Q: Why make a 1990s point and click in 2023?
Well I’d been meaning to get round to it since primary school. I grew up playing Amiga/PC games like Zak McKraken, Monkey Island and Simon the Sorcerer. I haven’t played PnC game for decades but decided to see if my 7 year old daughter would like Monkey Island 2. She did. Except getting stuck. A few weeks later I started to teach myself how to use Adventure Game studio. I wanted to make something of my own.
Q: How was it made?
Using Adventure Game Studio. I’d tried a decade ago to make a game. But never really got further than walking between rooms and some basic inventory stuff. With a dangerously obsessive mindset I was able to move much further past this armed with the AGS manual and lots of trial and error.
A powerful editing suite called microsoft paint provided the means to making my amazing artwork. And AI. Using ‘Bing’ media creator (when they had shit themselves about law suits and had reverted to public domain trained models briefly around June 2023) to create backgrounds and then messing with them. The budget is zero. No artist just means no game. No one loses a commison, the game just get’s censored.
I did eventually start using aseprite. Boy I was making life hard before. Imagine having LAYERs. LAYERS! Not having to redraw every limb of a 16 frame animation. Mind blowing.
Q: How did it go?
I lurk in a few gaming groups and reddits etc. They have their uses. They always say ‘your first game will be a failure’ or ‘make simple games like pong first’
Two quotes spring to mind. ‘Rules are for fools to blindly follow and wise men to take heed of’ and ‘without risk, their is no innovation’. To be fair the latter is paraphrased from a speech by the late Sir. Ken Robinson about education but it’s the same sentiment. I imagined maybe 10 friends and family might sympathy buy it and a few people might buy it and refund.
I’ve actually sold 192 copies of Brownie’s Adventure 1 as of now! Only two or three of my friends actually bought it. Getting comments or emails from people across the world saying how much they were laughing and having a good time really did make it all worth it. A great feeling.