Messages

[long approach]

Comments!

Cat:

Spoiler

Quick and logical. I guess this one makes the most sense of all the solutions if the game is in the Monkey Island tradition of being able to carry anything. Something like this would probably be the first one would try, but the two part "smash brick -> use brick parts to make ladder" would make for a satisfying puzzle to solve nonetheless. I thought along the same lines, but decided to make the player have to drop most items before climbing.

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Creamy:

Spoiler

This one I would never have thought of!  I like the setup for minigames, and one could use the game setup to nudge the player along the way, for instance notating "Ladder part 1 of 5" in the inventory. Using the rat for a metal cutter had me laughing, but I doubt I would have seen that coming even if I was being nudged along every step of the way. If I managed to solve this, it would be extremely satisfying!

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The Great Underground Empire:

Spoiler

I thought of making a pile of the coal, too, but I thought it may be too shifty for practical use. I like using physics to make this an engineering puzzle, so to speak. This would be fairly logical and very satisfying to solve as a player.

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I voted for

Spoiler

Creamy's long approach. (Sorry, btw, for including the word "long" in my title, too. That was clumsy.) It may not be the most logical solution, but scores high in creativity/unexpectedness and regarding how satisfying it would be.

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Congratulations to all nominated! And if you weren't, don't worry, you may have gotten some votes in after all. Here's what I nominated, in spoiler to not clutter the thread.

Spoiler

Best Game of the Year
•   Abscission
•   Dreams in the Witch House
•   Shards of God
•   The Devil's Teeth
•   Trapped On The Balcony
•   Tunnel Vision
________________________________________
Best Freeware Game
•   Broken Windows - Chapter 4
•   Shards of God
•   The Devil's Teeth
•   Trapped On The Balcony
•   Tunnel Vision
•   METRO CITY: Night Shift
________________________________________
Best Short Game
•   D-List Diva
•   Painted Hills
•   Stranger in Utopia
•   The Devil's Teeth
•   The Distant Door
•   Trapped On The Balcony
•   Yip Quest
________________________________________
Best Non-Adventure Game
•   Glorious Wolf - a Star Trek / Aliens musical comics
•   Glorious Wolf 2 - The Queens Gambit
•   Lost & Found
•   Mad Jack: Breakdown Shakedown
•   Super Star Trek (1978) meets 25th Anniversary
________________________________________
Best Demo
•   An English Haunting DEMO
•   Captain Disaster and The Two Worlds of Riskara DEMO
•   Magret and Facedebouc
•   Murder Cases(Demo)
•   Stormwater (Early Access)
________________________________________
Best Audio
•   Pirate Theme Park - A Short Adventure
•   Shards of God
•   Stranger in Utopia
•   The Sleeping Castle
•   Tunnel Vision
________________________________________
Best Visuals
•   D-List Diva
•   Dreams in the Witch House
•   METRO CITY: Night Shift
•   Outlaw's Gold
•   Painted Hills
•   Pirate Theme Park - A Short Adventure
•   Shards of God
•   Stranger in Utopia
•   The Sleeping Castle
•   Tunnel Vision
________________________________________
Best Writing
•   Abscission
•   Broken Windows - Chapter 4
•   Dreams in the Witch House
•   Glorious Wolf - a Star Trek / Aliens musical comics
•   Shards of God
•   Stranger in Utopia
•   The Devil's Teeth
•   The Distant Door
•   Trapped On The Balcony
________________________________________
Best Programming
•   Abscission
•   Barn Runner 5: The Forever Friday 5
•   Chaluul's Curse (Remake)
•   Dreams in the Witch House
•   Shards of God
•   The Sleeping Castle
•   Tunnel Vision
•   Why the Wrong Face?
•   Yip Quest
________________________________________
Best Character
•   "Will Stanhope" from Abscission
•   "Dr. Noriko" from Barn Runner 5: The Forever Friday 5
•   "Bill" from D-List Diva
•   "Walter Gilman" from Dreams in the Witch House
•   "Granddad" from Grandad and The Quest for The Holey Vest
•   "Guy dressed as a cup" from Pirate Theme Park - A Short Adventure
•   "Shai-La" from SHAI-LA OF THE SITH
•   "Mother Tiabata" from Shards of God
•   "Sister Ava" from Shards of God
•   "The Girl" from Trapped On The Balcony
________________________________________
Best Gameplay
•   Abscission
•   Broken Windows - Chapter 4
•   Dreams in the Witch House
•   Lost & Found
•   Shards of God
•   The Devil's Teeth
•   Trapped On The Balcony
•   Tunnel Vision
•   Yip Quest

