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Who could shoot a Sprout? Especially when any of them could be Barry, the Time Sprout. 

[Step # 1 - nomination time!]

Step # 1 - nomination time!
Play the games released in 2024. Then select games you deem worthy in each category!

While you're at this, people, please also go to the game's database page, find the box marked Public opinion and click on the link marked your votes. A game needs at least five player ratings to get those nifty orange cups. Although comments are nice, ratings also help. (And ten years from now, this will be a reminder for you that you've already played that game.) For those of you who don't like to write comments, the rating page allows a comment, but does not require it. Thus voting/rating is done anonymously.

The Gun Ninja and the Jedi Cowboy Part II: The Reckoning

With how many strange movies exist in the world, I have to ask, is that a real movie?

I would be surprised if it was. (But I was also surprised by the screenshot.)

The Gun Ninja and the Jedi Cowboy Part II: The Reckoning

This looks really good. The setting sounds creepy, and the video clips suggests this will be a great horror title. Best of luck with the production! Looking forward to playing it.

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I can't seem to figure out the trick with the hand mirror and fusebox at the end(?) - I think I'm looking for a key?  I have some wire bracelet, I'm looking around the corner with the mirror... but timing or clicking anywhere doesn't seem to work... a nudge would be appreciated

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(Mirror problem at the end)

Spoiler

Have you noticed that you can turn the mirror with mouse movements, viewing different parts of the room?

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Doesn't help?

Spoiler

You are looking for a key. It's in the rightmost view of the room.

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It's hanging on the wall right around the corner. You can grab it from where you stand.

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This is really interesting and would be fun, but I usually give up when making these because I don't have time for all the art. But maybe..

I didn't plan on participating by myself this month, but I'm willing to handle the art side if you or someone else wants to collaborate.

I don't have much time for coding either, but I'm sure I could cook up some backwards puzzles or a stupid plot, if needed.

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I finally played through this the last few days, and it was just as good as the fine people in the posts above have described. My impression is that you must have done a lot of research, because the game looks and sounds very believable and seems to nail the historical period very well. In a sense, the unnecessary bits, or the fine polish, if you will, elevates the game. The streets are bustling, sounds and weather conditions are just right - it simply makes the world believable. I've read stories in a bookstore, taken a horror quiz from the proprietor, and watched a silent movie in a theater, none of which are essential for the main story, but makes the whole package so much more. It must have been a ton of work.

The story plays like out like an investigation. There is a lot of dialogue, and some of the cut scenes are quite long, especially near the ending. There are many characters, so the game should preferrably be played intensively over a few days to avoid losing your thread. The story plays on some well-known genre tropes, borrowing from detective stories, horror stories and treasure hunt adventure stories. It's like a love letter to the type of stories alluded to. The writing is excellent throughout, and the characters have quirks and arcs with goals of their own. (Well, the most prominent characters, at least.)

Visually, it's very good. The attention to detail is staggering, and when you have an audio design complete with contemporary music pieces inserted, there is a lot to love.

Puzzles? The puzzles are by and large a part of the story and will require some back and forth, questioning people and confronting others with what you now know. Fans of Urban Witch Story will know what I mean. There are also inventory puzzles, and the game even comments Patrick Moore's habit of carrying around strange items. The puzzles are fun, but the game's focus is on the storytelling and atmosphere/world building. I was never stuck, and I think most players will solve this mystery quite easily. The one-click interface probably makes the game easier to convert to mobile platforms, and I have nothing against it, but it makes the game easier. Don't expect to be put to the test with this game, but expect to be immersed and told a great story.

Is it the AGS game of the year? I haven't played all the full length commercial releases (yet), so I cannot tell for certain, but so far, I would say yes. A game like The Shame of the Pack arguably has better puzzles and perhaps just as good music, so it's not impossible to  make a competition out of it, but my guess is that when the awards are coming, a fair share of them will belong to An English Haunting.

I don't have an actual release of my own this year, but since I've been doing videos of MAGS games lately, I could expand that into this: once the nominations are published I'll make a list of the games and try to play and record as many of them as I can to try and raise awareness and give people a chance to get a look at the nominees even if they don't have the time for proper playthroughs of their own.

I think that would be very nice. This year has 10+ of full length games releases, and very few will have had the time to play them all. (Not to mention @FransisKransis , who always releases something big and complex just a month before nomination time.  )

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Maybe AGS panel review should also become visible after 5 people from the panel rated the game? I'm honest, it doesn't make sense to me.

If I understand you correctly, you're referring to the way user reviews work, where five players have to have rated a game before the system shows the result as orange cups. Well, so far this year, one game has gotten the five ratings necessary to earn orange cups. One of all the games released in 2024. It's pretty clear that most people don't rate the games they play. Many games have lots of comments, but still no player rating. So in my opinion, more of us should rate (using the tiny vote button on the game page.)

