Messages

The winner of this contest was: Sinitrena


Greetings, writers and word weavers! We gather once again for our story-writing contest, and this time, we bask in the luminous theme of MOONLIGHT. Let the moon's ethereal glow guide your pens as we embark on a journey through the night skies. Unleash your imagination, and may your stories shimmer like stars in the moonlit canvas of the cosmos. So, take flight on this lunar escapade, and let your words paint the world with the magic of MOONLIGHT. Happy writing, and may your tales enchant us all!
^{(Co-written with ChatGPT)}

^{(Made in Bing Image Creator)}

[Tales from a Forgotten Tavern]

Thanks to Ponch and tbook for their entries.

The time for voting is upon us.

Please vote using the poll above.

	Tales from a Forgotten Tavern by Ponch
	Well... Horror, Naturally by tbook

I haven't had a two-er for a long time so I'll be giving myself a pat on the back.

Wordle 774 2/6*

🟨⬛🟨⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Thanks for the votes, peeps.

And thanks for your feedback, Sinitrena. I would like to address your main criticism if I may. Although I agree it was perhaps a little unnecessarily convoluted a gimmick, you do seem to have missed something. I said at the beginning that I had no idea who sent me the email and even thought it could be an AGSer pranking me. It was never supposed to be that Philip himself had sent me the email (otherwise he would have referred to story Stupot as "you"). In my mind, this Philip had written his version of the story, maybe posted it online somewhere and then someone else had seen it and emailed a copy to me, knowing that I was the author of the original Faceplant story.

Meh, it's still crap either way but I just wanted to set that straight.

Look out for the new theme soon

I *may* try something, make shake things up creativity rise while I'm a little stalled on my other project. No promises but I'm leaning towards participating this month.

Doooo it!

Interesting topic. I'll see if I can get a decent idea for a short game, while I'm still on vacation.

It would be great to have another Cassie MAGS game

[DISTANCE / SEPARATION]

Welcome to MAGS August

Theme: DISTANCE / SEPARATION
Set by: Rootbound and 4KbShort

The winner of MAGS August was:
The Distant Door by Durinde

	The Distant Door by Durinde
	The long August longing by Cassiebsg and Blondbraid

Is it something to overcome, or something sought after? It can be as wide as a bay or as narrow as a window. How far can you run, or how close can you stand to what you want to run from? How big or how small a gap can you manage to bridge? And is it a gap between yo and a goal, a loved one, a destination, a home?
Maybe you only need one more inch, one more second. So close, and yet so far. Or so far as to be in a different world entirely. It's up to you.




If you are joining us from Itch, welcome.
Please remember your entries do NOT have to be adventure games but they MUST be made with Adventure Game Studio editor.



What is MAGS?
Started in 2001, MAGS is a competition for amateur adventure game makers. The idea is to create a game in under a month, following the guidelines set by the previous winner. It aims to help you work to a deadline, improve your skills, and provide a kick-start into making adventure games. Regardless of skill, MAGS is for everyone. Voting is based on "favourite" games, and not the most artistic, or the best coded. If you have bad art skills, use it as a chance to do some graphic work. If you're sub-standard at coding, use it as a chance to give scripting a go. Ultimately, people will vote for the most enjoyable entry.

Rules
Entering MAGS is simple. First, conceptualize your game following the month's criteria (see above). Second, create your game fuelled only by coffee. Finally, post your game in this thread, including:

* A working download link
* The title of your game
* A suitable in-game screenshot

At the end of the month, voting will begin, usually lasting for fourteen days, and the winner chooses the next month's theme.

Remember that this is a challenge to see what you can do in a month, so any tinkering you do after that, including fixing minor glitches, is against the spirit of the competition. The exception to this is that you may go in and fix major, game-breaking bugs only during voting. We want you to have a game that voters can actually play and that runs on their machines.

So to reiterate, during the voting period fixing major, game-breaking bugs is okay, fixing minor glitches or making cosmetic changes is cheating.

Tips
Here are some ways to make sure you have a game to submit at the end of the month:
* Make a tiny game. Plan small, then cut it in half. Find shortcuts (e.g. if making walkcycles is time-consuming, make the characters static or have it in the first person).
* Plan to have your game playable and submittable with a week to spare. This way you have a week to fix bugs, add some flourishes and maybe even get someone to test it.
* Plan to submit it a day or so early. This way, if there are any technical issues with uploading, they can be sorted out in time.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Need a little help with graphics? Perhaps The AGS Trove has something you can use.
Don't want to go it alone? Try the Recruitment board.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My 3 points go to Baron.

