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I'm at the same place Lorenzo is, I guess.

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I've found all three caves. Took me a while to understand that the object on the beach wasn't a cave! I guess the hidden message is a hint to where I can find an object to help me past the obstacle in the third cave, and I further guess this must be somewhere in the large cave. This game is super hard, but the objectives helped. Not given up finding the second ending yet!

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Danvzare, your definition excludes games of chance. So, fair enough, by your definition, Snakes & Ladders isn't a game.

Does it actually exclude games of chance? Poker is a game of chance, yet choosing which cards to keep and which to not, is a meaningful decision. Based on what Snarky said, it does seem to though.

I meant games based on chance only, not games with elements of chance. Sorry for not expressing myself clearer.

Many kids' games are based on the same premise as Snakes & Ladders (rolling the dice and getting to the goal first), and quite a few other games have very limited choices to make. Game of Life, for instance, is clearly luck-dominated, but would make your cut. Barely.

Games like Poker, Yahtzee or Risk have high elements of chance, but there is enough skill involved that over time, the most skillful player will probably win the most number of games. But they won't win every time.

Danvzare, your definition excludes games of chance. So, fair enough, by your definition, Snakes & Ladders isn't a game.

One cannot really argue against a definition, one can only say whether or not it serves the purpose. If you want to make a divide between board games and board competitions (which Snakes & Ladders must be, as you can win or lose), then fine. But this isn't how stores and most people will define a game. They will probably think it's something along the lines of "a competition on a board where you can win or lose by following set rules". (Board game, there. Card game...almost the same.)

I'm not sure where I would draw the line. I'd say Bingo is a game, but I'm not so sure about a lottery or a bet. They would probably be games in the English language, though.

But I like your argument. Indeed, we use it a bit when we play games with the kids. I can participate while making dinner, if someone can just make the roll for me and move my piece. 

The "Superman is a horrible concept to write for" idea.
The idea that a protagonist that is morally upright and invincible can't have good stories. To me, that just smells of excuses for not being skilled at writing, and I thought pop-culture as a whole had moved beyond that argument, but I saw it recommended to me as a video again recently.

There are many good Superman stories, and many less good ones, too. The challenge seems to be that he's so powerful that he's not in any real danger. This can be solved by making even more powerful enemies, which is not a good solution in the long run, or by making stories that is about something else. I've been watching the new Superman & Lois tv series, and like what I see so far. The writers have emphasized parenthood, making moral choices and so on.

I played this to the end now before the award voting deadlines, and I have to say that it's a shame so few have rated the game in the database. We need five people...I've voted, so please cast your votes so people can see how many cups this one deserves.

The game is exceptional. The art is heavily inspired by Police Quest, and is done very well in that style. But the writing...oh, the writing! The game features lots of major and minor characters, each with a voice and personality of their own. Add to that an incredible amount of unnecessary details placing it in the right time frame. I'm sure I've added an hour or two to my playing time just by reading album titles in the store or looking at stuff in the museum. 

The characters have real relationships, and the game is so long that there is plenty of time for character development. I spent hours going back and forth between locations, following up all the leads in my investigation. This feels very realistic - you get to know about something and then go around asking everyone about it.

In my opinion, Urban Witch Story is one of the best AGS games of 2020. Possibly the best.

This har been a truly great MAGS year!    The deadline for voting is approaching, but these games don't take long to play...for the most part. Those who haven't already sampled this year's MAGS winners, should absolutely do so. And perhaps trying the other games, as well - the competition is often close.

If you play, you get to lose weight, eat all the Chinese food you can, get your motor going, get away with murder, persuade most eloquently, delve into the cosmic truths, find your inventory, stream your daring exploits, embark on a journey, solve a murder mystery, explore the hidden rooms, break the spell and deliver a pizza. These games are good!

Downloaded and looking forward to playing...I'll probably jump on this one right after the deadline for the awards.

I finished this yesterday, trying to play all the nominees through to the end. It's a very good installment, and as usual I can second all of Shadow1000's observations. The game is great, effectively combining humour in loads of dry wit observations and dialogue with a pretty dark and violent storyline. This can be a difficult line to thread, but this game series manages seemingly without effort.

These games are written like it's one long game, but segmented into smaller "levels" with their own puzzles. This is a very good way to avoid dead ends, but it also requires lots of locations and extra rooms, like in the police station. I think this adds lots to the atmosphere, giving an extra feeling of being there.

The puzzles are very well thought out, often depending on manipulating the people in question. And the characters are so well-written that they have their own personality, making me chuckle when I find the correct way of making someone bend to my wishes. It's a good puzzle when you feel that you couldn't have solved it that way if there was another person involved.

I finished it with 100 of 101 points, so I guess I will backtrack to find the one that got away...

The bug mentioned above has been removed and a new version uploaded. Sorry for the inconvenience. I hate dead ends!

