I've always been intrigued by W. W. Jacobs work on "The Monkey's Paw" and to see a futuristic sci-fi rendition on it, brought a new look to point and click, puzzle, 2D games. From the ambience to the idea of facing a non-moveable creature; just a supernatural item, with consequential promises to the wishes granted, just brings the beauty of it all back to the og story.
Pros: [Subjective]
The Artistic outlook was quite an enjoyable atmosphere. It was dense and compact; but every piece was detailed, giving shadow, highlights, and graphical improvement, upon which most 2D games lack. The Puzzles were short and sweet, with some form of a rewarding feeling after figuring out where one item goes and solving each puzzle. For a game that was only made in 2 weeks, it underlines every essential necessity for game: story, puzzles, an objective, an obstacle, a lesson to be learned.
Cons: [Subjective]
I feel like the beginning didn't make much sense, it was an interesting designer choice, and allowed the player to dive into the world and atmosphere of the game, however, it didn't add onto the story as much as I thought it would. Felt like a filler till we get to the actual Monkey's Paw. At the end, it would've been cool to see the son burst through the door before the main protag yells for his last wish.
All in all this was a VERY well designed game, and would definitely like to see more from this developer in the near future!
Thank YOU, George Broussard, for this well crafted, story driven game, that opened my eyes to the term, "Be careful what you wish for."
I like this game. the short yet significant gameplay part (the day of work) settles the univers very nicely. the art and voices are cool. I am just a little surprised by the conclusion *alert spoiler* You try to illustrate the sentence "be careful what you wish for", but the "punishment" the player receive is the cause of its wish and not its consequence. He wishes for *ALERT SPOILER LAST WARNING* two hundred credits. It could have brought bad things like having to pay more taxes, leading smuglers to attack them, or loose frendships. But the punishment is the way he optains those two hundred credits. Maybe I'm the one not understanding your point, but it seamed wierd to me.
The way the two last wishes are used is interesting.
Cool game but using the TAB ability slowly destroyed my framerate for some reason, eventually going from a smooth 60fps to just 5fps and I doubt it's caused by me using linux to play this since the outcome is so strange, but all I had to do is restart the game like twice and managed to beat it quickly. Hope to see more games like this in the future, since I loved the voice acting and the pixel art, but the controls were kinda meh, like why not use ESC for pausing and opening the save/load/quit/options menu but in the end a solid 8/10, too short for the story to get interesting.
Long time fan of your work back to Artic Adventure and Pharaoh's Tomb. The Third Wish is gorgeous, short and sweet. Would love to see a full length classic style adventure game from you. Very inspiring work.
I played it (for free) and I liked it a lot. Now I'm going to pay for it. Thank you for this little game, I hope (demand) Broussard maeks more games like these
am i the only one who can't find a way to turn the turbine on? I even used the hotspot thing with tab to see if I'm missing something and... nothing. I have examined everything, interacted with everything multiple times and used the tool box with everything multiple times
It was a nice and short game! The beginning felt like a sci-fi adventure game where you have to solve puzzles. Then it felt like an interactive horror story telling. I don't want to spoiler anything, but this was a cool and nice advjam2023 entry!
I have this unpleasant feeling that I have managed to get stuck on a bug yet undiscovered... I managed to find the generator, but now I can't exit the screen! Even pressing tab only shows two hotspots in the screen, none of which is an exit.
Which version? You can press F1 and see (it’s on the last screen). If there’s no F1 help screen then it’s v1.0 and maybe a bug.
Might be a bug even in later versions? Can you give me any more info as to what you did, maybe? I’ll try to see if I can reproduce it. Did you properly get past the sand cat on the previous screen? ie: go through the few steps to run it off?
What sort of screen (resolution) are you playing on? Might well be that it’s not 16:9 and the letterboxing failed and you just can’t see (move the mouse) to where the exit hotspot is.
I’m near 100% sure this is it. Dang. In that one room if you are on an aspect ratio of 5:4, 3:2 or 4:3, then the exit will be off screen and you can’t click it! I think all the other rooms are fine.
