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A Better Mousetrap:

A Better Mousetrap is rather short adventure from Dave Gilbert. This point and click title had been created for March 2003 MAGS. The game placed on first position which on the other hand is not that impressive considering that it was the only entry. But what's more important, at the end of the year it split the first place as the best MAGS game of the year with Apcalypse Vel and it tells more about it's qualities. Humorous plot is set in the RON world, main characters are dark mage Davy Jones and crazy Elandra Desmond. She invented a great new mousetrap but when Dave tries to even improve it with his spell the device teleports them through space to cliff edges of unknown world. And what's even worse, the device ran out of energy thus our couple has to find a new source. A better mousetrap excels in witty dialogues mechanism of controlling two characters is also good. The game is very solid graphics wise considering that development time was shorter than one month. Dave Gilbert proved once again that he has talent to create absurd yet funny situations and dialogues.

Well, Dave, there IS a reader's comments section but I don't suppose you want to hear them . Very... ermmm... negative.

OK, guys, I didn't have much free time recently so there was a delay this time. Anyway, here we go:

Other Worlds:


Other Worlds is one of the latest AGS contributions to classic point and click adventures genre. The author, Alkis Polyrakis, made this game as a present for his girlfriend Natalie. Natalie is also the game's main hero. Her quest is to find her boyfriend (how touching). The game is photorealistic with hand drawn characters and pixelized text over digitised backgrounds. It doesn't look that cool and probably not many will be stunned by game's visuals.. Also repetitive music becomes annoying . The puzzles are on the easy side and the game itself is not very hard to finish but regardless from surprisingly big filesize and massive documentation it can't provide the player enough motivation to dive deeper into the story of Natalie and Alkis. It lacks drive, it lacks atmosphere â€" and this is critical even for mostly slow paced suspense adventure games. A lot of better games have been created with AGS.

Well, I found Coup de Cup on this CD:

http://www.excal.cz/excalsite/hv30.html

It's a monthly collection of freeware games. Previous issues included other AGS games as well, A Friend Indeed for instance.

Cost: roughly 4 USD.

I don't know if I should be glad or pissed off. I saw Coup on magazine's cover discs and I was definately glad because my game is not what sells the magazine. But when the freeware games are the very content that sells the product, then it seems like someone is screwing us...

I mean, I wanted our game to be free and if it's not then someone might have asked for a permission at least .

OK, OK, guys. I will do the translations for you all but gimme some time, let's say till the end of the week. The real life is knocking on the door every once in a while, you know...

I would like to comment on this tileset since I've been bussy pixeling tilesets just recently.

It's good piece. Maybe saturation is little too high but it depends on rest of the graphics. I would definatelly reccomend to add some shading on the tree because when I saw the picture for the first time I was like: "Ohh, wonderful dirt road through grass!" Then I took a closer look to find out that it's actually a tree. But it's partly due to the fact the picture is chopped. Anyway, some more shading would be nice.Ã, 

Now the grass tiles. They are quite good, only when put together, repeating texture is visible.

It's because of certain distinct elements which are located in corners of the tile. Here's what I mean:



x2



(There is a couple more of these bold pixels but you see what I'm talking about.)

Get rid of these and that's it.

Hmmm, hobbies.

I really don't have much time for hobbies nowadays. I do pixel for fun after work but I'm getting paid for it so it's not a mere hobby any more since deadlines and stuff are involved.

Apart from that... well I suppose sex doesn't quite fall under this category, so then it's pubs and darts.  I used to be quite a good league player.

Darts anyone???

I've been working on titlescreen for a mobile shoot'em up last couple of hours. This is what I have so far:






The rocket should be more crisp and metallic maybe... But I kinda like it this way. I don't know...

What do you say?

Whatwhat..... Huh! Yeah? Coup de Cup won???

I am very surprised and very very glad at the same moment. And so is foz, I'm sure.

Thanks everybody for their votes and for congratulations. 


Woohooo!

The Hamlet, here you go:


The Hamlet â€" a dramatic detective story

Recently released point and click adventure The Hamlet is an example of brilliant storytelling. A detective story is presented in dramatic way and clever dosage of information helps to create  great  atmosphere. Will you accept an invitation to a little town where strange things happen?

When your friend invites you to his countryside place over Christmas it's either A) time for a deep meditation on meaning of life or B)just about the right time to grab a backpack, three pairs of clean socks and go. The hero of cartoony point and click adventure The Hamlet is  a doer, in spite of all dark aspects of his personality and he opts for B. But imagine his surprise when he finally arrives to the place only to find the house deserted, locked and a little note saying: „Gone for a few days“. After short consequent periods of fury-despair - spleen â€" and another seizure of fury the pragmatic approach towards dealing with mysterious situations steps in. And, what a wonder, he soon  finds out that somebody other wrote the note. What the hell is going on here?

