Messages

Perhaps

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your name?

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Most classic adventures don't use stats, but rely on finding the correct technique or weapon/item to use in order to beat a foe and advance in the game. If I read what you're saying correctly, you want to have RPG-like stats like a health bar?

In RPGs the clue is usually to find what tactic/spell/weapon works best against which type of enemy and use that whenever you encounter one. There's no rule against doing that in an adventure game, but it's hardly a puzzle then, more of a grind. Werewolf? Silver Sword. Vampire? Ultraviolet ray gun.

In something like Monkey Island you have insult swordfighting. The player trains against a master until having learned the correct responses and then can use these against others. This type of mechanic could be used in a game like you describe.

I guess that the point would be that there should be one or more good tactics against each foe, and that the player must learn them, through trial and error or (preferrably) through exploration somewhere else in the game. Fighting enemies with "wrong" tactics could still be possible, but cause more damage to the hero's health bar. That way you could win without finding all the good tactics.

Another option would be that the player loses a fight and uses that to do better next time. Say if a foe strikes you upon your head repeatedly. Next time, wear head gear for protection. And so on.

I can give some thoughts/opinions/feedback on the other entries if people want them, I'm not sure whether I should do that as an entrant or while voting is ongoing?

I'm sure all participants want as much feedback as possible. Most participants offer feedback on the other entries and don't wait until after the voting, as this is a low stakes competition, but there are no set rules. Do what you feel is right.

Maybe it is

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friendship?

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[the]

It's been a while since Gord10 posted on these forums, but he's been busy creating games using multiple other engines.

From his Itch page:

Omniscient God is nominated for Best Narration award in Kristal Piksel 2023, which is the award ceremony of Turkish game industry.

I don't expect it will win that award, honestly, considering the strong nominees this year for that branch. But it makes me happy to see this game earning a nomination.

(The game uses the Unreal Engine.)

These talented guys asks the audience if there are any requests, and one guy shouts "Super Mario".
So they play it.

[Purity of the Surf.]

I downloaded and played RON: Purity of the Surf (Archive link), RoN Homepage link here, to help a guy out in the hint section. Turned out I had not played the game before, perhaps because it never made its way into the database. It's made by Dave Gilbert himself, and it's a great game which I can highly recommend.

The prototype RON Beach Party could be worth checking out for those interested in how the game was developed. This prototype later turned into the full game Purity of the Surf.

In addition, the RON Beach Party Demo is also at this page along with several other RON Demos:
Time Out Trailer (in the database)
Stuck at Home Trailer (not in the database, though the full game is)
Fifth Anniversary Promotional Trailer (not in db)
Simon, the Sorceror's Brother Teaser Trailer (not in db)
Edge of Reality Demo (not in db)
RON Xmas 2002 Demo (not in db)
Without a Prayer Demo (not in db)
Everything that Begins with an M Demo (not in db)
Reality Check 4 Demo (in the db)
Spoons III Unauthorized Demo (The demo is not in the db, but the full game is. See also here.)
Hidden Messages (not in the db)

Bubby Kills God by DiggingUpGraves
https://diggingupgraves.itch.io/bubby-kills-god

This is my first game made with AGS. It's mostly just a test to learn the various systems and mess around a bit, don't expect quality.
The game itself is about a little blob called 'Bubby' who wishes to kill God. Why? Play and find out!
Enjoy my first abomination.

Played for a while, found only 1 puzzle involving inventory. Then dropped it...

I played it...and not quality is about right. The game seems to be purposely made to be as offensive as possible. Sure, you go to

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"Personal Hell" and chop off a guy's genitals with an axe and carry the chopped off penis as an inventory item

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. To say it's not everyone's taste would be an understatement. But ok, that's on purpose. The game also suffers from first game syndrome with bugs turning the game into an unwinnable state if you do things in the wrong order. I do think some of the drawings were good, though. The talent is there, but unrefined.