I have some errands to run but will fix this, this evening and upload a new version.
I'm playing on lowest resolution, because after all it IS a low-res game (and I have a strong preference for olschool 2D pixel graphics). Thank you in advance for the new version.
I have a HD screen, but I just don't like playing games in fullscreen. So I instinctively set it up to lowest resolution available in the menu. And I can't change resolution now anyway because all my screenshots from one game must have the same resolution. Unless I change it only for exiting...
Please let us know when the new version is available.
Abd if you altering the resolution in the Options menu, you can likely fix the issue selecting a higher/wider resolution like 1920x1080. Something to try.
I’m sorry but I don’t know anything about Linux. You can maybe google “How to run Unity games on Linux Mint”. The game is made in Unity. I think I recall people mentioning in the past they had to change some permission flag or something in some case on some versions of Linux. I bet Google helps you.
tnx for the help if i couldn't play on linux that's ok i could use wine to run an exe file anyways i would say this game looks like to me "another world"
Great work! I love this game, the first part took me to the past days when the point&click adventure were widespread and popular and the experience is that, obviously it reminds me "The Dig". The second part was very immersive and that's the thing that struck me most of all because it isn't so easy to be able to emotionally capture the player.
The pixel art was beautiful and the alien atmosphere was irresistible. The point-and-click part in the first half was great for enjoying the world. The second half suddenly started the classic horror, but I didn't know the ending of this story, so I screamed with cringe-worthy fear. It was very interesting. *meow*
I really enjoyed the art, the voice acting, and some of the dialogue. I am easily able to immerse myself in the environment and imagine what life is like - unfortunately, I was not particularly fond of the puzzle system for the same reasons other commenters have mentioned. All in all, I'm excited for future games. <3 Thank you for this one!
Lots of love for this game, I had a lot of fun playing it. Really Really cool World Building! Sometimes it felt a little without direction when it came to what I was supposed to do (although its possible I was just dumb), but overall I love the story, art, voice acting, etc. Great Game!
A thoroughly enjoyable point and click adventure in the vein of The Dig, which transported me back to a time when purple tentacles were trying to take over the world. A classic sci-fi short horror story is given a new lease of life with The Third Wish, and the lore within it made me think that I could quite happily go back to Mr. and Mrs. White and have more adventures...or misadventures, with them.
Pros:
Voice acting is superb
World building and gorgeous visuals, taking you back to the days of Lucas Arts
Twilight Zone/Outer Limits inspired feel
Cons:
The only critique I had was that the puzzle elements felt a little directionless (i.e. the main character could have stated once he found the gnawed cable that there should be some couplings around that he could use) and dirt mounds didn't appear until after he had fixed the cable. But I guess that's the point and click nature of puzzles!
Thanks for the video. I watched it and really enjoyed it. Couple of the rough edges were due to the 2 week timeframe. I’m a big fan of not hitting people in the face with what to do next and let them do some reasonable exploration. Tough balance! ;) Glad you enjoyed it.
What a game, reminded me of the classic point and click adventures I played when I was younger. The only thing that bumped me was that the dirt mound in the turbine sector should have appeared from the start, since we don't know we should visit it again after. Nevertheless I enjoyed this!
These beautiful, nay stunning screenshots give me some very strong The Dig-vibes. That's the biggest compliment I can make because I regard The Dig as the ultimate pinnacle of VGA-graphic. You've managed to recreate the aesthetics of the classics! I'll have to play it right away.
Thanks for playing and glad you enjoyed it. I saw your comment on the jam page too. Trying to get to the games that commented/rated there, so I will before it’s over!
A great game, fun and gave me major the twilight zone vibes ( i love ttz) In the beginning, it is a little directionless but once you figure things out its a fun little mystery.
Please check out my youtube video, any support would be so appreciated!
