MAGS April “End of an Era” (RESULT)

[Kastchey]

TRAVELERS by LostTrainDude

Spoiler

This is such a nostalgic concept, and I loved the beautiful descriptions. Of course as you said, it is a prototype and there is no actual gameplay in a sense that there are no goals to complete, so the game does indeed lose purpose gradually the more you play it, but it was lovely nonetheless. Do you intend to use the prototype for anything, or was it something you casually made purely for the fun of entering MAGS?

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The Era-Gone Trail by Mandle

Spoiler

That was AWESOME! The graphics are lovely, the music is very well picked and the very concept of a side scrolling runner game about evolution is brilliant. Not to mention the title, which has already been mentioned

I have managed to finish it after figuring out the following basic things:
1. I am controlling a dark reddish brown cat on a dark reddish brown background. That was an evil move...
2. Snakes are food if I manage to kill them.
3. It is better to first collect the food from the middle before trying to grab the food positioned near an edge of the forest area. That was an evil move, too.
Generally super cool, and I'd be willing to buy it if you really made a commercial release.

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Shamrock High School: Graduation by VampireWombat

Spoiler

A dialogue-based game is a solid concept in itself, and I don't think this game would have required any adventure elements to be fun. I loved the idea (a girl's perfect double crawling out of the lake? That's super cool and super creepy, too!), but the dialogue itself didn't seem very relevant to the situation. I would rather ask my double exactly who she is, why is she here, what does she want and just what in actual f is going on than start telling her about my graduation. Overall a promising concept, and if you care for suggestions I'd say don't worry about the form of the gameplay, focus on the story because you have great ideas that are really worth expanding.

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Heroes of Wyrdale by Jack

Spoiler

As with your previous entry, kudos for putting such a complex product together in such a short time frame. I imagine the coding alone would have taken a lot of time, and you also have animations for three characters and for the robots, plus the backgrounds. The story was a bit too simple perhaps, but the ending added some flavour to it. Overall a really good effort, I wish the gameplay was more differentiated and the steering less awkward, but I do applaud you for being able to put a game like this together in the first place.

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My vote goes to:

Spoiler

The Era-Gone Trail. I loved the atmosphere of TRAVELERS, but I finally decided to go for this one because it had both the atmosphere AND the gameplay. Great job everyone!

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Edit: I realized I had cut off a part of my thoughts regarding VampireWombat's entry, now fixed!
Edit2: And a typo in Jack's >.<

[VampireWombat]

Shamrock High School: Graduation by VampireWombat

Spoiler

A dialogue-based game is a solid concept in itself, and I don't think this game would have required any adventure elements to be fun. I loved the idea (a girl's perfect double crawling out of the lake? That's super cool and super creepy, too!), but the dialogue itself didn't seem very relevant to the situation. I would rather ask my double exactly who she is, why is she here, what does she want and just what in actual f is going on than start telling her about my graduation. Overall a promising concept, and if you care for suggestions I'd say don't worry about the form of the gameplay, focus on the story because you have great ideas that are really worth expanding.

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Spoiler

Yeah. I really should have focused on the story more. Unfortunately I prioritized things wrong and ended up doing about 2/3 of the dialog last minute.
Thank you very much for the suggestions.

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[Jack]

Thanks for the review. Like Fists of Murder I spent too much time on the art again and only had a week left for programming. The multiple characters, with each their own damage class, made this a more complex game than the previous one, but it was much better designed, and basically a joy to program. With Fists of Murder, everything was in the global script.

[Mandle]

Stealing Kastchey's format to give my own views on each game:

TRAVELERS by LostTrainDude

Spoiler

This game captured my imagination of what it could become with this concept. Much like reading about your long-dead character's exploits in Dwarf Fortress centuries later, this game made me excited about the idea of lost and found stories. It needs more scenarios and interactions to make it interesting, but the concept alone blew my mind for now.

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Shamrock High School: Graduation by VampireWombat

Spoiler

A beautiful-looking cutscene from the larger story inside the maker's head. Intriguing, but just made me want to play more but there wasn't more. Please develop this story. It is something I would play.

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Heroes of Wyrdale by Jack

Spoiler

Amazing graphics and animations! However, with the whole game being combat-based, other content cut for time constraints, the combat itself was not all that engaging for me. The backdrops and characters made up for that though and I did play it through with all three characters. The cleric was the easiest and walked all over the opposition. I would love to play an extended version of this game that included more story.

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My vote goes to:

Spoiler

TRAVELERS for blowing my mind.

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[VampireWombat]

Shamrock High School: Graduation by VampireWombat

Spoiler

A beautiful-looking cutscene from the larger story inside the maker's head. Intriguing, but just made me want to play more but there wasn't more. Please develop this story. It is something I would play.

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Thanks. I'll see what I can do to make an expanded version this month.

[Jack]

Oh, you should know that you can choose two characters at a time. 

Adding the Doc to any combination ensures you can walk into anything and remain standing up because of his healing.

(BTW Mandle the game became 3x more fun when sounds were added. I think it was you that commented on lack of SFX in Fists of Murder)

[Slasher]

Well, we ended up with a few entries this month and they look superb

[Kastchey]

Oh, you should know that you can choose two characters at a time. 

Wait, wut? You can actually do that? 

Also Jack, I forgot to mention this earlier but

Spoiler

when I was playing Tanya for the first time, I managed to aggro three robots at the same time in the second location. I didn't manage to kill any fast enough so they brought me down, but my HP would keep regenerating. I presume this might have been intended, but I entered an endless loop where my character would keep trying to stand up but immediately get gunned down again before I managed to shoot anything. It wasn't a big deal because I was happy to restart and proceed more carefully next time, but if you plan to expand this game in the future perhaps consider adding a second or two of immortality after a character recovers?

