Messages

This sounds like a fun concept. Best of luck with the production!

(Bonus level suggestion: Mount Rushmore.) 

That's really in-depth feedback, David! @soulstuff - I agree to all he says about your game, and wish I had found the words to describe it like he did, too.

and I think it's a decent foundation, but unfortunately needed more time to find the fun. Maybe I'll come back to it one day, but I was pretty burned out by the end.

It was still fun! Unlike @WHAM , I find myself one of those strange fellows who gets excited when a bar fills up.  Consider the concept proved.

And congratulations, Repi!

Is anyone working on something, or planning to participate? 

@AGA Editing games doesn't work at the moment. I get an error message when I press the save button.

[The Twilight Zone - The Lost Episode]

My May was filled with RL stuff, so I was late playing and didn't get a vote in. But here are my thoughts, anyway.

The Twilight Zone - The Lost Episode by Repi:

Spoiler

So, the only point and click game, and the only finished game in this competition. I like the writing, and from what I can remember of the TV show, it's spot on. The game itself reminds me thematically of my own Batman game, and like that one, I guess the story works best if the player is familiar with the lore. I was not, but I could get the gist of it anyhow. The puzzles are really searches for the triggers to move the story along, like in a VN. The stylish TV framing it all would not be strictly necessary, but is in accordance with this month's theme, and it also adds up with the meta-story told. There are some bugs - the player can repeat actions that are supposed to happen only once. All in all it's a nice entry that succeeds in what it sets out to do.

[close]

The Expedition by Soulstuff:

Spoiler

I am, unfortunately, not really a fan of dungeon crawlers. This demo seems well made. I made it to the final confrontation, but will need more goes before I can win it. (If I can, at all.) This looks like a promising prototype, and I can only guess what the remaining resources are used for, but it all hints that if the game is eventually completed, it will be far more complex than what we see now.

[close]

The Year of MAGS by OneDollar:

Spoiler

This game is playable, but according to the author, not finished. Most of all, it needs a save game mechanism, as playing through a full year takes a long time. While graphically bare-bones, and soundless, the game is still captivating enough for me to play it through to the end. (I scored 14593 points. My best game got 4006 points, and 4 of my 12 games scored 0/negative.) There doesn't seem to be any win criteria, and failing to balance the player's needs led to funny side effects that I don't know if was intended or not.

Spoiler

If my social needs were neglected, suddenly, my character decided to spend time with his friends instead of sleeping or eating, which in turn made him ill or out of energy.

[close]

I tried to make a game every month, but even with the scope rather low, I struggled to finish. Now I wonder what would happen if I used the first months learning and improving my stats before trying to make a game. I did discover the trick to double effectiveness, though!  The game doesn't follow its own advice, and will need testing, possibly making it less hard (if it's not just me being shite at it), adding bells and whistles and the possibility to save. Nevertheless, I could possibly have given this game my vote if I had been in time.

[close]

I like the art! It reminds me of Swedish artists Jan Lööf and Sven Nordqvist in style. Best of luck with the production.

Hmm..funny...I typed visual novel style speech on the search Engine and only us popped up..there is not even a moduel for visual novel style speech.

I guess you accidentally only searched in this topic or this board.

Check this thread where CW  answers a similar question and provides lots of links over in the Beginner's Tech forum.

Interesting change of formula. To comply with the rules, the only way I can think of is to shoot a FMV/visual novel, like Wales Interactive does.

I guess I'm going into territory covered by the writing contest or MAGS here. I hope it doesn't scare away the contestants.

[Farsley's Very Good Coffee]

Puzzle-making contest – making movies.

Sorry, everyone. I forgot completely that I was supposed to come up with a new topic here, but later good than, no, that's not right. (I actually typed that. Will let it stand just for the heck of it.)

New topic! You are a movie director.
You have: Fairly standard set of movie technical equipment, cameras, microphones, artificial lighting etc. Let's work from the premise that you have what you need in this area.

Three possible locations: A western saloon, a small ferry and someone's living room.