Now, the point of the comments and user ratings are mainly to give feedback to the game dev, and also to other players. The panel ratings I think serve more as some sort of information to the players looking for a game to play. I think both are useful, in their own ways. But they are opinions of someone, and hence subjective. They will also seem odd when time passes. A game from fifteen years ago may have gotten praise for its graphics, yet not be so impressive when compared to something people can do today.

In the FAQ Babar linked to, it says:

How does the Panel work?
The Panel works on the following premises:
1. Every member records which game he/she has rated in a special thread, along with a motivation. There is no anonymity within the panel.
2. Any rating can be challenged and discussed by fellow panel members.
3. The panel works under the supervision of each other and moderators.
4. The panel members are instructed and trained to rate according to certain guidelines and criteria that have been worked out in beforehand.
5. The panel members do not rate their own games.

The system is if course not perfect, but it opens for panel members to rate on their own or together, or challenge/discuss ratings. There have been several discussions about how the ratings should work or if they should exist at all over the years, but this information about how it is done has been public for a long time.

lapsking, please don't alienate everyone.

@ThreeOhFour and @WHAM has this slightly wrong, I guess. The bell curve will apply to user reviews (the orange cups). When or if enough players have rated a game, this will give an average like what you describe.

The panel scale, as explained on the games page and in the sticky post from Andail (which may be outdated), operates slightly differently. 2 cups is average, and most games get that. 1 cup games has serious shortcomings of some sort, while 3 cups are good or recommended games. The exact text on the games page:

The AGS Panel is a team of AGS forum veterans who play all of the games here, and give them ratings from one to five cups. The rating system is as follows:
1 Cup    Not serious entertainment
2 Cups    A reasonable game, worth a try
3 Cups    A good game, worth playing
4 Cups    A great game, well worth your time
5 Cups    An outstanding, must-play game!
Feel free to disagree with the panel's rating, and please don't be offended if you think your game has been underrated!

For comparison, the player ratings are worded like this:

1 Cup A bad game, I wouldn't recommend it
2 cups Play it if you're bored, but not much fun to be had here
3 cups It was ok, play it if you've got some spare time
4 cups Recommended, definitely put it on your to-play list
5 cups Amazing! You have GOT to play this game RIGHT NOW!

The way I interpret this, 3 blue cups equals about 4 orange cups. The player ratings tend to be higher than the panel ratings for many or most games. (Note that this is just my impression, I don't have the statistics.)

Now, occasionally, the panel will f up, misunderstand a game or give the "wrong" rating for some reason. This entire forum is filled with people doing this on their free time without getting paid for it. So the panel, the moderators, game devs, engine devs or coding helpers are all in the same boat, so to speak. In this case, I'll agree partly with lapsking and say that his first game probably was rated a bit generously by the panel due to the art and sound shortcomings he's referring to. I remember liking the puzzles a lot, though, so crap it was not.

As for changing the rating system to a different scale (0-10), that would probably mean losing all the player ratings through many years, in addition to having to rerate several thousand games. I don't think that's going to happen.

I can only speak for myself, but when I give a player review, I'll definitely take into account stuff like game length or genre. I'll compare a short game to other short games, I guess, like I would not compare a poem or a short story to a novel - they're different experiences. Likewise a comedy game ought to be funny and a horror game scary. If it's the other way around, (like unintentionally funny) I won't score it that high. If I paid money for the game, probably something like value for money will come into it, too.

[Best Game of the Year]

The categories are:

Best Game of the Year
Best Freeware Game
Best Short Game
Best Non-Adventure Game
Best Demo
Best Audio
Best Visuals
Best Writing
Best Programming
Best Character
Best Gameplay

I played this last night. I remember playing Sierra's Codename: Iceman many years ago, and not liking it one bit. The game was even more fixated on protocol than the Police Quest games from the same designer, and I felt that the puzzles were replaced by finding the correct sequence in the manual. (With the exception of a submarine battle near the end, which I think I won by saving and reloading a lot.) But this prequel is the opposite of that game, in many ways.

I think I'll put the rest in spoiler tags.

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First of all, it's a brilliant satire. There is just as much protocol in this game, but no sudden deaths for not finding it immediately or not knowing about it. And young JW is completely enthusiastic about the whole thing. The game is written in a very true to form Sierra style, just a little bit exaggerated, and then the satire gradually becomes more and more clear. I absolutely loved it. I don't know if it's possible to play the entire thing without discovering the satire, or if someone with very patriotic notions would be offended. To me it was hilarious as soon as I discovered that there was an icon for saluting.