This was really cool. I love sci-fi adventures like this. The painted scenes really transported me to world you created. I thought the story was presented really well with a good amount of player agency ...even if I was trying to circumvent the conclusion and pour my own whiskey. Excited to see how your games evolve and glad you took the dive on PowerQuest.
Great world-building, atmosphere, art, and voice acting. As others have said, it feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone (at least, the second ‘half’ does).
The game is also an impressive length for a game jam entry. It took me over an hour. However, the pacing felt a little off to me. The prologue/intro took me longer than the part in which the actual story is told, as it contained all the puzzles.
Although I very much enjoyed the game overall, there was also too much pixel hunting for my liking (even the hotspot indicators could be hard to spot, and I tried to avoid them at first, as the README file said they could spoil puzzles). At one point, I thought I had encountered a bug, but it turns out the puzzle had just been designed in a way that I felt was unfair. It had to do with hotspots, but I won’t say any more, to avoid spoilers.
That said, I know your main aim was to test PowerQuest, to see if you could make something polished with it. In that respect (as well as the others I mentioned up top), this was a resounding success. Great job. I look forward to seeing more from you :)
Hey, the game looks really great but i seem to have a little problem. In the first dialog after i click the "watch out" option the next dialog and options wont showup. Basically the game legs completly, does anyone have a fix?
What version are you on? You can see this by pressing F1 and it’s on the last screen. V1 didn’t have this F1 function. There was a bug with V1.2, i think, that could lead to the game breaking. Hope this helps. Sorry for the issue. Game seems relatively bug free on v1.3 (current).
I downloaded the game 20mins ago so i believe i have the newest one (1.3 i suppose). I'll try redownloading the game and maybe restart my pc. Still thank you for your help.
I don’t think I have one handy. Can you detail for me the steps you go through to get this? Is it just any time you click “watch out”? Being as this is literally the first thing in the game and hundreds of people have had no issue it’s interesting indeed.
Giving me a step by step or any additional detail may help. I’ll look into it but currently I don’t see how this could be failing.
Sorry to hear that. What OS? Linux? (assuming based on your other comments you left for people). Unfortunately I don’t know anything about Linux and just post the build that Unity gives me. I do know that others on Linux have been able to run the game. Either way you could post it here, or DM me on Twitter @georgebsocial. Not sure how helpful I can be in resolving it though.
I think the issue had something to do with audio. Somehow the ALSA implementation is broken. On another computer (exactly the same OS, except it has a different audio setup) everything works!
Played it now, really great atmosphere, and I wasn't too far off with The Dig vibes :) Sweet little adaptation, and I liked how much you left up for the imagination of the player in the ending.
The visuals are gorgeous and the voice-over is excellent. I also liked the gameplay. Had a nice Lucas Arts feel to it. If there is ever a 2.0 version with more puzzles (particularly towards the ending), I'll definitely play it. But even as it stands, it's a darn good game. Really impressive for a jam entry that has been developed with a new engine to boot.
I don’t believe this is an issue? I downloaded the file from Itch and scanned it with Microsoft Defender (results below). I also believe Itch scans things on their end before making the file available.
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Comments
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I've always been intrigued by W. W. Jacobs work on "The Monkey's Paw" and to see a futuristic sci-fi rendition on it, brought a new look to point and click, puzzle, 2D games. From the ambience to the idea of facing a non-moveable creature; just a supernatural item, with consequential promises to the wishes granted, just brings the beauty of it all back to the og story.
Pros: [Subjective]
The Artistic outlook was quite an enjoyable atmosphere. It was dense and compact; but every piece was detailed, giving shadow, highlights, and graphical improvement, upon which most 2D games lack. The Puzzles were short and sweet, with some form of a rewarding feeling after figuring out where one item goes and solving each puzzle. For a game that was only made in 2 weeks, it underlines every essential necessity for game: story, puzzles, an objective, an obstacle, a lesson to be learned.
Cons: [Subjective]
I feel like the beginning didn't make much sense, it was an interesting designer choice, and allowed the player to dive into the world and atmosphere of the game, however, it didn't add onto the story as much as I thought it would. Felt like a filler till we get to the actual Monkey's Paw. At the end, it would've been cool to see the son burst through the door before the main protag yells for his last wish.