Five actors:

• Laura (50+) is a diva that not quite has accepted that she may not be the star anymore.
• Gregory (40s) is a typical type-cast guy who is often getting roles as a henchman, bodyguard, the tough sergeant. However, he's got a wish to evoke feelings in people, and would most of all have liked to be able to sing.
• Hannah (20s, but can look older or younger) wants all her movies to break taboos or in some other way get her the attention she needs to become a rising star.
• Paul  (20s, but can look older or younger) is the epitome of political correctness and wants all food to be organic, no animals to be harmed, and the movie to be wholesome and family friendly.
• Grumpy the wonder dog (Ageless) wants dog biscuits.

You need to shoot a scene that meets the following criteria:
   

• All actors need to be satisfied. This equals 3 out of five on a satisfaction scale. (They all need to score 3 or higher. Feel free to include how their score goes up and down with every decision taken.)
• The scene needs to have high emotional content.
• You need to include products from your sponsors in the scene, including Farsley's Very Good Coffee, Tents R Us, Guns & Buns & Puns (& Sons), Karate Sam's Breakable Furniture (no guarantees!) and the board game A Woman's Touch.
• To satisfy your producer, there needs to be a development in either the inter-personal relationships or personal growth for the main characters.
• There must be a twist or a cliffhanger.

The Rules!

Participants respond to the set-up by writing entries that must do the following:
1. Use at least 3 of the provided elements (inventory, NPCs, a piece of the room like a cabinet or faucet etc.)
2. Give a step-by-step walkthrough of your puzzle solution.
3. Don't add new elements. For example, if the room is a forest, breaking a thin branch off a tree makes sense unless the host said the trees were huge and tall. But adding a hollowed-out stump with a bear sleeping in it is too specific. Assume all important elements have been mentioned by the host.
4. Keep any dialog elements summarized rather than typing out the whole conversation (for example, "threaten the mailman", "ask the child for advice", and so on, instead of giving every spoken line).

Each contest runs for two weeks to allow for a good number of entries, and then it switches to voting for one week. The participant whose solution gets the most votes gets to come up with the next scenario! (Please also provide a link to these rules).

Voters use the criteria of:
a) how logical the puzzle seems
b) how creative or unexpected (but still sensible) is the use of elements
c) how satisfying is the solution (Is it too simple? Way too complicated? Or just right?)

Note: These are the standard rules, and this month's contest deviates slightly.

Deadline: Tuesday 10th June

I have played some games from this jam together with my son and some other young people.

EVA is a point and click adventure, made with Unity. This is a pleasant short game, even though it is somewhat rich with cliches. You wake up with memory loss and discover that you are a doctor. The story is told by discovering scraps and remnants as you explore. What or who is EVA? The game has two different endings, too. This game took 16th place in the jam.

LUCID is a point and click adventure, made with Unity. This came in second in the jam, and it certainly is a lot of fun to play! Great graphics, good music and several crazy characters are spread out in a dream-like landscape. Family friendly, too. Recommended!

Mr Baldman and the Hook Quest is a platform game. A bit like Bionic Commando, the hero can shoot out a sort of hook on a chain. He can use this to swing, climb, jump or pole vault in order to get past the obstacles. Plus for a really silly storyline involving hot dogs as the one ingredient that can make humankind's hair grow again. Another plus for having several ways of getting past the obstacles. (Much due to the game mechanics.)

Cookie-Salad is a platform game, somehow set in Ukraine. The player controls a cookie, who needs to rescue all the little cookies while battling salad ingredients. Jumping, crouching and building up speed while manoeuvering tricky maze-like levels is the order of the day here. Very fast, very difficult, at least some levels.

Adventure Portal is another platform game. The player jumps on platforms, searching for a key to unlock the portal to the next level. Pretty standard. Made with Unity.

Yet another platform game was Mannequin of Time. This one actually made 15th place, which is not bad for a platformer in an adventure game competition! Well, it still is a platformer, but the Mannequin from the title makes for a different kind of tactic. The player has the ability to make a Mannequin, a sort of shadow of the player, record some seconds of movement with that one, then play it back and freeze it in place. The player can use this as a stepping stone, have the Mannequin positioned on a pressure plate or similar. The player and the Mannequin also have different weaknesses and abilities. I liked the thought involved in this, although I only saw the end of the game thanks to letting my son man the keyboard. 

