Well, I broke down today and finally played one close to the top of my list, which is Young Earth Road Trip, something visual novel-maker Saguaro made over a weekend for a Ludum Dare Solo competition. (For those of you who are curious, Ludum Dare is where indie game developers crank out a game in a very limited amount of time.)
I wanted something short and entertaining, and Young Earth Road Trip perfectly fit the bill. I think you can finish this little gem of an adventure game in 10-20 minutes.
You can tell the art assets were done quickly, but hey, it was a weekend-long competition. I thought they were quite sufficient for conveying the story, and had a certain MS paintish-charm. It reminded me a lot of South Park, actually. Maybe even more so because of Matt and Trey's Book of Mormon.
In short, I pretty much snickered through the entire thing, even though my friggin' dogs went running for the living room every time I had to ring a doorbell in-game. This happened a total of 7 times, in the span of 10 minutes. You would think that would be funny, but it was aggravating. Anyhoo, Young Earth Road Trip ended up tying for Third in humor for the overall contest. Nice!
*edit: Wow, looking this over I realize I actually didn't give the game much of a review. So here it is: it was hilarious and Saguaro's a fantastically funny writer, especially considering this was put together within 48 hours!!! It was a fun, cohesive little game. Highly recommended!
Saguaro has also made the graphically cool Locked-In, which is also available for download from his/her website. The two games look like they were made by completely different people...which makes me think Saguaro is some kind of mad genius.
(Saguaro, incidentally, is assisting me with a lot of the technical/GUI-related aspects of Coming Out On Top. I think of him/her as a MacGyver of sorts, basically solving programming problems in ten minutes that would take me several sober lifetimes to figure out. Basically what I'm saying is that I'm really, really freaking lucky to have Saguaro's help. Thanks, you mysterious creature!)
Locked In was a good game.
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