All in all this was a VERY well designed game, and would definitely like to see more from this developer in the near future!
Thank YOU, George Broussard, for this well crafted, story driven game, that opened my eyes to the term, "Be careful what you wish for."
If you wish to watch my Video...
===========================================
I can't believe someone finally turned this old tale story that I read in my Read class into a game. It's as amazing as the book. ♥
I like this game. the short yet significant gameplay part (the day of work) settles the univers very nicely. the art and voices are cool. I am just a little surprised by the conclusion *alert spoiler* You try to illustrate the sentence "be careful what you wish for", but the "punishment" the player receive is the cause of its wish and not its consequence. He wishes for *ALERT SPOILER LAST WARNING* two hundred credits. It could have brought bad things like having to pay more taxes, leading smuglers to attack them, or loose frendships. But the punishment is the way he optains those two hundred credits. Maybe I'm the one not understanding your point, but it seamed wierd to me.
The way the two last wishes are used is interesting.
you dont have to tell me that this is inspired by The Dig 1995
Hey George, this is fantastic. Thank you so much for your and Travis's work and for sharing this for free. Mind blowing.
The second act felt like a Twilight Zone episode and then the ending confirmed that influence for me. lol Anyways great game!
Cool game but using the TAB ability slowly destroyed my framerate for some reason, eventually going from a smooth 60fps to just 5fps and I doubt it's caused by me using linux to play this since the outcome is so strange, but all I had to do is restart the game like twice and managed to beat it quickly. Hope to see more games like this in the future, since I loved the voice acting and the pixel art, but the controls were kinda meh, like why not use ESC for pausing and opening the save/load/quit/options menu but in the end a solid 8/10, too short for the story to get interesting.
I really loved this game! The artstyle.. the voice acting.. the way you've implemented the short story, it's all amazing! Great job!
Loved the game! been thinking about the ending for a while after playing it. Is there a secret ending to this game?
Nice game. Congratulations!!
Long time fan of your work back to Artic Adventure and Pharaoh's Tomb. The Third Wish is gorgeous, short and sweet. Would love to see a full length classic style adventure game from you. Very inspiring work.
This game has the exact art style and gameplay style as The Captain (search up The Captain video game), and it was one of my fav games!
Also The Monkey's Paw is also one of my fav short stories!
I’m glad you enjoyed it. I played the demo for The Captain long ago. Maybe I’ll look into the full game soon.
I played it (for free) and I liked it a lot. Now I'm going to pay for it. Thank you for this little game, I hope (demand) Broussard maeks more games like these
Haha thanks for playing and I’m glad you liked it!
am i the only one who can't find a way to turn the turbine on? I even used the hotspot thing with tab to see if I'm missing something and... nothing. I have examined everything, interacted with everything multiple times and used the tool box with everything multiple times
Not sure exactly where you are stuck. Did you try tight clicking on the tool bag to see if it had things inside it?
It was a nice and short game! The beginning felt like a sci-fi adventure game where you have to solve puzzles. Then it felt like an interactive horror story telling. I don't want to spoiler anything, but this was a cool and nice advjam2023 entry!
I have this unpleasant feeling that I have managed to get stuck on a bug yet undiscovered... I managed to find the generator, but now I can't exit the screen! Even pressing tab only shows two hotspots in the screen, none of which is an exit.
Which version? You can press F1 and see (it’s on the last screen). If there’s no F1 help screen then it’s v1.0 and maybe a bug.
Might be a bug even in later versions? Can you give me any more info as to what you did, maybe? I’ll try to see if I can reproduce it. Did you properly get past the sand cat on the previous screen? ie: go through the few steps to run it off?
What sort of screen (resolution) are you playing on? Might well be that it’s not 16:9 and the letterboxing failed and you just can’t see (move the mouse) to where the exit hotspot is.
