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Oh, sure, I can try to do it....  (what do I do? )
.. and congrats Creamy!

Some votes:

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Concept:
Cat- 2
Rootbound- 1

Playability:
Creamy- 2
Framganga Games- 1

Artistic Execution:
Creamy- 2
Rootbound- 1

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well the leg scene was genuinely horrifying. Good job making the game playable and intuitive throughout the strangeness.

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I have a bit of a science-fiction brain, so I have a hypothesis that maybe explains all of this (in a forced and totally unnecessary way. The game works better as a fever dream without explanation).

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The character is "unstuck in time" in the vein of Slaughterhouse-five. Once he gets to the end of his life, he starts traveling through time backwards. He wrote the note warning himself to watch his legs, and he wrote the note from his lover because he knew he would never die before ever reaching home, and wanted to release himself from longing for her, despite the pain it would cause. He took the baby from the raft because he knew that traveling forward in time would not save the baby either, so he carries the baby with him now, traveling further into the past, and when he gets far enough in time before the flood that the baby will have a chance to grow up, he will release it back into the regular time stream. The baby then grows up and becomes him.

...As I said, the game is better without anything like this. 

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I love all this so much!

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.. and its probably super generous to the reality of the plot in this   (Poor Jackson, and whatever he is raking in?!)
That makes the bottle make sense a lot more, ..and the baby stuff!
I'd drawn a bunch of closeup's that seemed fun, and we tried our best to cobbled them together..  it seems like a lot of horror kind of feels like that though?  Just a series of very emotionally manipulative scenes   Thanks for the kind words!

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I enjoyed Bad to the Coral too, drawing a bunch of trash looked fun!  I really wanted to assign nets to hotkeys for net-size (1-3?) but that might make it too intense

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So, as an experiment, I have created a parallel jam in itch.io and invited users there to sign up and submit their games in the thread.

https://itch.io/jam/mags-august-2023

Sorry for reviving this thread, :p..
I had the idea to suggest this same thing, Itch jams page, and went back through this whole thread today.. and behold, you had already done it!

We had a good luck with our game that double-dipped with an Itch jam and MAGS. (August, I think). We've gotten more new players, and more comments/feedback (not a huge amount more, but more)... which is one of the real draws to participating (for me, anyway).

I would suggest trying this again, for several months in a row next year. I think you can pre-schedule jams on their calendar (and probably copy and paste most of the text?) so people can see its upcoming and 'join'. The text could link to some past MAGS topic thread and Hall of fame, and throw in a couple graphics to fancy up the jam page there.. 

If you want to reach new people and raise awereness, you need marketing. Starting with getting MAGS on the front page of AGS and updating its own homepage (no updates in 2018). Create social media accounts or maybe make a deal with some youtube/twitch channels and gaming blogs for coverage. Also, tie-ins with other game jams. For example, AdventureJam 2018 is coming in May and all AGS participants should consider double dipping. All this takes lots of time and effort of course, which you probably don't have, unless someone wants to share hosting responsibilites.

This is probably what resonated the most with me reading through the tread, marketing. To raise the profile of MAGS.. The rest might just fall into place.

I realised today that we haven't had more than two entries at all this year.

Between January and October we've had an average of 1.8 entries. August's experiment of hosting the jam concurrently on Itch.io failed to increase numbers.

So entries are up this year?.... 2.7 average! 🎉

Thanks for all the great work you do!

Well, that was creepy!    I liked it, and I felt it was like the fever dream you announce it as.

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The game is sort of on tracks, and it feels unavoidable to play out like intended. I had the feeling that none of it was real, and perhaps even the river might be Styx. Still, the evil dolphin (Flipper flipped!) and the baby in a basket (like Moses!) were great, and both gave me the full WTF moment. I guess the story in this game may be interpreted any number of ways.

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So - good game! Congratulations on making it!

Thanks as always for playing heltenjon!

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Things are definitely chained together linearly in this one, which was sort of an experiment.. it was hard to make that feel ok, and I'm not sure if we did

Some other ideas like more deaths (there's one in there!.. which maybe doesnt make sense depending on your interpretation of the game..), actions sequences (wack-a-dolphin, river rafting/paddling), didn't really make it past the drawing board. 

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[BOTOS DO DIABO]

BOTOS DO DIABO
(aka Devil's Porpoises)
By Babar & jfrisby
A fever dream horror somewhere in the Amazon...

AGS database: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2808-botos-do-diabo/
Download: https://jfrisby.itch.io/botos-do-diabo

Botos do Diabo is a short horror fever-dream point and click set on a river somewhere in the Amazon.
Made for Adventure Game Studio MAGS monthly competition November 2024 for the theme "Body of Water".

Features:
- 8 colors!
- Dolphin!
- Closeups! Animation!
- Endless(?) scrolling background!
- Original soundtrack!

!!WARNINGS!!
- Violence
- Mild strobing/ seizure warnings (6- second lightning pixel art in intro)
- possible jump scare(s)
- starvation
- blood
- Possible dolphin attacks

Here is the river from our MAGS game Botos do Diabo in 356x200:


It's got an animated background, and moving water object, foreground and horizon moving objects, which loop (in random segments).  Foreground tree's are spawned in at a settable random frequency... All the technical wizardry is Babar, but I drew a bunch of stuff  

The scene in motion (sorry for the low quality, I'm not great at recording yet)

and a view of all the elements:

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and AGS room:

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Just a minor nuisance: you didn't indicate the OS! _

Thanks for catching this, I was pretty tired when I uploaded it.. We'll have a linux build up soon too!

