[HN Gopher] Adventure Game Studio: OSS software for creating adv...
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Adventure Game Studio: OSS software for creating adventure games
Author : doener
Score : 239 points
Date : 2026-02-01 13:56 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk)
| Risse wrote:
| Man, around 20 years ago, when I was a teenager, I used to noodle
| around AGS. I think I made a couple of "games", but never
| released them or anything. Glad to see it's still around!
| npsomaratna wrote:
| Didn't they remake Quest for Glory II and a couple of the Kings
| Quest games in this? Fun times.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Yup. This is the one.
| alexhans wrote:
| Among other things, this got me dabbling with software
| development. It had an awesome C++ like scripting language.
|
| It also used to have a button with a text like "make a game"
| where you would click what you wanted in the form of checkboxes
| and when you pressed the submit button it would tell you
| something like, it's not that easy, is it? Wonder how easier it
| may be now. :P
|
| Shoutout to classic community games like
|
| - Cirque De Zale
| https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/play/game/377/
|
| - The trilby series (5 days a stranger)
| https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/play/game/269-5-days-a...
| BeetleB wrote:
| The Trilby series is fantastic!
| s-macke wrote:
| Blast from the past. In my mind, the Adventure Game Studio is
| forever tied to the ancient (German) Maniac Mansion Mania website
| [0]. Yes, that Maniac Mansion from Lucasfilm Games.
|
| To this day, they're are releasing fun new adventure episodes in
| the Maniac Mansion universe.
|
| [0] https://www.maniac-mansion-mania.com/index.php/en/
| n0um3n4 wrote:
| that was my first game... damn good years.
| goopypoop wrote:
| see also Maniac Mansion Deluxe: a faithful remake of the
| original MM
|
| https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/play/game/401/
| armcat wrote:
| Oh wow completely forgot about AGS, awesome that it's still alive
| and kicking! Brings back memories of Gabriel Knight, Broken
| Sword, Monkey Island and many other awesome adventure series!
| technothrasher wrote:
| Anybody else fondly remember the earlier Adventure Construction
| Set from the 1980s? It was similar, though more crude, software
| but for creating tile based adventure games. I remember
| breathlessly waiting for it to arrive in the mail one summer when
| I was a young teen, and then my brother and I spending countless
| hours creating games for each other to play.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Construction_Set
| oddthink wrote:
| I loved that thing. I don't know how many hours I spent on
| that. I wish I could my kids interested in anything half as
| creative.
| WillAdams wrote:
| There was also _Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures_:
|
| https://www.gogdb.org/product/1432650732
|
| which I greatly enjoyed, and my NWN character, even got a cameo
| in one fan-made adventure.....
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| There was also STAC for the Atari ST - absolutely loved it.
| Unfortunately my artistic skills were not up to making anything
| good.
|
| https://www.ifwiki.org/STAC
| jmcmichael wrote:
| Yes! Until I saw the box cover illustration, I had totally
| forgotten that a high-school friend of mine and I worked months
| to build a Gauntlet clone on our 64K Apple ][+ machines due to
| the money it was costing us to play it at local game store/nerd
| magnet, "Dragon's Lair".
| Vedor wrote:
| I think that Wadjet Eye Games studio still uses AGS for their
| games, and most (all?) of the games published by them seems to
| use AGS as well.
|
| I highly recommend checking their catalogue. While the first
| installements of Blackwell series didn't age that well I still
| think they are a quite nice starting point - they are short and
| memorable.
| armcat wrote:
| Gemini Rue is probably one of the best game stories I have ever
| seen. What Joshua Nuernberger did there is amazing. The "twist"
| that occurs there in the final third is something else. And
| it's built using AGS.
| sersi wrote:
| Another great AGS made game is Technobabylon. That and Gemini
| Rue are my two favourite Wadjet Eyes Games
| darthcircuit wrote:
| Gemini rue is one of my favorite games ever, not just point
| and click.
| brynet wrote:
| Yes they still do, and fun fact, SummVM has integrated support
| for AGS a few releases back, so one of my favourite titles from
| Wadjet Eye Games, Unavowed, works great on a ton of different
| OSes/platforms.
|
| https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=AGS/Games
|
| I've played it on OpenBSD before!
|
| https://pobsd.chocolatines.org/2953591878
| j-kent wrote:
| Yes! my love for The Excavation of Hob's Barrow is what led me
| to AGS.
