comes around again.

In addition, adding a link to the plug thread from the games page will probably also increase the number of hits there by a small margin. Heck, maybe even people don't notice the plug post because they don't know the game's been released, not the other way around.

Chomba seems to have already pointed at the points for improvement, so I'll just heave some praise your way. 

This looks and plays very well! The characters already have personality after just a few minutes of play. The portraits and backgrounds are gorgeous, and the music sets the mood, especially in the temple. The plot also sounds like it will be interesting. If you manage to stick some nice puzzles into the mix as well, this is very promising.

Perhaps adding more backgrounds? Changing the background when the player has completed a certain amount of tasks may make the player feel the progress better.

I don't really think any of this is the problem. If you have few downloads, it's more likely because you haven't added the game to the database yet. In addition, the game was released in the middle of the awards voting, and the plug post may easily have drowned in the mass of posts at that time. Followers of MAGS would still have seen it, but perhaps felt no special need to comment in both threads.

Concerning the points you asked for feedback about, I'd say that the screenshots, plot and title suggests that this may be aimed at younger audiences. Gameplay is not, especially the magnificent lock puzzle and the guard dialogue.

How about 46 Memory Lane?
Or maybe He Came Through the Door?

Does the Soviet Union count?

(nevermind, maybe I will repost later )

Nevermind=Nirvana
maybe I will repost later=I will be reborn
= Smiling all the time

So it's someone who has reached Nirvana who will be reborn as someone who smiles a lot.

Duh, it's Dalai Lama. 

Spoiler

There may be a pretence of belief that something that is not a riddle, is a riddle, somewhere in this post. This is due mainly to comedic effect, or the attempt at same.

[close]

So I wasn't sure who Cody Johnston was, googled him and ended up binge watching Cracked After Hours. Thank you! 

I remember in an oil museum, I had to balance funds and choose where and how to look for oil, how deep to drill and ultimately make use of information found in the exhibit.

Just for curiosity, do you remember where/which museum this was?

Yes, it's The Norwegian Petroleum Museum in Stavanger, Norway. My visit there was many years ago, though.

I think it is really cute. I don't think it requires puzzles, I only wish I could select/inspect the different items more freely (i.e. in which order) and more than once (I accidentally clicked too fast and couldn't "replay" that section).

Agreed, this would also be an improvement. Perhaps I'm being too harsh - I just really wanted this to be good.

I also played Opera Fatal as a kid/teen. I thought it was really cool, the graphics were impressive for me at that time.
It was a nice mix of puzzles and learning. There was some in-game library where you could learn about opera and classical music, music theory, instruments,... and some of the knowledge was required for some puzzles.

I'm going to have to try this one now. 

My attempt to go on a small Indy-spree was a bit more cumbersome as many links were missing in the database.

Indiana Jones and the crown of Solomon is at https://archive.org/details/indiana-jones-and-the-crown-of-solomon

Indiana Jones: Coming of Age is at https://archive.org/details/indiana-jones-coming-of-age

Indiana Jones and the Seven Cities of Gold is at https://archive.org/details/indiana-jones-and-the-seven-cities-demo-v1.2.1.1

Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth (Rolling Demo) is at https://archive.org/details/indiana-jones-the-fountain-of-youth

Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth (Playable Demo) is at https://archive.org/details/indiana-jones-and-the-fountain-of-youth

Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Spheres is at https://archive.org/details/indiana-jones-and-the-temple-of-spheres

Indiana Jones and the Passage of the Saints is at https://archive.org/details/indiana-jones-and-the-passage-of-saints

I don't think it is fair to call it a point and click adventure, the game calls itself an interactive storybook.

Fair point. I guess I was disappointed because it was described differently in the newspaper, and I was curious about how they would do it.

But out of curiousity, how, specifically, would you have changed it? You mention adding puzzles and challenges, but how would you fit that into the goal of teaching people about how an opera is made? Taking all the information that the game wished to pass on, how would you pass it on differently? Would the director asking the conductor for the key to his cupboard to get his stage plans to give to the architects really be the best way in this case?

I think one would have to first pass on the information, and then let the player use it in some fashion. I agree that key puzzles wouldn't further the goal of information flow. There are probably many ways to do it, not all relying on point and click gameplay. The easiest way is a sort of "Test yourself" quiz after reading the information. Another option could be through task management - how to do this on budget/with limited action points - more in the vein of a strategy game, perhaps. A third easy way out, would be adding a "Grow" type of gameplay where the player simply chooses which order to do things in, giving more or less satisfying results.

I've played games in museums before that works well in the context of using information given. I remember in an oil museum, I had to balance funds and choose where and how to look for oil, how deep to drill and ultimately make use of information found in the exhibit.

In order to make it a point and click AND give out the info through gameplay, perhaps the best solution would be to have a low difficulty level so that kids could breeze through it (and learn at the same time). A minimum of change to the current game could perhaps be that the player could click on the objects to perform the correct task themselves after the current tutorial. Writing this, I realize that I was probably disappointed because I felt that I was going through a tutorial phase with nothing afterwards.

silly and intrusive request, but would you care to draw up a short design doc/puzzle doc/script about how you'd go about it?
It could even be a bit of a different ruleset for a future MAGS...basically make a better implementation of that game.

Heheh...I feel the request is a bit in the vein of telling me not to criticize unless I can do better myself. I probably am not the best qualified to do this, so any ideas in this thread are welcome - that's basically what I wanted to discuss.

But okay - one idea I had was to start out without other verb actions than walk and look. Then, after reading/discovering stuff to do, the player gets new actions available  to perform, maybe looking like a musical score, a telephone etc. The order of discovering things is not set, but the order of doing stuff has to be logical. There're still no puzzles in that design, but they could be added...depends on how easy the game ought to be.

I'll have to think a bit more about it. Feel free to add to the discussion.

I happened to read about that a Norwegian philharmonic orchestra National Opera had made a point and click adventure game on their pages: Opera Quest.

It's at https://www.operaquest.no if anyone wants to take a look.

Out of curiousity, I checked it out, and was disappointed that there is very little game content. It's more of an interactive educational tool than a game. To proceed, you have to click on stuff in the correct order, and then you receive information about how an opera is made and what the different people in a production actually do. This may or may not be interesting, but I find it unfortunate that they didn't include any puzzles or anything challenging for the "player". It seems like a game made without any input from people who actually play games. It looks good, so I have to conclude that this is somewhat of a failed opportunity. The basic idea seems good, though.

Great game, Slasher! That's the guy from Taste the Blood of Darkness, isn't it?

Apart from the Back to the Future trilogy, do you have a suggested order of playing your games? That is, should I think of them as connected or as parallel universes sometimes featuring the same characters?

Iesu Nazarea? Or perhaps that's a bit too Latin.

February.