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I think it's time for more revealing screenshots...

I'm guessing it's a game somewhere from 1996 to 2000.

Oh, what's this mysterious QSM game engine about?

Mostly flexibility, optimization for speed and I'm currently writing an experimental 3D renderer for it, so hopefully that also means teh cool graphix in the near future.

Anyway, playing this feels a bit like a pen&pen RPG. No matter what I choose, something totally unexpected happens

* abstauber looks at the Gooseking

I think I'll take that as a huge compliment.
Thanks for playing!

[download Unknown Lands v. 1.01]

Unknown Lands

Dear AGSers, I'd like to present you a short experimental game I made this spring. It's called Unknown Lands and it tells about the adventures of captain Cassandra Sway who's lost everything in a blink of an eye and found herself alone on a piece of land completely strange and unfamiliar to her.

What happened to her next and in what order is very much up to chance and your choices.

Unknown Lands has a deliberately misleading structure for a short narrative-focused game, it's not linear and it doesn't have an overarching goal, and the main storyline isn't prominent or important at all. The game leaves you to explore the island/continent Cassandra is on and deal with the encounters she experiences by making choices. It's all about having your own adventure in a strange land.

The game has an end and can be finished though. The whole territory is divided in 4 types: water, forest, towns and hills&fields. Once you exhaust all encounters in each area, the game is finished.

The game is controlled with WASD for movement and menu selection and space for confirming choices.

You can download the game on the website of my indie game development team, Lazy & Sleepy:

download Unknown Lands v. 1.01

Some extra notes

I must say, I'm somewhat disappointed with the way it turned out. It doesn't quite have the effect I had in mind. And I ran out of energy before I could add certain features I planned. But as with any interesting experiment I certainly don't regret making it. Furthemore, the friends and pals I've shown the game to have been pretty much universally positive about it and said they have enjoyed the game. Funnily enough, many of the suggestions I've heard from them were amongst the features I originally envisioned but didn't have the juice to add in the end. And I think at this point I know how I would 'fix' this game to get closer to the feel I wanted it to have, but right now I'm simply too busy with much more exciting projects, so this game will have to stay this way for a while. Maybe later when I'm really in the mood for it, I'll return once more and enhance this little thing. But for now, I need to focus on more important games. I do hope you enjoy it for what it is and I anticipate hearing what you guys think.

Known issues:
· both fullscreen and windowed display resolution is limited to 800x600; I'm definitely gonna offer more options at some later point
· no saving / loading; probably not a huge deal for that game, since you can beat it in half an hour but still, I believe it must be a common courtesy
· the fonts could be more smooth
· the graphics are hardly perfect; I'm very much content with that it's a graphical map of the world rather than an isometric picture of it and I even like the current tiles, but if anyone feels like making an alternative tileset, just let me know
· there are typos, grammatical errors and other unnatural transgressions wreaked upon the English language. You bet there are! don't just giggle at them alone, report them so we can all giggle together and fix them.

Last, but no least, I'd like to thank Pablo for playtesting and clever suggestions, as well as everyone who originally took their time to check out the version 1.00.

@qptain Nemo: I'm stunned how fast you've guessed Ooze. So it was had some commercial success outside of Germany?

I naively thought it was somewhat apparent that I'm just a game nerd, with huge interest in 90s abandonware and adventure games in particular, and a MobyGames addict. ^_^ I haven't even played Ooze yet, but it looked interesting and that particular screenshot amused me a lot when I stumbled upon it, so it was definitely memorable for me. So I can't comment on Ooze's commercial success outside of Germany, but that's the story behind my guess.

The latest versions of AGS aren't of sole authorship of Chris Jones anymore, so the copyright statement at the bottom is incorrect. :V

I really like the way they look though. And that there's coffee inside.

edit: after briefly looking at Artistic License 2.0 again, it does seem like CJ would be the person intended to be named as the copyright holder for the whole project and all its instances. But still it doesn't say that supplied contributions are automatically transfered under the original author's copyright either. And personally I think that the people who invest their efforts into revitalizing AGS deserve a little "et al" / "and others" in the splash screen anyway.

Perhaps I should read the entire thread. Correct.

Haha, I actually consdered posting this! It's Ooze: Creepy Nites.

I knew you'd guess in 3 seconds, but the screenie was too fun not to use. Yeah, lovely game.

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/ZSgGPk2.png[/imgzoom]

Cosmology of Kyoto?

* Second in the series

I knew you were joking when you said a sequel to Jack Trekker will take a long time,  but still, boy, that was fast! Well done. Sure gonna check it out.

[Fly Paper]

Alright, time to share my thoughts, now that they've calmed down a little. I mean, what, with us TOTALLY DOMINATING THIS COMP- ahem. So yeah, without further ado:
(in a totally chaotic order)

Fly Paper
Everybody seems to really enjoy the joke, but it got me good. I was intrigued alright. Not that I'm bitter or blame you though. Still liked the surprise. You don't see that kind of turn every day.

Mi
I really liked that light surreal style and the melancholic mood of the game. Would like to see more of that kind of thing. I liked that the game didn't waste lots of effort to explain itself. Now that fairly traditional core puzzle solving isn't really what I'm after, but it was a very pleasant experience nonetheless.

Jack Trekker
I just loved this game. It made me laugh from the start to the finish. Incredibly stylish and beautifully ironic intro. The silliness. The machismo. The dialogue. It's simply brilliant.