| christhecaribou wrote:
| "Gemini Rue" and "Technobabylon" were my favorites, but they
| recently released a new title about time travel called "Old
| Skies".
|
| It actually made me cry and email the studio director. It was a
| masterpiece.
| shikshake wrote:
| The Blackwell series was one of my first video game loves. The
| final game made me cry
| BSTRhino wrote:
| I truly loved Old Skies! It was my favourite game last year.
| brynet wrote:
| ScummVM added support for AGS a few releases back, it works great
| for a number of free/commercial games.
|
| https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=AGS/Games
| vunderba wrote:
| Wow, I haven't heard about AGS for a while - glad to see it's
| still alive and well. It should be noted that it's open source
| and still sees regular updates (20+ years later!)
|
| https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags
| RobotToaster wrote:
| If anyone was concerned about the nonstandard license, the FSF
| says this:
|
| >This license is a free software license, compatible with the
| GPL thanks to the relicensing option in section 4(c)(ii).
| kleiba wrote:
| Or, if you've always wanted to make an old-school text adventure
| game _directly on your Commodore 64 (emulator)_ , there's this:
|
| https://www.protovision.games/games/d42.php?language=en
| goopypoop wrote:
| finally now i can kill pippin
| ndr42 wrote:
| I remember looking at it about 20 (?) years ago and came back
| disappointed that I could not use it on my Mac. Well, at least I
| was able to revive this feeling today... :-(
| newsclues wrote:
| Surprised it isn't on linux
| ndr42 wrote:
| At least the engine seem to be able to output linux games.
| IOS is also possible but not the Mac...
| a-dub wrote:
| there are also several oss editors for the original sierra agi
| and sci formats.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I remember making a very simple adventure game from scratch in
| BBC Basic in the mid 90s. Good times. Code immediately lost on
| reboot.
| j-kent wrote:
| I have never tried AGS, but I cut my game making teeth on Klick
| and Play and RPG maker back in the day. I think I was intimidated
| by the amount of art and the level of story telling needed to
| craft an adventure game. I wish there was a mac version of this,
| since I refuse to go near windows at this point.
| plagiarist wrote:
| I had that! I wanted to write a game like Monkey Island but
| couldn't work out how to do an inventory system with what was
| available. I found some blog on the internet where an
| enterprising soul with the same issue described using prime
| numbers and a modulo calculation to make an integer act as a
| bitfield. I wish I could reread that for the nostalgia, seemed
| like magic at the time.
|
| I moved on to RPG Maker and that was more my speed. I was
| really into JRPGs at that time.
|
| I accomplished absolutely nothing with either software. I was
| stuck on imagining the perfect art and perfect story. That
| inaction remains in me to this day.
| taneq wrote:
| Haha same! I had Klik and Play, and The Games Factory. I spent
| ages trying to implement side scrolling in KnP. The crazy
| complicated action grids for the TGF example games with all
| their hidden objects to implement game mechanics helped
| convince me that it was easier to just learn C++. :)
| agjmills wrote:
| This reminds me of OHRRPGCE
| shdon wrote:
| I've created my own adventure game engine starting in the late
| 1990s. Only learned about the existence of AGS many years later.
| Although my own engine allows much more flexibility than AGS,
| there is no userfriendly IDE and besides the runtime, it's mostly
| just a bunch of separate tools. I have to applaud Chris Jones for
| going all the way, it's really quite impressive.
| bdbdbdb wrote:
| AGS is cool but I wish they'd make a version for macos. You need
| to use wine to run it
| Benjamin_Dobell wrote:
| I'm building a modern platform for kids to hand draw their own
| games: https://breaka.club/blog/why-were-building-clubs-for-kids
|
| Currently supports RPG mechanics, with digital card game support
| coming soon. Plan is to keep expanding what's offered.
|
| Bits and pieces are already open source with more to come:
| https://github.com/BreakaClub and
| https://github.com/godotjs/godotjs/
| mathnode wrote:
| It's a lovely facelift of their website, but am I correct in
| saying the editor is Windows only, still?
| armcat wrote:
| It looks like you can build/run on Linux/Mac as well:
| https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags?tab=readme-ov-fil...
| geophph wrote:
| Randomly stumbled upon this yesterday when I learned that there
| is a Goblins 5 (released 2023) and it was built using AGS and
| it's playable using ScummVM!
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| Just announced beta release of my own parser-based IF platform:
| https://sharpee.net/ built in Typescript.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46844990
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(page generated 2026-02-01 23:00 UTC)