Hard to say but probably nothing good. The only way to see  is to break into the house and find out the answer. A detective story with a twist of psychological drama for those who want to discover it together with good storytelling keep the atmosphere at a level which is not half bad, even though the exposition and denouement of the game are not very original. The pacing of the game is great and the authors don't hesitate to include almost an action sequence when it's necessary to keep the game credible. Also the game is not spoiled by superfluous and illogical puzzles.

Even screens with empty houses which would normally be criticised are there for reason as they help to create an illusion of deserted countryside where city folk rarely wanders to and where last few stubborn locals hold tight.

The Hamlet is rather short game even compared to other freeware titles but this game leaves even slightly soft-brained players full of impressions. Some later scenes, which content is better not to give away not to spoil the enjoyment, are very emotionally strong. But there is still one flaw I would like to point out. The game's end is too open for a Marlow-esque detective story. Everything is explained in plain English and there is no space for the bitter feeling on the tip of the tongue and a bit of uncertainity in mind if everything really had to be like it most probably was.

The Hamlet is a product of AGS community's interesting summer contest. Members of different teams randomly formed larger groups with ambitions to create larger and more complex games

No game had been finished when the deadline came but in the end „The Team Competition's“ yielded two sweet fruits of labour: Excellent Two of a Kind by Dave Gilbert and his teammates and todays The Hamlet

AGS engine did a good job on the technical side of the project. The game is bug-free and easy to control through commands on left and right mouse button. Graphics are hand drawn and detailed, the only disadvantage is the resolution of  320x200. Fortunately even in  640x480 (that's why there are black borders on the screenshots) The Hamlet still looks great and you can admire the graphic artists feeling for colour contrast and shading   

Add a decent music and, here goes an adventure worth your attention. Not the longest or most original one but thanks to the professional approach of screenplay writer, graphics artist and musicians it's very atmospheric. and that's what you cannot say even about more technologically advanced freeware games.

OK I do apologise for it might have sounded a bit harsh but it was also due to limited lenght of post my cellphone browser enables.

First off, the setting is good and offers a wide variety of opportunities for an interesting story. The end of middle ages and onset of modern times was truly a turbulent period, when the whole nature of economy and government changed, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. Nobility and towns gaining strength and political power. "You are our king and we are your lords" was also what the noblemen used to say...

First half of 17th. century was also time of Thirty Years War, the most damaging of all European wars ever speaking in terms of percentual population loss.

Yes, it's  I can see broad field of possibilities and I would definately like to see a game from this period. But still the first post carried roughly as much information as one  like "hey man, how about to make a game set in medieval Japan, it was cool back there".

So here goes my conclusion: the idea is very interesting but try to play with it for a while, try to elaborate more. Will it be a story of one of the noblemen who discovered other noblemen's plot against king and tries to save his life and the whole kingdom? Or something else? Work on it and we all will look forward to what you'll come up with.

I think your post is almost useless. OK,you chose a rather interesting setting for a game. But what next? Not even slightest hints of storyline? So all I can say is go ahead,start working on your game and come back when you have something to discuss about.

Well, I didn't change my mind I only got the oportunity to see the problem from a different perspective.

First of, your first post is excellent. Very thought out and well written and covers almost all theoretical aspects of possible mobile adventure gaming.

I am still extremelly enthusiastic about mobile entertainment and I still DO think that mobile adventures can get off the ground and possibly be very entertaining.

The problem is not the games but the industry. Imagine you are a commercial mobile developer. Each project you take the risk and quite naturally you tend to limit it as much as possible. If this is what you do for living, there's no wonder you choose the safe way and go for good ol'shooters... Yes it's the thing we all hate Lucas Arts for now. Rules of free market are cruel.

But this is not the only reason. It takes ages to make a decent adventure game. There are things like script and dialogues that need to be done first no matter if the game is designed for PC or cellphone. The other parts of adventure development are time demanding too. But hey, mobile games life cycle is very short and counts in only weeks or at most a few months. The "AAA" titles can be alive for maybe almost a year before their time is over. And within this time period the game has to make enough profit to actually pay while it's still on first pages of internet software portals.

It's easy to knock down a Speccy remake in few weeks and the sad thing is that it will attract more customers than a solid and thought out adventure game the authors spent last 10 months of development on. And you have to consider the price you can charge for your game which will be downloadable over the air or through internet. It can be as low as 2 or 5 Dollars or Euros, most likely not more than 9,99 to remain competitive... Can this pay?

For example The Broken Sword, one of the best adventure games of all time was ported to Gameboy and flopped. Gilbert Goodmate, another good adventure had been ported to Pocket PC and while it did much better, still it wasn't anything to shout about.