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I think we may need another hint here. @mkennedy

Heltenjon thanks but

Spoiler

if I right-click on it I get "I have never seen so much junk collected in one place" and if I left-click "I don't want to have it".

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What am I missing? Maybe it is a bug?

You need to

Spoiler

know about the different-coloured eyes first.

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Edit: I was playing the MAGS version.

I am in what I believe is the last room

Spoiler

the Bedroom. I successfully locked the guards out, found a green gem, I think I need another one. Where to find it?

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Try the

Spoiler

bookshelf. If I remember correctly, you need to look at it before searching will be effective.

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If I just wrote about the one you already have, then sorry. 

[ridiculously long and silly]

Are you game for the ridiculously long and silly approach?
(I haven't read the other entries yet. Any overlaps will just show we are a crazy crowd.)

Spoiler

THROW CHAINS AT CATWALK
You have earned the achievement for most ineffectual attempt at a solution. Got tired.
BREAK SPEAKERS (WITH HAMMER/CROWBAR)
Obtained magnets. Scared the rat. Got more tired.
EAT LUNCH
Got energy back. The Rat peeks out from a hole in the wall, seems interested.
TEMPT RAT (WITH FOOD)
The Rat scurries into the wall and reappears at the ground level. It eats some food. Obtained rat.
PUT MAGNET INSIDE FOOD
GIVE IT TO THE RAT
Okay, you now have a attractive rat, so to speak.
FASTEN FISH HOOKS AND LINES TO OTHER MAGNET
ATTACH MAGNET TO RAT
REALIZE THIS IS NEVER GOING TO WORK (cut scene, stuffs rat in pocket for the time being. Realizes it will eat the food in the pocket and puts it inside the furnace room instead, closing the door.)
USE GLUE WITH PIPES, SCRAP METAL AND VALVES
Okay, you have makeshift footholds that extend to the catwalk. But will it hold your weight?
USE HAMMER AND CROWBAR TO EXTEND HOLES IN THE WALL OR MAKE NEW ONES
Okay, these can be useful for support when climbing.
BREAK BRICK INTO SMALLER PIECES
TIE/GLUE BRICK PIECES TO FISHING LINES
THROW PIECES AT FOOTHOLDS
With some effort, you manage to bolo the footholds, making the fishing line swirl around them. They seem a bit more secure now.
CLIMB UP, USING A COMBINATION OF THE NOW PARTIALLY SECURE FOOTHOLDS AND THE HOLES IN THE WALLS
Hot damn! It worked!
OPEN DOOR
Hot damn! It is rusted shut!
The makeshift ladder won't hold for many more attempts. You need to be clever now.
MAKE A LIFTING CONTRAPTION WITH FISH LINES (the box was possible to carry while climbing)
LOWER IT TO THE GROUND
The line is long enough to go to the ground, but you need to attach it to another line to pull on to make it work. (The other lines are attached to the rat, remember?) The line now has hoops of a sort on the end on the catwalk.
METICULOUSLY PLACE CHEESE IN A PATTERN
CLIMB DOWN
RELEASE RAT
The rat scurries into an opening, reappearing on the catwalk where the cheese is. It follows the pattern, dragging the fishing lines attached to the magnet with it through the hoops.
PULL FISHING LINE ATTACHED TO RAT
The magnet dislodges, and the fish hooks attaches themselves to the catwalk/hoops. You can now pull the line to lift stuff up to the catwalk.
OPEN UMBRELLA
USE UMBRELLA WITH LIFTING CONTRAPTION
USE SHOVEL TO PUT COAL IN THE UMBRELLA LIFT (NOT TOO MUCH)
PULL LINE TO LIFT COAL UP TO THE CATWALK. REPEAT.
This takes a while, because the umbrella can't hold much coal. You can manipulate it by pulling different lines in order to make it dump the coal onto the catwalk. (This is ridiculously complicated, keeping the hint threads glowing for weeks.)
LIFT UP CROWBAR TO SKYWALK
LIFT UP SLEDGEHAMMER TO SKYWALK
Wow, you didn't think it could hold that much weight!
LIFT UP HEAVY CHAINS TO...
The lift breaks.
CLIMB UP
As you make your leaps, several of the footholds give way under you. You get to the top, but there is no way down now.
USE SLEDGEHAMMER ON LOCK
You miss spectacularly, making a hole in the wall. The Sledgehammer slips and drops down, making a metallic clang on the furnace. The rat is scared and runs out the door, exiting the story. (Soon to be starring in «Rodney, the Magnetic Rat».)
USE CROWBAR ON HOLE
You manage to make the hole bigger, but you can't break through the wall.
PUT COAL IN HOLE
You must have dragged it up here for a reason!
USE LIGHTER FLUID ON COAL AND GREASY RAG
A fuse!
USE CROWBAR WITH DOOR FRAME/YOUR BELT BUCKLE/RAILINGS
Sparks fly, and eventually the fuse lights up, and the coal is burning.
The wall burns.
OPEN DOOR
It's too hot to push.
KICK DOOR
The door opens. You enter a new room, noticing some stairs leading up from a side door you didn't notice earlier. Aaargh!

