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Hi there! Congratulations on finishing your game!

However...there are some problems with downloading. Can you please make a zip file that includes all the game files, so we don't have to download each individual file?

Secondly, the download option on the datebase page doesn't work. You can simply put up your itch page there instead, so that is easily resolved.

Edit: solved.

I think I have v1.1, but I'm not very sure, I don't know how to check it.

Lost in the Nightmare

The file size looks about correct, so I will add it to the database again. If anyone has played this earlier - feel free to check for yourself that this is the correct version.

Thanks again, Gabriel!

Bloody Scream
Sweet Nightmares
Get Some Sleep or You'll Die!

Amazing! These are three horror adventures made by kids on some sort of art related camp. I tried to play badly in Get Some Sleep or You Will Die, but got the good ending (of eight possible). Got to try again, I guess. This is a time management game, of sorts. The voice acting is over the top and reminds me of my own kids and their friends. (I don't think I would describe this one as a horror game myself, but I haven't seen it all yet.)

Sweet Nightmares is a crazy kind of adventure/platform hybrid game with a couple of rpg-like fights. Totally surreal and changes from cute to nightmarish and back again constantly.

Bloody Scream is totally over the top with gore and corpses everywhere. Kids won't think less is more! Adventure game, escape a house where a serial killer (?) roams. Two endings (I think).

It was fun to get a glimpse into the minds of these 10-12 year olds and their ideas of game design.

America 2000

Philosophical dystopian game. I liked it, even though there is a lot of walking, some unmarked exits and the two endings could have been better signalled. Made for $102 Adventure Game Challenge.

The author also has a demo made in AGS: 99 Species Demo. This looks promising and gives an impression of yet another dystopian future.

EDIT: America 2000 is now added to the database!

New City

This looks like the wrong link. Probably it should be New City. This is an investigation game, currently Spanish only.

Tomten

This is a small piece made for an advent calendar. Looks like it has no ending, just an endless loop of Tomten (Swedish, "nissen" in Norwegian - a kind of farm-elf from Scandinavian folklore that is mixed up with Santa Claus) feeding a hungry fox. Cosy, though. I'll let my kids play it come December. 

https://ludiantiqui.itch.io/oakleys-game
I just thought the idea was cute. It's just a single room someone built with their kid.

This was so cute! I love those graphics - a six-year-old's drawings. Aaaawww!

The secret of Cougar Island

I was actually impressed by how well made and funny this demo was. Granted, NSFW stuff won't be to everyone's taste, and it does go one step further than the Leisure Suit Larry games, but I'd characterize it as a humour game with lots of lewd jokes, not as a "porn game".

[Lost in the Nightmare]

Okay, next missing game...

Gord10 has made several versions of Lost in the Nightmare. The most updated version has a working link in the database (through the archive): Lost in the Nightmare: Save our Souls.
However, we lack working links to the earlier versions: Lost in the Nightmare v1.1 and Lost in the Nightmare - Demo.

Does anyone have these earliest versions?

Thanks to you all! I managed to unpack, test and zip the Goonies, and Lars now hosts it without any false virus alerts at Lost Ags games on itch. The download link in the database is now functional again. 

The Goonies, You can find it here to download:

The Fan Game: The Goonies

Thanks, Gabriel. However, this download is "repackaged for the Pandora". Does anyone know how to reverse this process, if possible? PND-file back to standard ags? I have played the game myself, this is an attempt to fix the now broken link in the database.

The author of Chmelnica and Bill DeBill also made another game called Dinky Island, but it doesn't look like it has anything to do with the Monkey Island series. I am not even sure this one is an AGS game, though it seems probable. Does anyone have this? (Or know if it is an AGS game at all?)

And does anyone have The Fan Game: The Goonies by Daniele Spadoni?

[Dragonscale]

The September Mags 2003 featured a game called Dragonscale, which is on the archive, but not in the database. This is a short game set in a future which looks pretty much like our times, and perhaps involving a dragon. The theme was "Mythological Beast".

It looks like one of Daniele Spadoni's Back to the Future fangames is not in the database, but it is on the archive. This is the one similar to the movie.

And with Adultsqualman returning, why not post the link to his production from his younger days. It's on the archive again: A Cup of Coffee is worth 1000 Bathroom Trips This may require an older pc or some tinkering before it will run. And it's made by a kid, so be warned. 

From ITCH comes
cosmo's trinket hunt
that could be categorized as joke since it lasts one click only

Joke indeed. Looks nice, but a bit disappointing.

From the author of The Beekeper comes 2 little game about Holmes' brother Mycroft
MYCROFT HOLMES SIMULATOR 1895
MYCROFT HOLMES SIMULATOR 1895 ExEd

This is the same game, but with a bit more features in the expanded edition. Absolutely delightful and funny, albeit a sort of celebration of pointlessness at the same time. I was having a good time, achieving very little. 

Purpose : Retired
stating from the itch page, it's a short P&C adv, to be finished in few minutes

This is a really nice, "slow" game about a retired cop. Good-looking pixel art, too.

Zombie Train Beyond Earth: Episode 2
(the episode 1 is done with another engine)

I checked out episode 1 (made with GameMaker Studio), and it was really cool. Making a flipped animation? Nope, just let the guy moonwalk (Space, you know).   Episode 2 is well made, but I didn't like the idea that much. And I can't reveal it without spoiling it.