I’m near 100% sure this is it. Dang. In that one room if you are on an aspect ratio of 5:4, 3:2 or 4:3, then the exit will be off screen and you can’t click it! I think all the other rooms are fine.
I have some errands to run but will fix this, this evening and upload a new version.
I'm playing on lowest resolution, because after all it IS a low-res game (and I have a strong preference for olschool 2D pixel graphics). Thank you in advance for the new version.
Sounds good. Out of curiosity what sort of screen are you playing on? The game will look fine (still pixels) even in HD (1920x1080) etc.
If you manually set the resolution in the Options menu, can you let me know which one? Would be helpful!
I have a HD screen, but I just don't like playing games in fullscreen. So I instinctively set it up to lowest resolution available in the menu. And I can't change resolution now anyway because all my screenshots from one game must have the same resolution. Unless I change it only for exiting...
Please let us know when the new version is available.
Abd if you altering the resolution in the Options menu, you can likely fix the issue selecting a higher/wider resolution like 1920x1080. Something to try.
It has old Sierra adventure style, I love it!
I’m glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for playing.
i need help how to run the game on linux
(btw i use linux mint)
I’m sorry but I don’t know anything about Linux. You can maybe google “How to run Unity games on Linux Mint”. The game is made in Unity. I think I recall people mentioning in the past they had to change some permission flag or something in some case on some versions of Linux. I bet Google helps you.
tnx for the help if i couldn't play on linux that's ok i could use wine to run an exe file
anyways i would say this game looks like to me "another world"
Thank you fot this nice little game.
Thanks for playing it!
Saw Nookrium plying your game on youtube and had to check it aout. Looks amazing
Appreciate the head’s up on the video. Was enjoyable to watch him play it.
Great work! I love this game, the first part took me to the past days when the point&click adventure were widespread and popular and the experience is that, obviously it reminds me "The Dig". The second part was very immersive and that's the thing that struck me most of all because it isn't so easy to be able to emotionally capture the player.
Thanks for this game :)
Thanks for playing and I’m happy you liked it.
The pixel art was beautiful and the alien atmosphere was irresistible. The point-and-click part in the first half was great for enjoying the world. The second half suddenly started the classic horror, but I didn't know the ending of this story, so I screamed with cringe-worthy fear. It was very interesting. *meow*
I really enjoyed the art, the voice acting, and some of the dialogue. I am easily able to immerse myself in the environment and imagine what life is like - unfortunately, I was not particularly fond of the puzzle system for the same reasons other commenters have mentioned. All in all, I'm excited for future games. <3 Thank you for this one!
Lots of love for this game, I had a lot of fun playing it. Really Really cool World Building! Sometimes it felt a little without direction when it came to what I was supposed to do (although its possible I was just dumb), but overall I love the story, art, voice acting, etc. Great Game!
Pros:
Cons:
Thanks for the video. I watched it and really enjoyed it. Couple of the rough edges were due to the 2 week timeframe. I’m a big fan of not hitting people in the face with what to do next and let them do some reasonable exploration. Tough balance! ;) Glad you enjoyed it.
What a game, reminded me of the classic point and click adventures I played when I was younger. The only thing that bumped me was that the dirt mound in the turbine sector should have appeared from the start, since we don't know we should visit it again after. Nevertheless I enjoyed this!
Amazing game, it took me back to the 90's. thanks!
very good game! didn't expect the lore
These beautiful, nay stunning screenshots give me some very strong The Dig-vibes. That's the biggest compliment I can make because I regard The Dig as the ultimate pinnacle of VGA-graphic. You've managed to recreate the aesthetics of the classics! I'll have to play it right away.
Amazing game really enjoyed playing this one :)
Thanks for playing and glad you enjoyed it. I saw your comment on the jam page too. Trying to get to the games that commented/rated there, so I will before it’s over!
A great game, fun and gave me major the twilight zone vibes ( i love ttz) In the beginning, it is a little directionless but once you figure things out its a fun little mystery.
Please check out my youtube video, any support would be so appreciated!