Hi all,

I'm doing the surf contest and I can't figure out how to beat your favorite mayoral candidate zombie :-( Unfortunately there isn't any walkthrough for this game. I've tried using everything in the inventory on him + talking to him and pushing him. It doesn't help.

Hi! Help is near. I'll give you hints and the full solution to the problem.

You need this item:

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Death's radio.

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There are two pieces of info you need to combine.

At the beach party:

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Talk to Death and Gower to overhear their conversation. You'll find out what Dr. "Davis" has done to him.

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In town:

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Read the poster on the wall outside the shop.

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Full solution:

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Use the radio on the poster in town. In the final moments, use the radio on Gower.

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Or maybe

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love?

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Perhaps it is

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life?

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Wordle 1 062 6/6

🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
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Some of the modules have demo games. Here is the PanoRama Demo. This is a room with some objects and a character in it, made for showing the module. The game ends/quits when you walk out the door, so I guess it's a very easy escape room game...

Alys vs the Phantom Feline Foe is a NSFW game. It's a reworking of Alice in Wonderland where the magic cat kidnaps Alys because he wants her to be his sex slave. And it gets worse from there. I mean, the first puzzle involves watering a plant with no external water sources. You have been warned.

Buloght's Knightsquire is a very good game with Gobliins-like gameplay involving switching control between the knight and his squire. This has a Completed Game Announcement thread in the forum, but never made it into the database. Highly recommended!

Amberfish Arts' Indiana Jones: The Fate of Atlantis II project was never finished, and  what's released here are the four demos from the project. In case you have trouble running them, Arj0n tells you how in This post.

Another fan game is Monkey Island 2.5: The Prisoner of Monkey Island. This is in Italian only and picks up where MI2 ended.

Yet another that also starts in the same spot, is Monkey Island: Illusion. This one is partly translated into English, but some of it is still in the original French. The short game/demo is winnable, but there is a fatal bug early on that crashes the game if you click on a hatch to go below deck on a pirate ship. If you walk past the hatch, you will go below deck with no error, triggering the active region. I guess all of these games are for fans craving a small taste of what once was.

Desert Miner

This is a short game with one puzzle. It looks like the developer abandoned AGS and made the sequel and other games using other engines.

boite, La

This is a cute game about a cat who wants to look into a box. It's French only, and my phone translator didn't recognize the font, but enough of the story is visual for me to play it through to the end despite not understanding the text. I liked how it looked, but the French speaking players will get more out of this than I did.

City That Drowned, The

This is a demo or prototype that plays like a walking simulator. I didn't find much to do except uncovering clues to the story. The atmosphere and story were interesting, though. I don't think the demo has a scripted ending. At least I couldn't find it.

@heltenjon
I was so excited that I told my best friend I made a another game. When he asked me what the game was about I actually realized it isn't really a game but basically a animation with click elements. Let's see if I can do better next time

We grow and learn. Don't be hard on yourself. The game is fun, it just concentrates on story and conveying feelings instead of making difficult puzzles. We hope to see many more games from you. 

So I got a little bit enthusiastic and ended up finishing the game. 

It's now downloadable on itch: https://speksteen.itch.io/mathildes-dream

It's about 5 minutes long and a bit barebone. It's my first AGS game but I still would like to know if what you all think about it. Any feedback is welcome!

 

Normally, I'd wait until the end of the month with playing and giving feedback, but your enthusiasm got me.  I agree with jfrisby that the music is a good fit and gives the game atmosphere. I'd put it as dream-like, which is also the impression I get from the faceless, stylized characters. I liked the dancing guy animation! (Even though that part is a bit sad, really.)

The game is a fine five minute feel-good play. It's barebone in the way that there's little extras in the ways of descriptions, dialogues or stuff to do except what's needed to reach the ending. That also makes the game easy, of course, as there's not really any chance of making the wrong choices. I felt the same way as I do when playing some bitsy games, that the point is to convey a feeling. As the game is made from the poem/song, I think that is fitting to the theme of the month.