Well, welcome back! Time machines really do exist, they just work differently than in the movies.  And while I have you here - I guess you don't have your old games anymore? Warrior of Might is on the list of "lost games" that our archivists are looking for, and possibly others, too.

Thank you, Gabriel! As always, much appreciated. 

Does anyone have Bill DeBill? It was in the database years ago, but have been removed.

I'm primarily noting this because you seemed to want to upscale the GUI graphics automatically. There's no good reason I can think of to ever want to do this.

I think the point may be that the option seems to indicate that the GUIs will just work if you upscale.   As a new user, you want the inventory window, options menu etc. to just be there and work properly without having to make them from scratch. (Frankly, I wish the option would work that way, too. But you have explained adequately why it doesn't.)

Jimm's Quest III: Lesko's Revenge Demo does not have a scripted ending. To be fair, this is more or less stated on the db page, but there is nothing in-game.

deep lake mall

This was a fun short investigation game.

Senpai Getaway

Short Slovak game that I needed Google Translate to finish. Made for a small anime-inspired jam, this is a mix of graphic assets that doesn't fit together. I found it kind of charming, anyway.

drawn to the flame

This one is a brilliant short horror piece featuring a scary elevator ride. No real puzzles, but I thought it was genuinely unsettling. Good stuff.

The same author also has a game in the database (Where No Fear Was), but on his itch page, there are also two other small games:
Grace Russell: Episode 1 tech demo, which is a taste of an investigation game. Just a demo, like the title says.
A Fool for Love (or: Finding the Right Words Beta Version), which is an unfinished game where the player control a cupid who is guiding a hopeless guy in his quest for love. Quite funny, and a great idea for a game.

TijdTripper
This is a 2010 AGS prototype of a later flash game

It's a shame the flash game doesn't exist anymore. Very cool concept where the player has to time travel to preserve the history of Utrecht. Learning history this way is very appealing.

Or you could send the player to a room with an all-black background and display the speech on that. (Then send them back when you end the dialogue.) Could be useful if you need to do this at several places in your game and are not sure about how to turn Matti's solution into a function.

So sorry to hear about that. All the best wishes! I hope game making can be a welcome distraction in a difficult time.

Do you think a link to the current month's MAGS contest on the front page would help?

Or posting next month's rules early, giving a bit more time?

To provide an alternate opinion, "programming" is often quite visible in AGS games, because of how engine is focused on particular gameplay and offers little to no foundation for another. Hence it's quite easy to notice something that was programmed from ground up as opposed to games using built-in behavior.

EDIT: but of course such category will be prone to not having enough competitors each year. So maybe consider the some kind of "special award" as with "Good character".

To be fair, one of the comittee awards already in place can also be used for this, although the tech award has been given mostly to work on the engine, modules and plugins the latest years. But maybe the committee could choose to award "Spectacular programming" a given year if there is a game that deserves it? If there are few coders in the anonymous committee, they would probably be dependent on tips from our experts in the field.

*) Reduced categories
"Best Demo" and "Best Character" are dropped.

Possibly combine Best Demo and Best Short game?

Best Character, if we should want to keep it, could be awarded by a separate committee consisting of a few of our members who play most of the games, but are not necessarily devs themselves. I think this is a different consideration from Lifetime Achievment or Technological advancement, and calls for a different approach. Not possible now, but ideally, these members would be appointed before a year starts and keep each other updated on good characters in a separate thread. (My thoughts here are that there probably will be a "best character" every year, put maybe not "Outstanding programming". Also, I think our programmers are too busy programming to have time for being hard core gamers. Could be wrong.)

Hmmm...I actually like the best character award, but I think it's rather difficult to do by popular vote as we do now. But I do think it could be done by a small committee. Suggestions could be posted in the FYI thread, like others, in case there's a great character in an overlooked game.

I guess when it comes down to it, the people who organize this will have to draw the lines and determine how much work they want to do and how they are going to do it. The rest of us will have to accept that and rather try to support where we can.

Actually, I don't think 50 people deciding the awards is all that bad, if it's compared to other websites giving out awards where it's done by a small committee. I wish more people would participate, of course.

My gut feeling is that the AGS crowd are pretty fair in their ratings, even though some of us are friends or "fans" of each other's work. This could be due to us being mostly adults by now. I see a tendency on other sites that (younger?) people will vote either 1 star or max amount, and they may also feel an obligation to rate another product with five stars if the author of that game gave their game the same. At least to an extent, I see this in some game jams and on google play. (My own theory is that this is due to these people using game rating the same way they use social media.) But I digress.

In theory, artists should be more interested in nominating games in the art categories, not to mention more capable of recognizing good art than those of us don't know what's the front end of a pencil. Same would go for programming, writing, music and most of those categories. I wouldn't mind if someone with a talent in one of these fields were given a big blue nominate button, to be able to give the nominations out where they are deserved. Thus if a game doesn't get the five nominations necessary, it could be nominated as a "Expert's pick" (I'm sure someone could make up a better name for it) instead.

Again, I'm working out of an assumption that may be wrong, namely that we choose which games to play out of our field of special interest. For example, if eri0o makes a game with some programming magic, that other expert coders are likely to check it out to see what he did and how he managed to accomplish it. But I fear many of us don't really play many games at all.