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It's so great to see this project going well! It's been a been a burden on my conscience ever since I volunteered to help, but had to let it go due to health problems. (Though I think you were lucky to get Morgan on the team instead of me.)

I have been playing this the last days. I'm not through the game yet, I'm dealing with a fire imp next, and I need my dictionary for that puzzle, I guess.

Let me start off by saying that I'm nominating this game for the Best Programming award, and possibly sound and visuals as well. Some of the puzzles are very intricate, so hats off for making them work! 

There's some things I like and some things I don't like about this game. I knew from going in that some puzzles may be too hard for me, having played Elentgirl's games before. And I'm not a fan of mazes. So I was reluctant when I realized that there would be a lot of wandering about in the overgrown garden outside the castle, fearing I would get lost. And get lost I did. Even with the map, I often took the wrong direction and ended up somewhere else.  I didn't realize for a long time that my usual method of waving the mouse about to look for interactive spots didn't work unless my knight was close to said spot. That oversight made me think that I still needed something in the maze before I could try to solve the combination lock early on. (Which was a great puzzle, by the way.) Now, these are design choices, not necessarily flaws, but they made the already hard maze even harder by not always showing the exits from far off. So first part: puzzles - fun, maze - not fun.

Inside the castle, things got better. I absolutely loved the navigational puzzle of how to reach the other parts of the castle. I also had fun with the chessboard of death (a memory puzzle - okay), until I had to do it again every time I wanted to cross the floor to reach other parts of the building. Part of my frustration is probably because of a bug - see below. On the top floor, I feel quite intimidated by the difficulty of the puzzles, but that's okay. I'll use a walkthrough when needed, and it's nice to try to solve some of your hardest puzzles. I'll admit to solving some with trial and error, and trying to figure out afterwards why that worked. 

There are a couple of walking dead situations in the game, if I'm not mistaken. In the garden,

Spoiler

taking the chalice looks like it locks the player in the garden with no possible escape. There were planty of warnings about this, so I saved before trying it anyway.

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The other I fear is due to a bug. At the chessboard of death,

Spoiler

there seems to be a set number of times to try to solve the level, and after that, the map on the wall sets an automated solution. I ended up with no way to change away from the set solutions and not being able to go to the library. Even if I changed the parameters on the wall, I ended up going back and forth between the stairs and the kitchen. Of course, there may be something else I didn't do, but I had to go back to an earlier save to get past this.

