There's Going To Be Cake For Chris(Jones)Mas

I am a Dunkin Donut addict. I love their huge boxes of assorted dough-thingies with a hole in the middle. It's so nice to have such a box, full of different sweet treats. My fav is the one with the double chocolate filling. That and a nice cup of coffee can keep one determined game maker awake for the best part of a busy night.

Some geniusses over at the AGS board apparently have realised that everyone likes cake, and much of it, and a diverse selection of it. And so they asked around and eventually had a group of forum members... all willing to bake a cake and send it over to a central spot where people would be allowed to look at it from a safe distance for only ten dollars a minute, napkins extra, no flash photography allowed.

Then the secret bakers realised that this woudld result in an awful lot of traffic, and instead opted to make GAMES instead, and offer them as a bundle on a "pay what you like" basis. The noble goal of the AGS BAKE SALE is to raise funds for a new server. The sale will take place sometime mid-December, meaning that it's going to be an awesome xMas all around!

How awesome is that? CJ, he who rules the forums with a benevolent and onion-ringed hand, has always been pretty adamant when it came to hard monetary support, but this is the perfect idea. Everybody wins: More AGS games for peeps to play, a very generous payment concept, and even some publicity for our little island of webspace.

Yesterday the cover was blown, the secret bakers rose from the shadows, and there was much rejoicing and a flurrican of dough. We still have to wait for CJ's reaction, but... hey, what's not to like?

So far elven games have been anounced, and rumour has it that there may be even more- from now on there's roughly six weeks to get a game done, contact the bakers and make it part of the bundle.

The word has already spread, but I'd like to plug this anyway: Here's what the bakers have come up with so far... a very great selection of often unusual and cool ideas.

Ponch - Barn Runner: The Rich Dame Who Cut The Cheese
GiP Thread
Barn Runner is a long-running series that I discovered far too late in my AGS career. With a distinctive look and some intentionally cheesy humour it has proved to have the staying power, too. This episode revolves about a stolen cheese, and apparently has an endless looping room, something I've not yet seen since the AGS 2.7 starter game.

WHAM - Undead Hangover
GiP Thread
Waking up with a hangover's never nice. Neither is having zombies all over the place. WHAM hints that this could be a Nintendo Hard game where you do not necessarily win eventually, and where your actions need to buy you time. It sounds very dynamic indeed!

ddq - SCOUT
GiP Thread
An astronaut on a lifetime mission. While we don't know yet what exactly that mission is, the game already looks terrific, with a clean 4-colour palette and a unique pixel-look.

Tier - Understaffed
GiP Thread
A flurry of puns already rose: Understaffed reminds me of Kyrandia 1 in terms of its looks, and it seems to aim for tongue-in-cheek humour too. Also aboard: A sidekick owl and GEM PUZZLES. Tier also seems to think about voice acting; always a nice addition!

tzachs - 9 Months In
GiP Thread
A pregnant woman in jail is suspected of haing killed an inmate. This is quite possibly one of the darkest and most mature setups I've yet seen in an adventure game. Seriously, I think it needs an indie game for such a plot. You know that one donut you KNOW will taste best? In a box already full of tasty treats, 9MI may well be that donut.

Grundislav - Ben Chandler, Paranormal Investigator
GiP Thread
Ohnoes- Promising young game designer Ben's sweets are gone! Will he find them? All right, Ben Jordan is another long-running series (BJ1 Deluxe was the first voiced AGS game I ever played!), and always reminded me a bit of John Sinclair. Now Grundislav takes it up to eleven with a direct reference to the forum's own Ben304. This is meta, and sounds like a lot of fun. We're also promised authentic Australian music and voiceovers.

ThreeOhFour - Falling Skywards
GiP Thread
Modern "stalkers of the sky" seek treasure on floating islands to bring back to the ruined face of Earth. Now that sounds a bit grim indeed, but chances are that you already KNOW Ben304's knack for balancing the serious and the humour. What else to say? It looks very nice indeed, with a distinctive "bloom" to the background graphics. Hell, it's a Ben Game!

cat - Escape the barn
GiP Thread
Cat has a history of cute, child-friendly games, and has made me searching for apples already. Here's a classic "escape the room" situation in a very bright, clean and soothing art-style. cat promises "a lot of item combination", which IS pretty hard to do and very rewarding for players who hate the generic "I can't do that" responses.

Calin Leafshade - Murder On The Lady Titania
GiP Thread
A whodunnit on a ship (apparently a large one). A very cool setup indeed, and what's best, this is going to have a PARSER. Calin also has a reputation as a maker of, in his own words, swishy-swashy interfaces", apparently related to the timey-whimey ball of... stuff. Anyway, a parser-aided investigation on a dark ship sure smells of classic adventure.
Man, I LOVE parser games, did I mention that? We need more of these.

Baron - Blue Lobe Inc.
GiP Thread
Baron (aka "Swarm Daddy") us a force to be reconed with. His setup is very self-aware: Three guys team up to form an indie game studio, facing all sorts of net-joke problems. The game's made to look very much like a comic book, right to the characters using speech bubbles. Clearly something to please those who like geeks, nerds, webbs, nerdgeeks, and dennis.

Ghost - Mythaumatology
GiP Thread
Heh, yes, this ghost's also aboard. I mean hey, I got to wear secret leather pants and move my haunt to the Batcave. The game's about a strange creature with all the marks of a true hero: Memory loss, no aim in life, mysterious scars... but what does that even mean?


To sum it up, this is one amazingly diverse selection! Stay tuned here, too:
The Original Reveal

And please forgive the awful lot of links. One day I'll figure out how to ride this beast of a blogging page.