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.")

Comments

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

[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 and Odyseuss Kent. 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.

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 is quite good. And almost all of Jeff Vogel's games over at Spiderweb Software 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...