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Thanks for the game! The good puzzles in the castle made up for the maze in my mind. And even if mazes are a big personal drawback for me, I have to admit that the maze in this game has a good justification storywise.

EDIT: Finished it! The final puzzle was more straightforward than I thought. I have to add that I think you have made a great job making Carabosse seem like a powerful villain. Even though she is off-stage, the other characters talk of her, and it's made clear that she's behind all the traps our hero may wander into. The death scenes work to this effect, and also the remains of other adventurers found along the way.

EDIT 2: I can't help but wonder...The incantation for the fire imp is

Spoiler

readable backwards.

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Is this something that was left out of the game? Or just a joke?

@FocusHillGames - I noticed that you credit yourself with "art direction". What assets are you using?

I'm also nominating "Guy Person dressed as a cup" as one of my favourite characters this year!   

I got help from my daughter. She found the hotspot I was missing. 
It was

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a drawer inside the pirate ship.

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I'm at a standstill in Pirate Theme Park. I have found three of the four items required, only lacking the hard object to cut the key with.

I have a teddybear, a battery and a magnet. I suspect

Spoiler

that I am supposed to use the battery for helping the guy in the drink costume to cool further down, somehow.

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Am I missing a hotspot or something somewhere?

I've been playing this for a bit. It's a fun game, looking beautiful and sounding wonderfully Monkeyish Islandish, which I believe is the point. So far it's been fun and easy, until I had to search every location for some object I'd missed. But that's on me, i guess. I could wish for some more intricate puzzles, but no other complaints here.

If you're not in the market for shelling out, check the youtube video to see if you want to nominate it for music or art for the upcoming AGS awards.

@elentgirl @ddavey1983  @arj0n @Yanek_Crispbread  Have you forgotten to make a post about your games?

Only one week to go! It's very close in some categories, so your votes do make a difference.

We also need many more votes for the best character category. I noticed that one person typed two characters in the same field. We cannot count this, please make a single nomination entry for each character (nominating different characters from the same game is possible if you make an entry for each.)

@cat - This is not possible. I tried to nominate more than one character from the same game, but when I refresh, only one character is counted, and the second one is removed. There is no error message, though.

Idiotic workaround - If you cannot fix this, as possible workaround would be to pick another game, but specify in the name field that you are voting for Ms X from game Y. (If this is a stupid idea that won't work, forget I mentioned it or answer this post with an appropriate insult.)

Edit: And idiotic it was.

I wish there were a chili type called Ninuan. 

Perhaps this thread is of help? https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/beginners-technical-questions/how-to-play-a-music-just-after-the-previous-song-is-ended/msg636637354/#msg636637354

I also played the demo and agree with the others here. Surreal, unpleasant atmosphere, nerve grating animation and sound design, like playing a nightmare and not knowing the rules. (Which means I liked it.) Will follow this one.

Upon reading Jwalt's answer and doing a quick check about the Dayist Church in earlier RON games, I retract my notion that they should be fought in this game. I had forgotten all about them, to be honest. (Played the RON games 10+ years ago.) I actually thought they were something Jwalt had made up for this entry, but now I see they are a part of a what if-scenario that plays heavily on alternate realities where things played out a bit differently. And I think the story is all the better for it.

Rik_Vargard:
I'm glad you liked the AGS Easter egg idea. The truth is that I was thinking of hiding it again in the next game I make with the engine... But it would be cooler if we all did it 

Usually it's a blue cup, though.

heltenjon:
During development I was afraid that someone might find the puzzles too easy, or on the contrary too frustrating, so I am very happy with the great reception they have had!

There should always be a mix, but that is easier said than done. I didn't get stuck this time, but I had the wrong idea many times.  I tend to play in a way where I try what I think is the wrong solutions first, to see what responses the game gives, because the chance to see that often disappears after the correct solution is performed. This time I thought I was supposed to

Spoiler

make a fire and guide smoke into the vents in order to set off the fire alarm, but I tried using the fire kit inventory items in another spot first because i was in that location, and hey, it worked.

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People (me) often like puzzles with multiple steps, or that items may be used in different ways on several puzzles. You hit the bullseye on both accounts.