AGS (Adventure Game Studio) is a powerful and user-friendly tool designed for creating adventure games, particularly in the style of classic point-and-click games. It offers a comprehensive suite of features that allow developers to design their own games with custom graphics, sound, and gameplay mechanics, even without extensive programming knowledge.
AGS has been used to create many popular indie games, making it an ideal platform for both beginners and experienced developers who want to bring their creative visions to life. With its active community and wealth of tutorials, AGS empowers anyone with a passion for storytelling and game design to start developing their own adventures.
All games showcased in the carousel are notable commercial games made with AGS, although there are also hundreds of excellent freeware games available.
AGS was created in 1997 by British programmer Chris Jones as a simple MS-DOS program called "Adventure Creator," inspired by Sierra On-Line's adventure games like Space Quest IV. Initially, it only supported low-resolution, keyboard-controlled games.
The first complete AGS game, Lassi Quest, was released in 1999. The engine gained popularity with games like Rob Blanc and Larry Vales in the early 2000s. In 2008, AGS received a major update with version 3.0, introducing a rewritten editor based on the .NET Framework and 3D hardware acceleration.
In 2010, Chris Jones released the source code under the Artistic License, allowing community developers to maintain and enhance AGS. By 2015, they had implemented cross-platform capabilities and support for modern screen resolutions.
Originally designed for Windows, the AGS engine now supports Android, iOS, Linux, Mac OS X, and PlayStation Portable, thanks to community efforts after the source code was released. It can create games ranging from 256-color, 320×200 resolution to high-resolution true-color games. AGS also supports various multimedia formats, including mod, wav, xm, MIDI, ogg, mp3, and avi.
The AGS community is active on forums, IRC, and Discord. They even host annual real-world meetups called "Mittens."
Since 2001, the AGS Awards have recognized the best games made with AGS across multiple categories, gaining attention from prominent gaming sites.
Thousands of games have been made using AGS, including commercially successful titles like Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine, The Cat Lady, Primordia, and The Journey Down. Indie developer Wadjet Eye Games has created and published many popular AGS games, including the Blackwell series.
Additionally, teams like AGD Interactive and Infamous Adventures have remade classic Sierra and LucasArts adventure games using AGS.