[BOTOS DO DIABO]

Babar & I present...
BOTOS DO DIABO
A fever dream horror somewhere in the Amazon...



Download: https://jfrisby.itch.io/botos-do-diabo

This one has some violence, blood, *scares, etc.. if you're sensitive to that (*AGS level jumpscares). It got pretty experimental and weird this month. :p

   Thanks everyone for playing and voting!
This game was way too ambitious and very hard to finish, which is probably why it took close to 2 months to make... I'm still in shock that no one seems really upset about the puzzles!

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That big window / button puzzle was like... pretty absurd... but seemed to do something interesting...  I wanted to quiz people about solving it, but I'm also traumatized by it

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[The Sphinx of Time]

The Sphinx of Time

The Sphinx of Time is a sci-fi-timewarping-mystery-point & click with 30-60 minutes of fiendish puzzles, exploration, and adventure.  Join the crew of The Bahamut as they voyage to the end of the universe to try to save time!

- Multiple player characters!
- 8 colours!
- Piano and space clarinet soundtrack!
- Riddles? Pangrams?
- Possibly difficult puzzles, that may require taking notes (you've been warned!)

Made by Babar & jfrisby over two months for 2024 MAGS August "Timewarp" & MAGS October "Finish your MAGS game".

DOWNLOAD: https://jfrisby.itch.io/the-sphinx-of-time

[The Sphinx of Time]

Hi everyone, Babar and I present..

The Sphinx of Time
DOWNLOAD: https://jfrisby.itch.io/the-sphinx-of-time
Made by Babar & jfrisby over two months for 2024 MAGS August "Timewarp" & MAGS October "Finish your MAGS game".
Join the crew of The Bahamut as they voyage to the end of the universe to try to save time!

Misj', wow! That's crazy beautiful. I like how the three entries are from distinct eras of gaming

jwalt, I love these Gumby-esque aliens, I haven't played the game yet but will.

Misj' gets my votes. The playability feels like it'd be a lot of animation... but I can imagine it (and never dream of doing it myself ).

Thanks for the detailed comments heltenjon!

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I don't think it was explained why the aliens used English, but it got a reaction from the protagonist. Puzzles were logical and not too difficult, given the few items available in a single location. Or perhaps I should say semi-logical or intuitive? There is a sense of not fully understanding what's going on that I shared with the character.

We sort of got tied in knots trying to fit the 'least intelligent' theme and not overload the lore..  We put a couple references in, but the idea was that it's a 'distant future' human ship, that's been stolen by another alien race (or an AI?)...  and they are trying to unlock it by abducting Cornbankle..  That's pretty hard to explain

The music was a little different from your earlier outings, and while still good, I kind of missed the silent movie piano emphasizing the moods in the game.

Thanks! I feel like I'm running out of tricks with my piano skills.. but it will return! 

And you tease this as the beginning of a series...cool indeed!

In a testament to our backwards marketing skills, we've already made a sequel, Breakfast Requiem in a Cornbankle game...  and this is set sometime way before that... The timeline of events is very fuzzy, that might be many years in the future

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Not sure if I'm allowed to submit, since this was completed between sept 7th-21st for AGC/MAGS, but this was my attempt at biological-alien-spaceship   (That's a partial draw over of the bottle feeder from S&M: Hit the Road)

[.. And also made for MAGS September 2024, with the theme ALIENS!]

An unknown entity has taken Cornbankle... But why? 
Can he escape their gelatinous and horrifying grasp?

Made for the 2024 $108 Adventure Game Challenge with the theme:
The protagonist must be the smartest person in the game, but everyone including themselves believes they are the dumbest person.
.. And also made for MAGS September 2024, with the theme ALIENS!

- a slightly gruesome techno-organic nightmare in 8 colours! (356x200)
- puzzles!
- inventory objects!
- monsters?
- original soundtrack!

By Babar & jfrisby

Updated MAGS DELUXE EDITION VERSION here:
https://gamejolt.com/games/abductedintelligence/928421

AGS Database:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2788-abducted-intelligence/

We have an updated version pretty much ready to go, but...  just a few more hours

We went the double competition route Stupot mentioned and entered the 108 Adventure Game Challenge, and attempted to combine the themes. We submitted a version for the jam, but there's a couple dozen things to polish for MAGS  still

We'll post updated version in a couple days (hopefully).

<removing link to jam version... will upload MAGS version!>

We've been working on a game... but TIME has not been on our side this month (ha ha ). 

We've got three+ big rooms, a couple playable characters, full progression for the puzzles...  but almost no look/dialog texts in yet.. which would make it very hard to decipher the puzzles    We're going to take a few more days and polish it up..   

Hope someone else has had better luck!

I played this and pixel-hunted to the end. But was that the only end?

Thanks for playing! and yes, that's the only end --

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One version of the original idea was going to possibly have a timer and expanding fire that maybe blocked off locations... and some different solutions.. But that was way too complicated to figure out in a month... and probably would have been very cruel to play?

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