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So I liked the game very much. Good writing and graphics that get close to the Sierra style of the period. I completed it in a couple of hours, scoring 49 of 55 points, so there is some replay value, too.

And let's add JW from Kidname: Iceboy, which I played yesterday. JW is written

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satirically, as a super patriot, with excessive "good" American values, but he can't think for himself. Ultimately, this brings him at odds with what's really happening, because that doesn't fit his world view.

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Oh, darn it. I just realized when reading @The Last To Know 's top 5 list of 2024 that this game has not been added to the database. Which means it's not eligible for the AGS awards, and that's a shame. Please add it to the database (make a new entry for the complete game), both for the extra visibility and downloads it will create for yourself, but also for being eligible for awards for 2025 (if I understand the rules correctly).

It has become a tradition now that you release something on the last day of the year. Congratulations on the release and happy new year! I wonder what you have cooked up for us this time around. 

Alas, this thread has also been forgotten throughout the year. I probably could have mentioned @jfrisby even more times. But today it's about @Sakkeus and his game The Shame of the Pack. Most rooms have music specifically made for it, some of them several, due to events. My experience of the music was that it was almost organic, emphasizing some mood that was there in the pictures or the story. And the boy can play!

I've recently played The Shame of the Pack. It's a puzzle fest, which achieves the incredibly difficult art of integrating the puzzles into the story seamlessly. I particularly liked

The map.

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I liked the investigative style of eliminating all the wrong houses through observation and information already received earlier. I think it's cool that Frank does this when you direct him to. It's good character writing, telling us that he has knowledge, skills and perhaps even opinions that the player may not have. And he'll help you.

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Getting rid of the squatter.

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One of the earliest problems in the game, and with a logical step-by-step solution. I liked how I identified the problem (revolver) and then tried to come up with a solution. When that failed, I had to address the reason that failed, and so on. This kind of multiple steps puzzles are very satisfying to solve.

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Getting information from the guy in the red jacket.

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I don't even want to think about how many steps are needed, starting in the very first scene, ending up in one of the last scenes.And it's arguably even just a step in an even larger puzzle sequence, regarding the construction site. Now that's nested puzzle design!

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The moles.

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The confidence of Frank tells us that ten bullets will be enough. But there has to be a trick to it. Or several.

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As we are closing in on the year's end and the subsequent nominations for the AGS awards, I remembered these threads. No big success yet, but that's no reason not to give some positive feedback.

Botos de Diabo: The Dolphin. I really liked seeing such a different take on a beloved animal. It's like seeing an actor who's always playing good guys, suddenly being the villain.

The Shame of the Pack: This game actually makes sure all the characters have back stories and their own agenda. It's very much character driven writing. Even so, the player gets to know the main character the best, so Frank Lapidus stands out.

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Is he a hero, come to save the small town's problems? Is he a ruthless killer? Or perhaps just a loving brother? He talks a lot about his values, but are they written in stone?

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The Order: I'll go with the guards of the gate here. Most characters in this game has some quirk, but these guys won me over.

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I solved their dialogue puzzle while trying to make all the wrong choices first, just to see more of the writing.

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Brownie's Adventure: In this comedy, many characters can be mentioned. I laughed the hardest at the antics of the wizard in the wheelchair. Sadly I can't remember his name.

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I liked that he was immediately recognizable, and that the humour relied on how out of place the wheelchair was in the medieval setting.

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I played this yesterday and today. I must say that this game surpassed my expectations, even though the others gave rave reviews in this thread, it was even better than I thought. Surely this is one of the best AGS games of the year!

The screenshots do not really do the graphics justice. From the stills, it looks average, but in motion, it's another beast altogether. There are lots and lots of animations, closeups, cut scenes etc., and it didn't take long for me to escape into this world of talking animals (and some humans, too!).

What really sells the game, is the writing and puzzle design. These are very well integrated, fair and logical, and all seems like natural parts of the storytelling. The game is darkly funny, while dwelling on rather grotesque topics, like family honour, blood feuds, a casual business-as-usual approach to an alarming suicide rate and more. The humour won't be everyone's taste, I'm sure, but it's subtle and mature. I'm curious to how people will respond to this, if it's a northern thing or not. The puzzles are also varied, ranging from easy to quite complicated, and from inventory puzzles, pattern spotting, investigation, dialogue based, trading and exploration. And mini-games, too!

I don't think anyone else has commented on the music. I was curious about it, because I thought it was very good and fit the game very snugly. @Sakkeus - how many instruments do you play? Did you make the music to fit the game, or did the music come first? I now have some of those guitar runs playing in my head.  Have you considered making the music available as DLC?