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So what you're doing is that you have the same AGS room posing as different identical hotel rooms in-game, and keeping the small differences (lamps turned on, objects visible etc.) stored in variables?

I played Oddjobs 3: Cult of the Almond. I have played a game from this author before, and he didn't disappoint this time, either. You play a kind of private detective who has to infiltrate a cult, and they don't come much crazier than this one. Excellent and funny story, and puzzles that are a lot of fun to do. There is a language puzzle in there that I particularly liked. Challenging, yet solvable.

This is a really hard question, as I certainly wasn't aware of what AGS was back then. I suspect it may have been Rode Kill: A Day in the life or a Reality-on-the-norm game, like Lunchtime of the Damned. I downloaded games from Home of the Underdogs, and I suspect I found them from there. I also remember MAGS having its own website, ending in .tk if I recall it correctly. I may have played something from there first.

Edit: The (now obsolete) Mags site was indeed http://www.mags-competition.tk/ Probably viewable through the wayback machine, though, if someone wants to take a peek through time and see what it looked like back then.

Even though the jam has ended, I will still play those games. 

I played The Shadow over Peenemunde. This is a unity piece set in WWII, and the player goes undercover to get some photos of the V2 Rocket plans. You know, standard spy stuff. The game has fun puzzles and humorous dialogues, but unfortunately suffers from being made like an open world. Most of the open world is pretty, but empty, and there is some trekking back and forth before you find what you need or the place you need to be. The game would have worked better if it were smaller.

I also played Scam I am. The idea is good - the player has to infiltrate a phone scamming company, build up trust by doing scam calls, and then expose them. It looks good, but the controls are terribly unintuitive, so the game sadly is no fun to play. I solved it by clicking around a bit, but I doubt it's intended to play like it does now. It has nice visuals, so I guess the creator started in the wrong end.

Congratulations on the release! Please also add it to the database: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/add/

I will give it a go soon!

EDIT: And as it's a commercial game, it's twice as important to add it to the database for increased visibility. No upload here, you add a link to your itch page.

I played Beyond the Wall. Or tried to. This is a unity piece with huge rooms with nothing in them, text that disappears before I can read it, and it's incredibly awkward to move around, open doors, walk down stairs etc. I ended up falling off the edge of the screen before progressing to the end, unfortunately. The music and some of the backgrounds are nice, though. Otherwise, this needs some work.

I also played Catfishing. This is a unity game. There are quite a few bugs, but the game is fun and playable online. The idea is that the cats of a lady wants to impersonate their owner in order to set up a date with someone who will bring them sushi(!).

I also played The Memory Obfuscation of Patrick Sei. It's another AGS game! This game has the player in a strait jacket. Can you escape the asylum you're stuck in? This is a quite fun game with a mystery to unravel, as the protagonist doesn't remember anything from before.

I also played Mervin Pissarro and the Martian Menticide. This is a game made with unity, that plays like a mix of Zak McKracken and Maniac Mansion. The player character is an alien who uses mind control to hijack other characters' bodies. Hilarity ensues when he tries to impersonate and interact with these people. Well worth playing, although it looks like the author ran out of time and had to shorten the game, dropping puzzles and interactions and some polish. The mind control stuff is gold.

The Book of Jim

@heltenjon do you want me to set Contact for this month or the next?

Your call, boss. 

I suggest Contact by UKZ530.

Those familiar with the author know what to expect. Hand-drawn graphics with a nightmarish atmosphere, with action sequences showing monsters mauling our hero to bits.

[Painted Hills.ags]

Is it actually possible to download such games nonetheless? Could you download the whole wrapped package an run it locally?

If you really want to, you can download "Painted Hills.ags", "audio.vox", and "acsetup.cfg" using a download manager, stick them in a folder with the "acwin.exe" from AGS 4 Alpha (renamed to Painted Hills.exe), along with "sdl2.dll", and bobs your uncle.

For the archivists among us, this could be really useful. @TheTMD @arj0n @gabriel19681_1
There are games out there that the uploader does not have the files for anymore.

And here another one
Annie Londonderry

I played this. Nice, historical graphics, and a very short game that would work nice as an intro to a history lesson about the real Annie, I suppose. Online play only. Thanks for the link!


On the site for that one, I found a link to Painted Hills, which is a fun short investigation game set in a Canadian native American village. Online play only, but very nice-looking and also using the relationships in the small village to make tasks/puzzles flow well in the investigation.

EDIT: Painted Hills has been added to the database!

Thanks to your clues. It's...

Spoiler

A cow!

Two horns pointing up, a tail behind, and 4 legs and 4 teats of the udder pointing down. As for the two pointing forward... could be eyes?

[close]

Absolutely correct!   

Ah! I see what I wrote can be a bit unclear. It's not an ox, either.

Spoiler

The answer is the animal only, no cart or wagon.

[close]

Then why 8 pointing down?

     

Spoiler

Forget about the ears.

[close]

Spoiler

I don't know if I should milk this riddle very much longer.

[close]

Spoiler

If it's not one thing, then it's ...

[close]

Is it an ox pulling a cart? As with my previous guess, the eight pointing down are the four legs and four wheels, the cart is the one dragging behind, the two pointing up are the ears. The two pointing the way to town would be the ox horns.

This is about as close as you get without solving it.

Spoiler

The answer is the animal only, no cart or wagon.

[close]

I was thinking about:

Spoiler

an hermit crab. According to Nausicaa they have eight legs (pointing down), two claws (pointing to town because...reasons), two antennas (pointing up) and a stolen shell dragging behind.

[close]

That's an even better solution than the correct one! 

This is an old riddle from Norwegian agrarian culture.

Unfortunately, I did a mistake that prevents the game to save via GUI. I will fix that after the 107AdvChal voting.

If I remember correctly, you can still save via the function keys.

[Falling Skywards]

From the recent $107 Adventure Game Challenge jam there is Tony's Spaghetti, which is a fun short game about going undercover in a restaurant.
EDIT: This game is now in the database.

The same creator also made Magenta in Space Chapter One for the Adventure Jam 2023.

Another AGS game from Adventure Jam 2023 is  Office of the Returned, currently being updated and polished by Durinde.

Be my guest!

Done! Falling Skywards now has a permanent home here.

For those who do not know, Falling Skywards was included in the Bake Sale some years ago. It's a great game with a moving story, good and quite challenging puzzles, wonderful animation and cool sound design.

Two pointing up, four eight pointing down,
two showing the way to town,
and one dragging behind.

Bump! Hint: It's indeed an animal.