Quoting: MarlockPrince of Persia hails all the way back from 1989 with the handbook as a digital copy deterrent

You can find earlier examples as well. Some C64 (and Spectrum) releases had code cards/sheets inside the cassette sleeves in the early eighties. One I remember fondly is Jet Set Willy from 1984. Others had actual copy protection code such as California Games (the Epyx US floppy release) from 1987.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Eike* The Journey Down
No sure about this one, pledged in 2017, anymore.

All three chapters were released on time, and they all ran fine for me on Linux. The last chapter came out in 2019 I think.

I know I played and loved them, but I cannot remember anymore why I dared to make this (my very first) pledge. Did they have chapter one out already?

The Journey Down (chapter one) started out as a free AGS game. So I suppose you could say there was a demo. Although the final product looked and played a lot better.

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Quoting: Eike* The Journey Down
No sure about this one, pledged in 2017, anymore.

All three chapters were released on time, and they all ran fine for me on Linux. The last chapter came out in 2019 I think.

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Quoting: tfkHm. Don't see a free copy of Whispering Willows.

Seems like the giveaway is over.

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Quoting: tmtvlThey're both side-scrolling adventure games, aren't they? It's like comparing it to I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream or Quest For Glory. (To be honest it's been a while since I played through Whispering Willows, so I may be misremembering. According to Steam I got the Sixth Sense on February 12th, 2020.)

No. Technobabylon, IHNMaIMS and Quest For Glory are not side scrollers, even if some of the "locations" pan a bit. You control the characters with your mouse, with the gameplay revolving around inventory and dialogue based puzzles. Well, Quest For Glory (Hero's Quest) is a bit different with its RPG elements and the original's text parser and clunky keyboard controls. The early 90's remake has a more modern point-and-click interface and prettier VGA graphics.

Whispering Willows is closer to a puzzle platformer. Just check some gameplay video of all of these games and I'm sure you'll see the difference.

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Quoting: tmtvl

Quoting: no_information_hereI enjoyed Whispering Willows when I played it a number of years ago. Nothing groundbreaking but a decent little game.

Same, played through it on Steam and while it has some neat visual designs the game proper didn't resonate as much with me as Technobabylon did.

Just out of curiosity: Why would you compare it to Technobabylon? Gameplay is very different, graphical style is different, one is a horror story and the other one is sci-fi... As far as I can tell, there's very little overlap. It's like comparing Dirt Rally to SuperTuxKart.

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Quoting: Klaas

Quoting: Tevurwhat about games not on steam?

The last time I looked, you had to manually specify a fitting profile. If there is nothing for the game then it would be mostly like running wine-ge.

If a non-Steam game needs "protonfixes" to run, they can be submitted to the umu-protonfixes repository and the respective ID to the umu-database. The game can be in any store or in no store at all.

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Quoting: darkoverlordofdataI think it takes more than making collages with medieval art to be 'pythonesque' - it takes good humor writing. Don't quit your day job.

Did you just decide there's no good humour in the game, or did you play the previous titles? Besides, the word "pythonesque" refers to a style of comedy, not necessarily the quality (which is obviously subjective anyway). Check a dictionary if you don't believe me.

Also, while I nitpick, the art isn't medieval.

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Quoting: finaldestWhat would be needed though is an age verification body e,g PEGI to carry out the work. The best way to do this is to give any unrated game an 18 cert until its been reviewed and given the appropriate age rating.

PEGI covers a good chunk of Europe, but not Germany. They've got their own USK. Besides, Valve have already streamlined the process by not requiring an official rating (which costs time and money) and offering a single questionnaire.

Of course, developers are free to get a USK rating as well like the FAQ excerpt in the article says, which should be useful if the game is sold in Germany via other platforms or physical stores. But that takes some time and even the minimum cost of 1200 € (or 300 € for expansions of, game collections with, or "games equivalent to" already rated titles) can be a lot to some indies.

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Quoting: CGullWhy is this kind of political censorship accepted for games?

It would be prudent to wait for confirmation on the exact types of prohibited content included in the questionnaire before knee-jerking about censorship. Any developer with a game on Steam should be able to check it out and report back. We've got several here on GOL.

Or someone fluent in German legalese can probably dig out the relevant laws and regulations. After all, that's what Valve has to comply with here.

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