AGS Highlights 2022 (3) – p.1 – User article
teasers
Look forward to pixelated folk horror, a budding space janitor, a nasty giant monster, a surprising sequel, a potion brewer in training and an escape room.
If you are reading this, it means that we are already past the third quarter of 2022. And you may know that I always use the end of a quarter as an opportunity to take a look inside the niche.
And with that, welcome to what is now the fifth edition of the AGS Highlights. This article is about selected ones Adventure Game Studio-Games that made the biggest impression on me in the months of July, August and September 2022. Fortunately, the AGS community is again showing its strengths here: commercial adventures, fan adventures and in-house developments are hand in hand. As usual, I’ll present my personal highlights from it and then give you an overview of what to expect next.
What was AGS again?
Those who follow my articles surely know that AGS stands for Adventure Game Studio. For 25 years, this open-source and free engine has made it possible for hobby developers to realize their dream of creating their own adventure as easily as possible and sometimes even without programming knowledge. You can find a small introduction to AGS in my first AGS Highlights article.
The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow
Cloak and Dagger Games are no longer strangers to the AGS scene, having done so with titles such as Soccer Game or Sumatra – Fate of Yandi attracted attention. For their latest point-and-click adventure called The Excavation of Hobb’s Barrow (to the news) they were even able to win Wadjet Eye Games as a publisher. Anyone who can still remember the first edition of AGS Highlights and wonders why the new work by Cloak and Dagger Games is no longer there incantation means, gets a virtual pat on the shoulder from me and learns now at the latest that the title seemed too complicated to the new publisher and they went back to the very first working title instead.
In the role of antiquarian Thomasina Bateman, you embark on a folk horror adventure in the English town of Bewlay to conduct research for your book about English burial mounds. Of course, not everything goes as smoothly as you imagined. You can expect about seven hours of pleasant horror puzzles. For me it is THE highlight of this quarter, you can find more about that in my game check. You can get The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow including strong English voice acting at both Steam, GOG and at humble acquire. The price is different for all platforms, but you don’t have to pay more than the regular price of 14.99 euros anywhere.
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| The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow: It’s not that easy to convince people of your plan. |
Space Quest – A Son of Xenon
Attentive readers of my user articles already know that besides King’s Quest especially too SpaceQuest is an apparently never-ending source of inspiration for fan adventures and remakes. This time I can show you a prequel penned by Boston McShew introduce: With Space Quest – A Son of Xenon is the indie developer in collaboration with AGS-User fist monkey an all-round successful homage. Wait, you already know the game? It’s already two years old?!
Right and wrong at the same time, because in 2020 a small part of the game appeared as a foretaste of what awaits the player in the future. And the future is now! A Son of Xenon tells the story of Roger Wilco on his home planet, how as a young engineer he falls under the spell of a mysterious beauty and is drawn into his first space adventure, even before he becomes the notorious space janitor.
The optics, controls and background music imitates the past wonderfully SpaceQuest 3-Feeling. The puzzles are well thought out and almost always logical, here the copy even surpasses the template at times. Of course, stupid deaths shouldn’t be missing, which will probably make hardcore Sierra fans happy. So always stay true to the motto: “Save early, save often!”
As befits a fan adventure, it is of course available free of charge. You can do it directly on the Download AGS pagethe texts are completely in English.
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| Space Quest – A Son of Xenon: The Adventures of Young Roger Wilco. |
giant
The South Korean AGS User ukz530 has diligently published freeware adventures over the last two years, which had in common monstrous insects or other creatures as well as pixel splatters. His first commercial adventure giant takes the same line and presents itself as a monster shocker. This is quite unusual for AGS and also the adventure genre and therefore deserves a mention here as well.
The setting is Seoul, South Korea. You play as unemployed Da-hoon, who is offered a part-time job with extremely good pay. All you have to do is load a few body parts of a huge creature, what could possibly go wrong?
So much so that the majority of the game consists of escaping from “Giant”.
Unfortunately, the puzzles don’t live up to the otherwise nice horror atmosphere and quirky, splattery pixel visuals, but if the developer continues to develop himself in the future, we should expect a real splatter classic from him soon. If that has piqued your curiosity, you can find all of the previous ukz530 games at itch.io free to download in English. For giant, the developer would like to at Steam have 3.29 euros.
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| Giant: We don’t skimp on pixel blood here. |
Reference-www.gamersglobal.de