This was really cool. I love sci-fi adventures like this. The painted scenes really transported me to world you created. I thought the story was presented really well with a good amount of player agency ...even if I was trying to circumvent the conclusion and pour my own whiskey. Excited to see how your games evolve and glad you took the dive on PowerQuest.
Great world-building, atmosphere, art, and voice acting. As others have said, it feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone (at least, the second ‘half’ does).
The game is also an impressive length for a game jam entry. It took me over an hour. However, the pacing felt a little off to me. The prologue/intro took me longer than the part in which the actual story is told, as it contained all the puzzles.
Although I very much enjoyed the game overall, there was also too much pixel hunting for my liking (even the hotspot indicators could be hard to spot, and I tried to avoid them at first, as the README file said they could spoil puzzles). At one point, I thought I had encountered a bug, but it turns out the puzzle had just been designed in a way that I felt was unfair. It had to do with hotspots, but I won’t say any more, to avoid spoilers.
That said, I know your main aim was to test PowerQuest, to see if you could make something polished with it. In that respect (as well as the others I mentioned up top), this was a resounding success. Great job. I look forward to seeing more from you :)
Hey, the game looks really great but i seem to have a little problem. In the first dialog after i click the "watch out" option the next dialog and options wont showup. Basically the game legs completly, does anyone have a fix?
What version are you on? You can see this by pressing F1 and it’s on the last screen. V1 didn’t have this F1 function. There was a bug with V1.2, i think, that could lead to the game breaking. Hope this helps. Sorry for the issue. Game seems relatively bug free on v1.3 (current).
I downloaded the game 20mins ago so i believe i have the newest one (1.3 i suppose). I'll try redownloading the game and maybe restart my pc. Still thank you for your help.
Concerning. Let me know, please. Also what OS? Windows, Mac, Linux?
I’ve never seen that or had anyone report it but will look at it this morning and see if I can find any reason it would fail. Thanks.
Windows
Even after reinstalling the game and restarting my pc nothing changed. Do you think you could send me a older version, we'll see of that works?
I don’t think I have one handy. Can you detail for me the steps you go through to get this? Is it just any time you click “watch out”? Being as this is literally the first thing in the game and hundreds of people have had no issue it’s interesting indeed.
Giving me a step by step or any additional detail may help. I’ll look into it but currently I don’t see how this could be failing.
How are you starting the game from the main menu? From the New Game option right?
Try posting the log files here. They should be located here, I think:
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\George Broussard\The Third Wish\Player.log on Windows.
Thanks.
Hmm, getting a segmentation fault. Where do I best share a stack trace?
Sorry to hear that. What OS? Linux? (assuming based on your other comments you left for people). Unfortunately I don’t know anything about Linux and just post the build that Unity gives me. I do know that others on Linux have been able to run the game. Either way you could post it here, or DM me on Twitter @georgebsocial. Not sure how helpful I can be in resolving it though.
No problem!
I think the issue had something to do with audio. Somehow the ALSA implementation is broken. On another computer (exactly the same OS, except it has a different audio setup) everything works!
Haven't played it yet, but it gives off some serious The Dig vibes. Downloading it now :)
Loved that game! But, I could never figure out how to beat it 😭
There are hints in the readme file in the games directory and I’ll help you if you tell me where you got stuck. Thanks for trying it.
Played it now, really great atmosphere, and I wasn't too far off with The Dig vibes :) Sweet little adaptation, and I liked how much you left up for the imagination of the player in the ending.
The visuals are gorgeous and the voice-over is excellent. I also liked the gameplay. Had a nice Lucas Arts feel to it. If there is ever a 2.0 version with more puzzles (particularly towards the ending), I'll definitely play it. But even as it stands, it's a darn good game. Really impressive for a jam entry that has been developed with a new engine to boot.
I don’t believe this is an issue? I downloaded the file from Itch and scanned it with Microsoft Defender (results below). I also believe Itch scans things on their end before making the file available.
Lovely art and story. I did get stuck quite a bit though.