Now my personal favourite: cellphones. I only saw a few adventures on these devices, I remember some X.Files game and that was pretty much all. Of course there are ports of Sierra classics but it doesn't quite count.

The thing is that Ã, while there are smartphones and there are already millions of users of these gadgets already, the main consumer group still consists of lower end mobile users. The most common mobile gaming devices are java enabled Nokia Series 40 phones. The screen resolution is 128 x 128 which is hardly enough for adventure games. But it's not the main problem, it could do. Mobile Java (J2ME) is. These phones are not equipped with operation system and Java as originaly a cross-platform language is very limited. Some phones have also a maximum file size limit which varies from 50 - 100 kB. In these cases I have a limit of roughly 50 kB for ALL the ingame GFX! Even without this limit it's not much more than 100 kB. This is a big obstacle, at least it seems like it to me.

Of course this is not an issue with smartphones now and technological limitations of low end handsets will disappear but again there always is the question, will it pay??? The competition is tough and for a taste of things to come in mobile gaming check out SP Mark 2005 (Smartphones benchmark).

Also nature of point and click adventure is specific. Time consuming as they are these are better suited for long rainy afternoons when you have nothing to do than for ocassional boring bits of time you have to kill, bits which are best to be filled by mobile entertainment... You dealt with this problem well in your first post so that everybody can see the point. It's not the lenght of the game but the progress that has to be done to keep the player interested that matters. To be stuck in adventure game in supermarket line is not exactly what we are looking for, right? There are lenghty and complex mobile games that are very popular - RPGs, RTSs, Pocket Kingdom for instance. But in these games you can always make at least a little progress in a short period of time.


But there is still hope. I think this opens field for non-conventional adventures.
Hell, if people like RPGs on mobiles and love logical games why wouldn't they accept an adventure which is something between these two? A properly designed adventure, that is.

In my oppinion Gobliiins are the type of game that could do well on mobile...

Ufff... I'm tired, I will stop now... Laters.

Attention!

Heh, we went silent for pretty a long while...

I hope I will find time for MIA in between making GFX for mobile games and that this game will be released this year. Yay.

Ease!

Well, you probably forgot the first and only rule of rebate: Lure the fools, promise the money back and let's hope that only few will actually use the mail in coupon... :-)

I suppose this phone does not have bluetooth or infrared? Or memory card? Because if so, the data transfer would be so much easier for you...

I don't have a VCR and I don't miss it at all. On the other hand I would miss Smartmovie which is a program that allows me to watch movies on my cellphone. It comes especially handy while commuting to work and back by underground :-).

Well,this tragedy will take its toll in all parts of the world,including the "western" one. Even our little country reports as much as 300 missing tourists at the moment... :-(

Here you go and try to get things straight


Legend - a Czechoslovak gaming magazine


Being editor of freeware section of Level it's one of my duties to get permission from authors to publish their works on cover CDs or DVDs. From time by time, apart from confirmation e-mails I get a feedback when someone mentions that his game has appeared in certain issue of Level and sometimes even a link is added. This was also probably intention of Dave Gilbert, an AGS scene celebrity, when he mentioned our deal concerning publication of his new game Two of a kind in Christmas issue. However, this little news took an interesting spin.

This is what it reads:

11-24-04
I just got word that "Two of a Kind" is going to be included in the christmas issue of Legend Magazine, a Czechoslovakian gaming magazine. So if you hail from Czechoslovakia, be sure and check it out!"

Level was dubbed Legend  (which confused me to such an extent that I started thinking about what kind of deal Dave could have made with Legenda â€" another Czech magazine specialised generaly in fantasy and games)

And, however,  phrase  "best-selling Czech magazine about computer games" is included in all my e-mails it turned out „Czechoslovakian“ in Dave's news. What a clear proof that neither ice hockey and soccer players nor politicians succeedeed in propagation of Czech republic abroad very well and even really smart people often don't know that Czechia & Slovakia are not one country any more for twelve years already

Well, nothing doing… At least Dave got the most important thing correct â€" a webpage link which gets things straight.

P. S.: Nevertheless, pay attention! Two of a Kind itself is totally sweet humorous cartoony adventure, and the fact that it gets high marks on sites like Adventure Gamers or Home of the Underdogs is surely not coincidental.

This game is a commercial project for mobile devices and shareware/freeware port for pc is not currently planned. But we will see, maybe it's not a bad idea. But our priority now is to finish the mobile version.

Thanks for feedback, especially to six_plus_one.

I am glad that you can see the personality of bosses. The first one will be in fact pretty week and not exactly smart, more a minion than a real boss thus the insect features and thin arms. On the opposite side will be big strong circular and mighty Mr. No5.

Some might look like regular enemies but I think not in comparison with common cannon fodder which looks like this: