Graphic Adventure Underground Awards Announced

Thanks to Adventure Gamers for releasing the results of its Underground Awards, honoring the best amateur graphic adventures. The introduction notes that "...the field of amateur adventures seems to improve every year", and winners include overall victor Out Of Order ("One of those rare games where you just can't believe you're playing it for free"), as well as Best Story for The Uncertainty Machine ("[a] dark atmosphere and ingenious research-based puzzles"), and Best Sound/Music for Apprentice ("a wonderful backdrop for the light-hearted adventure.")

A minor correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonono, you completely misunderstood! The winning game isn't called 'Out Of Order', that's just what the webpage says now that 250,000 slashdotters have clicked on the link...

Re:A minor correction

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

Based on the number of comments here, I'd say the 250 definitely clicked the link, but the other ,000 weren't interested.

Which is sad. Adventures are still my favourite genre.

Out Of Order Walkthrough

[Lady Jazzica]

There's a walkthrough for Out of Order here [gameboomers.com], in case anyone wants it.

Re:Underground

[__aaklfb6460]

I find underground games fun to play. They're really really good at times and stories are worth comparing with the commercial counterparts. Its like Indie films competiting the hollywood biggies.Same thing goes for underground games. I wish a lot more of these games are released.Heck, even text based adventure games are so fun to play.Lot of imagination and stuff.

Re:Underground

[MoonFog]

They're really really good at times and stories are worth comparing with the commercial counterparts.
IMHO, stories are becoming less important for commercial games. Great graphics seems to matter a the most. I like eyecandy as well, but I miss games with a great story, and lots of humor, like the Monkey Island games and others from LucasArts.

Re:Underground

[captainktainer]

That's the problem with Escape from Monkey Island (which I've tried to sweat through but am finding to be boring and ugly as sin). LucasArts went for the gee-whiz factor, and lost the funny, as well as the expressiveness of the characters.

My favorite, so far, is definitely the Discworld adventure game. Expressive characters, clever dialogue, a substantial world, and interesting puzzles combined to make it a heck of a lot of fun. Wouldn't work in 3D. Escape from Monkey Island definitely didn't.

Re:Underground

[Bagels]

stories are becoming less important for commercial games

Not necessarily true. There are at least a few commercial games out there with good stories - for example, Beyond Good and Evil [beyondgoodevil.com] is quite good. And almost all of Jeff Vogel's games over at Spiderweb Software [spiderwebsoftware.com] have excellent stories (yes, they're shareware, but he makes a living off of them - that makes them commercial). I see less problem with the stories than with the length of a lot of games coming out today - a lot of them are only 10-15 hours long, when 40 used to be the minimum...

Re:Underground

[Anonymous Coward]

There are actually quite a few "pretty damn good" underground adventures, although admittedly the bulk is garbage. Out of Order was going to be sold commercially, and there's titles such as Pleughburgh [gaspop.com] and Odyseuss Kent [fullyramblomatic.com]. Tierra are using the same software to spruce up old Sierra titles, and are doing an excellent job too.

Non-commercial doesn't automatically mean crappy, as games and mods like WolfET, Counter-Strike and Natural Selection have shown.