I think perhaps what caused me to discover the error in the first place, was that the character moves to an object and effectively stands in front of it afterwards, blocking it from view.This is about the only nitpick I have in an otherwise excellent game. 

Hello! I dearly hope it isn’t a dead end because there shouldn’t be any!

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Have you given him the scrap of material?

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No, I don't have that item. I hope it's located somewhere in the same location, as I cannot go anywhere else. I'll do some more pixelhunting, then.

EDIT: No, I can't find it. Do I need to backtrack to an earlier savegame?

So why are we in the basement in the first place?

The price of curiosity 

SÃ¥ you (couriosity) killed the cat, went to the digital basement to bury it, and the way upstairs turned out to be bugged.

Ok, I'm genuinely interested. I know too little about Asia to know what you are talking about, so it would be nice to see some examples of what Southern Europeans and East Asians have in common.

The Scandinavian countries probably do have some extra connection to the anglo-world...not necessarily anglo-American all the time. We're obsessed with English football, we do subtitles for movies instead of dubbing them (and get the most from Hollywood), and with regards to Disney, my first thought is actually Donald Duck comic books, not the movies. (Mickey Mouse is for some reason secondary to Donald Duck up here.)

The term "Western world" is in common use, and it would be interesting to know if this is an offending term. The term is loose in meaning and easy to attack, yet useful for generalization.

I'm stuck with 50 points outside the crime scene where I'm talking to SOCO chief Gary Lukic.

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I've given him two pieces of evidence: the matchbook and the blood sample. After that, I still can't leave the scene because "there is work to be done", so I suppose there must be something I'm missing in this location. I hope I haven't reached a dead end.

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I love how those swells move. 

Hello everybody,
I'm Simone (I'm not English) and my first visit here dates back to... at least 2001, I guess...
I was in university and I made 12 short AGS adventure games for my friends.

So, are those 12 shorts available still?  Best of luck!

Also, please kindly turn your attention to the voting for MAGGIES 2020, and choose your best three games from last year.

That link goes to last year's competition. (But that thread is a good reminder, so that's good, then.) Here's this year's thread: MAGGIES 2020

Voted!

This time I've played all the entries and commented along the way, so there was no need to postpone. A bit hard to make up my mind about what game should have the third spot...and some of my favourites of the year didn't win their month, anyway. Should we talk about the games in this thread? Or perhaps not? *Checks other thread* Ah, I see you wanted discussion last year. I'll probably blab my mouth some, then. (Later.)

Stupot, it says "The Fozen shore"...we have to find room in the budget for that extra r. 

Hey! Sorry, I've totally missed this thread. Thanks heltenjon for messaging me.

Concerning the questions on loose ends and red herrings (a massive spoiler alert):
(snipped)
Once more, thanks for playing!

Thanks for answering! Deliberately or not, you made lots of interesting could-be-puzzles. Maybe in a sequel... Given the dream context, you could reuse rooms in another dream. The effect used in the kitchen was very cool.

One should think you had made this game to specifications about my personality, just to drive me mad! 

Ok, so I drown a lot. Then I

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find a massive chest of treasure and become too heavy to go up again. And I die. Next time I dive in a storm, because I want to save up money before going to port because half of it goes in bribes. And then, when I survive the dive, my boat have lost almost every treasure stashed on board! Arrgh!!!

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My thoughts:

Pig in a Poke by Slasher:

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Oh, just another standard Slasher game? It's easy to think so. This time around, the protagonist reminds me a bit of mr. Creosote, stuffing himself with all kinds of nastyness, in addition to what is actually edible. There's plenty of humour of the gross kind. While I don't think this is among the best games Slasher has made, I keep reminding myself of all that I now almost take for granted when playing his Mags games. He's developed a very functional navigation system through icons, which also is used to keep track of which locations are now cleared. This time there's both a meter for money and for weight, the latter functioning like points. I'd have wished for the weight to be utilized at some point, maybe for some area to only become available when he had reached a certain weight. This template makes even an average Slasher game an above average game.

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One More Fathom by WHAM!:

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I'm too greedy. I keep dying because I go too deep and collect too much treasure. The interface is well thought out, and there are more variables at play than I can easily shake a stick at. The premise and execution is very good, although this clearly isn't my type of game. I guess I have to grind a lot to build up my levels before I get to really tackle the deep end. I'll stick by it, because I want to see that ending when I meet the win condition, but I'm not there yet.

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I don't know who I will vote for yet.

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Slasher's game is an adventure game and works like a charm. Yet it's a game I'll quickly mostly forget about, except that the protagonist ate everything that wasn't nailed down. Wham!'s entry is of a game type which frustrates me, but it's memorable and undoubtedly well made, impressive for the time given. I wil try to get a little further in OMF before I make up my mind.

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