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[Shadow1000]

Great effort to all you last-minute entries. I actually thought that there would be none this month and then they came piling in last minute!

I'm only going to comment on two entries:

Spoiler

Heroes of Wyrdale
Great back story and play system. Choosing a character with skills was a great bonus. Graphics and effects are superb. Because of time constraints, the game basically consists of shooting out robots.

The Era-Gone Trail
I loved the graphics and gameplay. Even with most of the game being left to the imagination as to what "could be", even in its current state it was a lot of fun. Once I understood some of the details, it took about 20 or so minutes to complete. A lot of the game is about food management and that can be somewhat random as to how much food or how long you'll last before getting kicked out by the snakes.

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My vote went to

Spoiler

The Era-Gone Trail. I felt that there is more gameplay in this one

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It's always interesting to see what people come up with when pressed for time.

[Mandle]

(BTW Mandle the game became 3x more fun when sounds were added. I think it was you that commented on lack of SFX in Fists of Murder)

Yep, a beat 'em up without meaty punch sounds is not gonna be fun.

The sounds in this new game were great, except maybe for Doc's gun which sounded like a Nerf weapon.

[Cassiebsg]

TRAVELERS by LostTrainDude

Spoiler

Love the concept, but I fail to see what the objective was from the start. So I didn't play it that long. Add some game objectives, and I'll play it again.

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The Era-Gone Trail by Mandle

Spoiler

Took me a while to figure what was happening, but once I took noticed of the "cat" I figured it out. I was already on my 4th or 5th play, when I noticed "veggie food"... and I was veggie food? "Oh, I can eat the red fruit!"  I'm still not sure, if I can influence the fight with the snake,' or if it's entirely "automatic"... so I just click all over it's head.
Placing food right on the edge of the room is just evil! Oh, and gathering the beads if extremely hard for some odd reason. It's like there's only one pixel to click on. 

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Shamrock High School: Graduation by VampireWombat

Spoiler

Love the art, and the game started intriguing... but unfortunatly it never developed and it ended before it began. Go finish it. 

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Heroes of Wyrdale by Jack

Spoiler

Awesome art work! 
I was confused with the controls. And wondered why the character didn't walk, even tried the keyboard. When that didn't work I decided to start exploring the area, and obviously right clicked to start examining the area... and oh... that walks! Wasn't crazy about the controls, specially the shooting part.
Due to time constrains the game consists mostly of shooting. I had the same problem as Kastchey, though I managed to run away once I realized that just continue to try and shoot the robots was pointless... The end was a "nice" twist. 
Now... about those awesome puzzles.... I'll be waiting for those. 

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My vote goes to:

Spoiler

The Era-Gone Trail by Mandle as it was the game I enjoyed playing the most and keept me playing the longest (I just finished it for the 1st time!  )

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Good job everyone. Was great to see 4 entries all of a sudden. 

[Stupot]

Still a few more days left to vote and it's still pretty tight between all four entries.

[LostTrainDude]

At last! I played all the entries and cast my vote.
I like this trend of keeping on pushing AGS towards unexplored territory (either within the adventure game genre or outside of it), so congrats to all of you!

After some reflection I chose:

Spoiler

The Era-Gone Trail! I personally think Mandle has often gifted us with very peculiar entries and this is no exception! As Cassiebsg, it was the game that kept me playing the most!

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Speaking of my entry, instead, what I was trying to provide was actually an exploration of the feeling of "purposelessness".

At the beginning of the game you have this fresh unexplored "world" for you to explore, where "leaving a mark in its history" is something that can feel unique.
As eras go by, though, travelers end up walking already walked paths and their contribution to history feels more and more just a "line" in a list.

Put this way, I suppose it's a tad depressing, although that was not the intent!
The concept was maybe more interesting to me to explore through game mechanics, as a developer, than it is to the players who are not supplied with the same tools for "catharsis".

Thank you for all your feedback, folks! I really appreciate it 

[cat]

TRAVELERS by LostTrainDude

Spoiler

I loved the descriptions and the exploration, although I didn't really understand that shard aspect.

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The Era-Gone Trail by Mandle

Spoiler

Cool graphics, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Only on closer inspection I saw that there was something running and there were lots of stats where I don't know what they do. You should include a readme in the game zip. I read only later on your description in the thread. I still couldn't win it - damn snakes!

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Shamrock High School: Graduation by VampireWombat

Spoiler

I have no clue what this was all about. I don't mind conversation based gameplay, but why would I talk about graduation when I meet a clone of myself?

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Heroes of Wyrdale by Jack

Spoiler

Very good graphics and cool characters. I struggled with the interface a lot and only realised I could have two characters after reading it here.

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My vote went to:

Spoiler

Travelers, because of the exploration and the atmospheric descriptions

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[Stupot]

Voting is over and we have a winner!

Congrats to LostTrainDude for his game, Travelers. Well done to you. You'll be contacted soon about coming up with an awesome theme for June.

Commiserations to the other three, and an honorable mention to Mandle who was actually leading the votes until like a day or so before voting closed.

[Mandle]

Congratulations to LostTrainDude for his win on a unique concept game. I hope it gets developed further allowing more adventures to be transcribed into the fabric of the world.

[Shadow1000]

Congrats! I look forward to next month's theme!

[Jack]

Congratulations, LostTrainDude.

[LostTrainDude]

Wow, I really really did not expect this many votes! Thank you so much, everyone! 

Also, congratulations again to Mandle, VampireWombat and Jack for three great entries! I'll do my best for June's theme 

[Kastchey]

Congratulations, LTD! That was a really amazing entry.

(And yeah, you bet it was depressing....)