Feedback incoming

Excuse the late feedback. I've got a newborn baby and a wife on maternity leave. Ironically, I am typing this at work, where I actually have a moment to breathe occasionally.

@Baron - I had to enjoy the story in a few small chunks, but I did enjoy it. I read it with no memory of the original and then went back and re-read the first one. While I think I preferred the mysterious boulder in the middle of the island to the sudden tentacle, overall the rewrite was definitely better.

The biggest improvement for me is that the characters were more far more distinct and their interpersonal relationships added more to the story. In the original there was a lot of "they did this, they did that", whereas in the rewrite there is more individuality for the characters.

The ending was rather abrupt. I suppose it has to be, but perhaps it could have benefited from some kind of climactic showdown or fight with the tentacle/island.

Overall, great effort.

This looks great. And I like a bit of Buckles. All the best.

Hi mdoak330, good to see that there will me more Fatman. The original was one of the first AGS games I ever played.

I'm curious. Why the new account?

This is not a blue tick.
Why is everyone calling it a blue tick?
It is clearly a white tick on a blue background.*

Maybe I'm missing something obvious but I can't think of any other instance where we describe an item by the colour of the background it sits on, rather than the colour it actually is.


[* Yes, pedant, I'm aware that the above tick technically is blue because I chose a PNG where the WHITE is transparent and posted it on a forum with blue pages. Thanks in advance for pointing that out.]

Seems like the X is supposed to be spelled and pronounced 'Sh'.
VERY fitting name.

So instead of Tweets, do we call them Xeets, pronounced "sheets"? If, so, people are going to be Xeeting all day and all night, and sometimes even Xeeting themselves.

Nice one @Ponch.

[Faceplant]

Sorry. I have been unable to finish my entry.

Instead. I have something very strange and messed up to share.  This morning, this text appeared in my email inbox. I have no idea who sent me it. Possibly someone from these forums having a joke. If so, I admire and appreciate the work.

What you are about to read pertains to my 144-word story "Faceplant" from a few months ago.

Everything below is as it appeared in my inbox.


My name is Philip Lane. My birthdate is July 14th 1983. I reside at 42 Teatree Lane in Heathhurst, Susshire.

On the 8th of March, a short story appeared on a small community forum for point and click adventure game enthusiasts. The story, titled "Faceplant", is presented as a creepypasta, a kind of urban legend told for fun and intended to entertain. Here is the full text:

No-one was home, but James locked the bathroom door through tears and washed his face. This time they'd thrown him face first into a pile of fertiliser for the hell of it. He rinsed and noticed a tuft of fluff on the space above his top lip. His first moustache? Running his mum's leg razor over the fluff, and still half crying, and still stinking of shit, he celebrated this milestone inwardly.
But it seemed he had missed a patch. He applied foam, shaved and rinsed. The patch was gone at first but it quickly returned, faster and thicker than before. This was not right.
James dropped the razor and started desperately yanking at the tendrils now sprouting from all over his panic-stricken face. But he couldn't keep up as a thorny tangle of vines and nettles wrapped themselves around James's head and squeezed.

I'll get straight to the point. This story is true. I know this because, much to my regret, I was the boy who threw "James" into the "fertilizer" (his real name was Simon Thorne and it was fresh cow pat). I am not proud of my behaviour as a child and have spent much of my life since that day trying to find out exactly what happened to Simon. I have undertaken this task privately, so you might imagine my shock when this story came up in my Google Alerts.

The user who posted "Faceplant", a frequenter of the forum by the name of Stupot, seems rather unremarkable, perhaps even boring. His posts lack much substance and he seems to be a generally liked, if not particularly influential member of the community. He appears to have presented the story as his own work, not citing any sources nor acknowledging any real-world basis. Of his honesty and integrity, I have no query. I am in no doubt that he believes Faceplant emerged from his own grey matter. And yet... here we are.

Perhaps this would be a good point to retell the story as I know it:
I attended Blackbridge High School from September 1994 until my expulsion in February 1998 for an unrelated offense. Simon was a quiet boy. He cried easily, which made him an easy target. I would frequently threaten to "get" him after school, and me and Neil and Tim would watch and laugh from the third-floor corridor as he ran across the playground and out of the back gate without even looking behind him to see that we weren't even chasing him. On a few occasions, though, we would follow him and try to make him cry.

