Messages

[Rik Vargard]

Hey Rik Vargard, thank you for your comment and feedback - it left me chuffed! 

I would love to make another game in this style in the future, maybe with a different setting. I've got a lot of stuff going on at the moment, so it'll have to wait, but I have many ideas on my mind already. ...which is a start, but making the actual game is the hard part!

Regarding your question:

Spoiler

You haven't missed anything, the game just doesn't tell you what happened to the real Simon!

I thought that the ending was already too wordy (I wanted to make it more interactive initially, but ran out of time) so I left out that part of the story.

Anyway! Only Aram was in contact with Simon, the others knew nothing about him. He had settled a date for Simon's arrival, which got delayed multiple times, spooking Aram.
When Simon arrived, Aram obviously wasn't there, being dead and all that. So Simon just went away hiding, not wanting to risk being caught. Maybe then he caught word of how Aram had died, and he didn't want to find himself in the middle of a police investigation. He was there for an illegal purpose, after all!

You, the detective, could pass for Simon since the other components of Aram's group had no idea of his identity (nor Simon of theirs).

I hope it's a satisfactory explanation

[close]

[For your consideration:]

For your consideration:

LINK!





Teleia: a self-sufficient island separated from the outside world that has seen no poverty, unemployment, or crime for 60 years.
Until now.
When a brutal murder is committed you are called from the mainland to investigate. Discover the secrets of the island, find the killer, and their motives! Not everything is as it seems...

Please consider this game for:

Best Freeware Game: you don't pay for it!
Best Short Game: can be completed in half an hour! Even less if you have already played it!
Best Audio: Arman's soundtrack is amazing, check it out!
Best Visuals: it's 1080p, is this the future of game resolutions or something?!
Best Gameplay: you even type in the game, is this amazing gameplay or what?

* p.s.

Spoiler

I hope you like the Bartolomeo cameo I put in the game.   

[close]

Whaat?! Moving the game to the top of my to-play list -- oh wait, it was already there! 

A new Barn Runner game? Is it Christmas already?!? Oh wait, it is!!! 
It's great to see this long-running series still continuing, can't wait to play it!
Merry Christmas, Ponch!

Have a great Christmas everyone! 

Played it yesterday and I loved it. Loved the graphics, the music, the plot, the worldbuilding... everything! And what I liked the most is that you handle yourself very well with a tone that is far from your best-known works. I'd like to see more things like this from you.

Thank you very much, Postmodern Adventures! I'm really glad you liked the game.
I was a bit uncertain about people's response regarding it, but it has been mostly positive so far!

I like your slapstick adventures but - Like Postmodern Adventures - I think you handled the darker undertone of a police investigation well - especially given the time limit.
I also enjoyed the cinematic score of Arman Mkhitaryan which gives character to the game.

No complaints about the seamless detective work that primarily serves to move the story along. Our immersion in this utopian setting is the most interesting part IMO.

Thanks, Creamy, although I missed writing silly jokes while making the game 
Puzzles were the hardest part to design since a lot of traditional inventory puzzles can look out of place in a more serious setting. Plus, I didn't really have enough time to think of too many, haha!

One has to wonder why so many people are paid to do nothing in Teleia

Who said they're paid? 

Thank you very much for including my game on the list 
I always enjoy reading these articles. Also, some of the captions were really funny!

Thank you for playing, Rootbound! I wish I had time to flesh out the ending a bit more, but I hope what is there is adequate.

Really funny game! The disguise mechanic is so clever, and I loved how the walking sprite changes reflecting your choices.
Strong EGA graphics as usual and some really quirky and funny situations.

I really enjoyed the game! Very funny writing, nice puzzles, and the perfect length for a game jam.
If you have half an hour, give it a try!

A lovely short game, with funny writing and situations!
Having three protagonists each with its own attributes makes for some interesting puzzles, which were all logical and fun to solve. Plus the story is really funny and I loved the ending.

It's pretty crazy that you managed to make a game with three playable characters in only two weeks! Hope to see more adventures of these three in the future 

It was a fantastic game with a deep story! This adventure gem is worth playing! 

Thank you very much, Ramorama! Also for helping me find a good name for the doctor 

I really liked to play this game! The first person view reminded me of old-school detective games, but instead of pixels we get Lorenzo's beautiful art in full hd - and the extra pixels means reading text here is a breeze. Definitely had fun testing! 

Thank you very much for all your help testing the game, eri0o! You spotted so many problems and bugs, it would've been a much worse game without your help. In fact, it would be icon-less as well

I will have to take a look at the other 24 games in the jam, of course, but I would not be surprised if this one is the winner. Stunning art, as usual, but the writing is top notch, as well. There is a very nice science fiction story here with investigation puzzles naturally integrated.

I'm really glad you enjoyed the game, heltenjon! I was a bit apprehensive while making it as there was a lot of text in the game that I had to write really quickly, so I wasn't sure if it was any good. Plus, the story was a bit more serious than my usual ones
Thank you for your comment!

Spoiler

Sadly, there was no evidence called "lock pick". What happened to tau 1 and tau 2? 