We played Amari, which was a very short point and click adventure. It is very nice visually, with a distinctive style. The story had to do with helping an animal spirit finding peace, and despite the dark colours, it wasn't a horror game, as I thought when loading it up. I liked this a lot, mostly because of the storytelling, as the puzzles were very easy, to the point of being automated if the player carries the correct item. But it's definitely worth the five to ten minutes it takes. Despite being #31 overall, it was #3 in atmosphere, which correlates well with my impressions of it.

Adventurer Runner is a side scrolling jumping game, kind of that one with a dinosaur that runs when you don't have an internet connection, except with no variety and some bugs which makes it possible to jump on thin air.

We briefly tried Clicker Simulator, which has the player clicking the mouse button endlessly, then buying upgrades in order to make the click worth more points. This can actually be fun for a short while if others are playing it at the same time, making it into a competition. Otherwise, this seems pretty boring to me. And in an adventure jam setting? Hm.

I can also mention that Shards of God had a demo in this jam, which placed in 24th place. The now finished game, is of course an absolute AGS masterpiece going far beyond the jam level games, which I have praised enough in the game's own thread right on this site. But I'm sure you all have played it by now, right? Right?

Thanks for reply.  My experience was I tried to use 7zip to extract the .001 file but it didn't recognize it as a compressed file format.  Likely because the file is .zip.001.  So I tried renaming it to .001.zip and then it gave an error saying something went wrong.  So I am at a loss, I assume I am making a dumb mistake but not sure what that dumb mistake is haha.

I don't know if it makes any difference, but I believe I ran the 7zip front shell program and chose the file from there, instead of opening the file directly.
@Marion - Do you have advice for this?

I tried the game a bit a week or so back, but didn't have time then to get properly into it. There's a big load of mechanics and recipes to wrap my head around. You have to work out where on the map to harvest or gather various resources, then combine them to make things. The AI graphics are pleasant to look at. I didn't play long enough to explore enough to see if there are conflicts to resolve in the game (Mordor is an available location, after all.), but I met and befriended some people and got quests from them, of the "Bring me flowers" variety. I think I can happily spend some hours with this on a rainy day. I'll come back to it when my schedule clears up a bit.

Hmm...I don't see any games in the site's 2024 Awards list and none of the winning and nominated games are tagged on their creators' forum profiles.

@cat @Kastchey @AGA Are you guys on this?

(Also, if anyone needs some extra inspiration, I recommend Coldline by Adam Pype. Evil phone. Evil game.)

I'm glad to say that I saved the world.  Great recommendation!

That's really close to the original style of art. Cool! I had Manhunter: New York on my Atari ST back in the day, but never managed to beat the final arcade sequence. Best of luck with the production!

@Misj' With such great art, I wasn't expecting to find my favourite part in the written note. 

You can download this from GameJolt.

The House without Windows

Thanks, Gabriel. Link on the database game page now directs to gamejolt and is working again. 

Probably a dumb question, but how does one extract these game files ending in .001 and .002?  Is there some kind of .ZIP joiner program to combine the two to then extract?  I use 7ZIP myself and I am at a loss haha

If I recall correctly, I just extracted the .001 file, then it went on automatically to .002 (which was in the same folder). I believe I used 7zip as well.

Does anyone have The House Without Windows?

These early versions are also available on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/ags-v2_6_2 is the one in this case.

Hello, I have a game that is very difficult to find, Abstract, Or at least I think so, since I can't run it. I'll leave it to you to see if anyone can tell me how to run it. Thanks.

https://mega.nz/file/wFojRaKB#jedO-ZMbHGdhDYB0_LiUAdFKD_nR6dqq6q6WiV_Av6A

This one is also here: https://lost-ags-games.itch.io/abstract
The TMD has commented (Two years ago):

Another missing game no more lost. Thanks for your efforts in preserving them. Downloaded and tested on DosBox: nicely working