Oh, btw, and that little camel that trips over and starts spinning? I LOVED THAT!! I bet you thought no one would appreciate that little bit of silliness, but I love that kind of random humour!

ODOW
Writing a functional 3D renderer and adding some gameplay on top in 1 week, all with a rock solid implementation? Hell yes. Well done. I really liked the cozy oldschool look and the dark moody music as well. My only criticism is perhaps that I think I'd like to see a more unusual enviroment than just a traditional fantasy dungeon. Because of that it lacked sense of discovery for me. But still, it doesn't belittle this impressive effort.

Educating Adventures of Girl and Rabbit
Ugh, what is this. Clearly an amateur effort made by some lam3 n00bs. 0/100, would develop again.

Draconis!
Very cute and decent, but it's very hard for a game to grab me with puzzles alone, so alas, I quickly lost interest.

Betrayal
Sweet music. Lovely weird atmosphere. Loved the transitions between weird and cheery moods. I like the concept overall. But I felt the final reveal was a bit too obvious in the context. Didn't leave me severely disappointed, but I certainly wished there was a more unexpected, more weird twist to do the atmosphere that was set up justice.

Sinking
Fucking loved the premise in the intro. Really liked the concept and how it was implemented too. Ironically though, haven't really played it properly yet because I have to really be in the mood to play gameplay-focused stuff. But it's definitely a game that has my endorsement, thumbs up and so on.

The Tattoo Room
One word: brilliant. Simply brilliant. It charmed the living hell outta me. It's absolutely adorable. This is a game that I actually kept playing just to try all the different things long after I've beaten it. And you know, to be honest, when I saw this, as one of the OROW participants I thought to myself "Oh shit, this is brilliant, everybody will love this, we're screwed." So yeah. One of the best.

The Butler Didn't Do It
First of all: dat soundtrack. Lovely job. Me and Pablo were sure it'll win the best music. Next, the writing is hilarious. The "this is worse than Game of Thrones" line outright killed me. The game is absolutely ridiculous and it manages to keep it on the such level that it's impossible not to interpret all of its silliness as a good thing. One thing I was really confused about though is how walking between the two sides of the room was so incredibly obtuse when it's the single most used action in the game. But oh well.

The Addict
The only reaction this game has gotten out of me is utter profound confusion. And I'm afraid it's probably going to stay that way.

Kanji Gakusei
I value being honest above being nice, and I don't know how to sugarcoat this anyway, so I'm afraid I'll just have to say that this game didn't do much for me. Or nothing at all. Well, except that it's a straightforward educational game about a little girl that entered the same competition as our Girl and Rabbit game, that parodies exactly that concept. And that fact is absolutely hilarious.

The Reaper
The background is awe-inspiring. Absolutely stunning. In combination with the music and overall mood it's a very nice love letter to post-apocalyptic atmosphere. I liked that a lot. On the other hand, the focus on fairly generic puzzles over evocative narrative did disappoint me a little and the game generally suffered from being underdeveloped due to the constraints. But since apparently it's merely a prelude to Ben's and Grundislav's upcoming collaboration, I think we can count on that the final work won't have this issue.

The Rebirth
This conceptual counterpart of The Reaper has impressed me even more overall. Nice writing, interesting characters, some brilliant ideas (loved the "burnt my hands so can't activate the hand scanner" problem), some actually decent drama. What's not to love? Grundislove! Ahem, so yeah. A splendid short game that made me think it could become a serious competitor to Technobabylon series.

The Crystal Ball
Oh yes. My very personal favourite. The Crystal Ball has enchanted me. The intriguing premise, the incredibly evocative graphics, the very fitting even if unoriginal music, the clever writing, I loved every bit of the game. The overall mood was impeccable. And seeing the focus of the game being observation, manipulation, choices and dialogue puzzles made me absolutely ecstatic. The game has clearly suffered from the time constraints of the competition and it would greatly benefit from the additional interactions, that very evidently were planned, being finished and having actual non-linearity and various consequences. Needless to say, I want more. Still, even as it is, it won my heart.

And for me, it won the OROW.

Disclaimer: It might take a while due to ambition. But it will come 

What are you talking about, I want it, like, now.

My favourite music is pretty much genreless or hard to classify. But if I had to pick one genre it'd probably be IDM. As such, a perfect example would be the genius of Igorrr

So, I don't know if anyone gives a damn about what I've bought during this sale on Steam or not, but here goes.
Ironclads: Anglo Russian War 1866 - was extremely cheap, so bought out of curiousity. Immediately regretted anyway. Turned out to be even more boring than I expected. I love me some pirate game and ship sailing gameplay for fun, but I'm not an actual ship/naval battle nerd.
AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome - was cheap and I loved the original. Didn't regret at all, played for over 6 hours so far. Was fun to play it again. No other game conveys "indie" as well as this.
Bastion - still not in the mood for this game, but it was piss cheap so it felt almost like a crime not to buy it.
Driver: San Francisco - basiaclly I have been waiting since last summer sale to buy it because my friends told me it was a pleasant driving game. Seems to be true.
System Shock 2 - it's on my backlog, so what the hell.
Fallout: New Vegas - I'm very conflicted about it, and it still haunts me, so adding it to my collection for a very low price felt like the right thing to do.

Wow, that was boring. The graphics and the choice-driven gameplay look somewhat nice though.

I don't care if Dropsy cries. If this doesn't get funded, I will cry myself.

Yep.

Bring it on.

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/eRT9E4o.png[/imgzoom]