[close]

Thanks for playing, cat! Haha! I should add that evidence to the database as an Easter egg.

Spoiler

Maybe Tau 1 & 2 had to close, because the third one was too good.

[close]

This was fantastic! Excellent mystery, impressive scope, given the time  constraints, beautiful music, and you know I'm a sucker for investigations requiring text parser inputs Oh, and, of course, your art is always wonderful. Brilliant job. I loved it.

As I told you already, Signal & Echo was an inspiration for me while making the game, so I'm really happy you enjoyed it!

And if you people haven't played Signal & Echo's demo, you should really try it! A fantastic game that makes you feel like a detective.

When I saw the game cover on itch, I immediately recognised your style!
I have yet to play the game, but it looks really fun. Plus, the part on the game page where it says "A public domain soundtrack ripped from a government education video about water injection" really made me laugh!

I did allow Karl to sneak in an extra colour in one spot (the green mint leaf), and I used a green for the hotspot highlighter, too.

One extra colour?! Preposterous! I now refuse to play this game!!!

Too bad I already played it 
This was really fun. Great characters and dialogues, nice puzzles that felt just right, and most of all, very funny! My main complaint? I wish there was more to play, which is always a good sign 

Congrats Kini & Team for creating a very enjoyable short game!

[Stranger in Utopia]

Stranger in Utopia

STORY

Teleia: a self-sufficient island separated from the outside world that has seen no poverty, unemployment, or crime for 60 years.

Until now.

When a brutal murder is committed, you, Lieutenant Stevenson, are
called from the mainland to investigate. Discover the secrets of the
island, find the killer, and their motives! Not everything is as it
seems...

Made in two weeks for the Adventure Game Challenge.

SCREENSHOTS








CREDITS

• lorenzo: story, coding, graphics, animation
• Arman Mkhitaryan: music, sound effects
• eri0o: testing, technical help

DOWNLOAD!

On Les' Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@maelstromobscura1575/videos there are walkthroughs/game videos from several of the unreleased chapters: New World Order, Antarctica and Yeti.

Thanks for the link! I wanted to point that out as well, but I couldn't find the link to the channel anymore.

Perhaps those who have collaborated on Maelstrom Obscura could share what they had done for the project. It could be interesting to see what it could have been. I know I have a lot of backgrounds from that game.

[heltenjon]

I'm so saddened by Les's passing. He was such a nice guy and a legend here. I always enjoyed his quirky games and his sense of humour.

I worked together with Les on his big game, Maelstrom Obscura, and I wish he had managed to finish it, since it was very ambitious. He also helped me test some of my games, which was especially nice since I could write him during game jams and he would be ready to try them the next day, and the new versions as soon as I had them. Plus, he always had ideas on how to make the games better.

We colab in a few games where I did graphics for his game... but boy did he annoyed me sometimes by requesting hard to do BGs (making me do more work on a BG that I couldn't see how it would possible look better) and then end up using a grab from an online reference pic in game.... or using an unfinished BG when I specifically told him I wasn't finished, and just wanted some feedback to improve it... or picking a sprite and distorting it to fit his "size" (instead of asking me to rendered it again at a bigger size)... but I'll still miss him and his horde of games.

HAHAHA! Yup, that's Les all right! The same kind of stuff happened during my copy editing of his game texts. He would sometimes just rewrite pieces of text I had already corrected and signed off on without running them by me again. And those monstrosities would show up in the released games that had my name on them as copy editor, making it look like I had overlooked them.

It's funny how I had a similar experience with him, where he added stuff to my backgrounds that clashed quite a lot with the original images. I think he was just used to working alone, fixing problems by himself, and he didn't want to bother me with adding changes. But one email exchange clarified things and didn't create any issues between us. It was just easy to get along with him and when there was something wrong, you could just tell him and there were no hard feelings.

Slasher, your grammar and spelling were atrocious, and I just had to contact you and ask if I could correct the whole mess, which led us down a years-long journey where I copy edited your games.

Funnily enough, I remember when I was making my jam game Bartolomeo, I sent him a first very rough version of the game. I wrote it so quickly because I was afraid of not making the deadline, and it was full of typos and badly written sentences.
Les pointed out so many of them and helped me improve the game so much, that I had to add him to the credits for proofreading, which I always found a bit funny since his spelling was usually terrible
But I guess he couldn't be bothered to write better in his games and communication. It was the same with his games: he just wanted to get them done, no matter the bad graphics or lack of polish. And there was such a rough honesty to them that you couldn't help but smile when playing.

--

Thank you very much to all who took their time to find out what happened, and especially to heltenjon for contacting his son.

[Results!]

Results!

This was really close, but the winner of this Background Blitz is... newwaveburritos!

Congratulations! 

[Voting time!]

Voting time!

Entries:

Creamy's sunny summertime scene!



newwaveburritos's extravagant EGA edifices!



Voting categories:

Concept: your background should tell us something about the place you have depicted.
Playability: does it have clearly defined walkable areas, things to interact with, etc?
Artistic Execution: does the image convey the wanted atmosphere? What's the feeling of the place?

Deadline: 18th of May.