Friday, June 14th 1996, after school. Neil was setting fire to some dry grass in the corner of the cow field, and I looked up and saw Simon. He had seen us and began backing away. It is too painful to remember the exact words I said to him, so I will not record them here. I called him over and told him not to tell anyone he saw us setting fire to the grass. He nodded. I knew he wouldn't tell anyone, but the cruel schoolboy in me decided to go further. I tripped him up and dragged him by his school shirt over to a fresh cow pat and rubbed his face in it. I should have known I'd gone too far when even Neil stopped laughing.

"Here you go. Have a pat on the head." I said, and watched as he stood up and ran away. I thought I was so clever, but when I turned around expecting Neil's usual smile of approval, he just said "What the fuck, man?"

I felt shit. For the first time, I realised that Simon was just a kid trying to get through school, like everyone else. I decided to go after Simon and apologise. I left Neil behind with his lighter and exited the field. Simon was already way ahead of me, but I knew where he lived, so I wove my way through the estate until I arrived at the front of his house. I took a few minutes to work out what I was going to say: I'm such a dickhead. I'm sorry for everything. I promise I will leave you alone.

The truth is, as much as I knew I should apologise, I was about to talk myself out of it. Ahh, everyone picks on him, not just me, he won't forgive me anyway, so what's the point. I can't tell you whether or not I would have gone ahead with the apology because all of that became completely irrelevant, when I heard Simon screaming from inside the house.

My first thought was that he'd killed himself. I was sick to my stomach that I might have been the reason for someone to do that to themselves. I banged on his door, but it was clear no one else was in the house. I ran round the side of his house and found a back door, mercifully unlocked. I ran through the kitchen, the living room. He wasn't downstairs, so I bolted up the stairs, my heart was thumping now from fear as well as exertion. The screaming had stopped, but when I reached the top of the stairs, I could hear a rustling noise coming from behind the only door that was closed. I ran at it and turned the knob, but it was locked.

"Simon!" I screamed "Come on, Simon. Open the door." I banged on the door harder. Behind the door those rustling sounds were joined by whipping and snapping. I stood back and kicked the door inwards. It came off its hinges easily, and behind the door was Simon. He was dead. Surrounded by a twisting, writhing jungle of vines and branches, pulling and constricting the poor boy's body.

I stood and watched in horror. There was nothing I could do to save him. Then I realised the branches and plants were receding. They had killed their prey and were satiated. But it was a moment or two before I realised, they were receding into Simon's face, as though his body was where they had sprouted from.

As the last of the vines was sucked back into his chin, his face was left a contorted, deformed mess. And he was covered in cuts from the thorns. In his hand was a broken razor, and the blade was on the bathroom tiles covered in blood. Not a trace of the foliage remained. This was going to look like a suicide or a murder. Either way, I knew I was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

It was indeed registered as a suicide. Although my actions were inexcusable, it transpired that he had made such attempts before, and I was not regarded as legally responsible for what happened. But I am the only person in the world who knows that, whatever happened to Simon Thorne, he did not do it to himself.

I have never told anyone about what I saw. Not a soul. Not until now. But enough time has passed, and seeing Faceplant online made me reconsider my silence. The story is true. I have no idea how, but this Stupot was somehow able to channel Simon's story into his own work.

Spoiler

I didn't have time to make the edits I needed to so the above is still the same first draft I mentioned the other day. I just don't have time to sit down with it. I may go in when I get some spare seconds so correct a few italics etc, but I won't change any of the prose.

[close]

Took part once. Pass 

What was wrong with it?

It's looking great. 89th out of 350 is good going. Keep them updates coming.

Looking better and better with each update. Keep them coming.

Double (triple) logins are allowed? 

No. Or at least not without being open and transparent about it.

Yeah, I think the rule is in place to prevent people having sock puppet accounts (pretending to be someone else),

Slasher never pretended he was someone else, though, and I don't believe he used them simultaneously. I'm not sure why he created new accounts but I've no doubt he had valid reasons even if it technically broke the rule.

I only mentioned the other accounts in the hope that they could lead to something in terms of contacting him.

You got this, @tbook

I've managed to bash out a draft of something. It needs a heavy edit and I have more ideas for it if I can find the time, but in the worst case I feel I can submit what I've got.