I'm not participating this month, since we submitted the theme and I'm crazy busy, but here's the idea I was thinking about (if anyone wants a weird idea):

1 room, 24 birds rehearsing singing / choir practice, inside a pie. They make sounds (notes?) when you click on them.  something something...  That's all I had

This would be a cool setup for a memory game, like simon says. Or for loom-like spells. 

For the first item, it was more a stylistic question as to whether it's normal to have a whole pile of bools and ints in global for trackers and stuff. My char has to learn 3 things before she can ask a char about the plot. Since those things are all in different room the only way to track them was global bools. I couldn't find any other way to do it.

There are other ways to do it. The other responders here are very experienced coders and their advice are aiming at good coding; advice that will work every time.

However, just looking at what you write about your game, you could solve this specific case simply by adding a point to the score (which is built in and works right away without declaring the variable): https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Globalfunctions_General.html#givescore If you aren't using score for something else, you can simply check if the score is 3 (or more, if you want to use this further) before she can talk to the NPC.

Another way will be to give your character inventory items (gems, diploma of insult sword fighting, a medal or whatever) when they achieve the task you have set, and use an if command to check whether the player have the required items before allowing progress. Note that this is essentially the same as using bools - the player either has the item in her inventory or not.

These ways will also work, but are prone to errors, especially if you make a longer game: Can the player get 3 points by repeating an action? Or by doing another task than the one you intended? What happens if the score reaches 4? Is the player going to keep the useless items in her inventory, cluttering it up? Do you want to code descriptions and messages if the player tries to use them later on? Is the conversation with the NPC a once-in-the-game event, or do you need to keep it open for the player to replay the dialog? What you gain from not having to declare the variables may easily be lost to messing up something like this.

Another obvious reason to follow the experienced coders suggestions, will be that if you develop a systematic approach, it will be easier for you to go back and understand your old code after some time has passed, which may be needed for updates or bug fixes.

I guess I'll kick off this one, too.

GOC Games' Steeplejack stars two characters I immediately grew fond of. They argue about how to demolish a chimney, and their character traits is the reason for the whole story. The traditional one gets his way, but no way is the other guy going to help him!  And when looking down,

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he's headbanging to metal music on a 1984 walkman bacause streaming is for wusses.

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What's not to love?

In ANOPHTOS by Claire Moon, the entire game is an internal journey into the mind of the protagonist. Every action taken or not taken gives clues, quite often through symbols or metaphors. By the end, I had a working theory about the inner turmoil my character was experiencing. But the cool thing is that the symbolism is somewhat open to interpretation, which means that different players will project different thoughts into it, depending on their background.

I'll start. I really liked the ventilation puzzle in In Our Midst.

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I liked that the puzzle involved several locations and characters. You had to exploit the engineer's lazyness, understand and manipulate the vent system and the cleaner droid, play to the captain's sense of duty and finally sabotage the air lock.

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That's quite a few steps, yet in feels organical and natural.

You know when you are supposed to vote for the best characters for the AGS awards, and you can't remember their names? Or why you liked them?

This thread is for giving feedback to game devs about characters you liked in this year's games. What did you like? Why did you like it? This will give nice feedback about what works for the devs, and also hints for others about how to create memorable characters.

If it also helps us remember who to vote for when it's time for the awards again, well, that's a bonus.

I'll start one for this year.

The Best Puzzles award may be water under the bridge, but that doesn't mean we can't have a thread to discuss it. The question is simply: What puzzles in AGS games released in 2024 did you like? Why did you like them?

Please make the thread user-friendly with well marked spoilers, for instance like this:
Steeplejack:

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And something about it in here.

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Hopefully, this may give devs some feedback on what type of puzzles work well, and the players a chance to discuss and (dis)agree.

(In addition, I could imagine similar threads for the current year could be useful if we started them now and run them all year. It may be helpful when the year is over and we try to remember what games we liked months back and a help for nominating to the AGS awards. If the interest for such threads is there, of course.)