Donald Dowell and the Ghost of Barker Manor - a beautiful FREE old-style adventure

Hi friends!
I've been away for a long time, but I came back bringing a news that - I hope - could be a nice Christmas present for those of you nostalgic of the Good Old Crazy Adventures  
In May a friend of mine, Andrea Ferrara, released a delicious free game called Donald Dowell and the Ghost of Barker Manor. It is an exhilarating, long lasting game reminding Old Sierra and Lucas –style adventures of the past.
It took seven months to translate it for English speaking gamers, and now it is ready! Anyone nostalgic of the crazy gags in Monkey island or Maniac Mansion should give it a try!
This is the story:
Donald Dowell is a funny 80-year-old man who’s recently retired. His life is apparently peaceful, except for his unbearable wife. Nevertheless, Donald starts feeling empty and suffering from the so-called retiree syndrome. He’s bored to death and decides that the only solution to his problem is to start working again. After wandering several hours about the town and being refused and mocked by several potential employers, he is struck by a peculiar epiphany: he is to become a GHOSTBUSTER! Donald tries to be hired as Bob Delano’s assistant - the most famous paranormal detective in Ireland; unfortunately, since Delano is temporarily stuck at Barker Manor, Donald will have to go there to find his boss and to investigate on the strange phenomena going on there.

You can download it fromApe Marina (Seebee)

Hope you enjoy it!  

, struzzo!

Thankyou Struzzo. Looks really good.

I downloaded it and I am having a lot of fun playing it. I wish it was a talky so that my grand kids could play it. I just started it yesterday so I am not very far yet.

I'm really glad! Thanks you all!   

@Gelert, I'm so poor in lateral thinking that I had to ask for help all the time while playing    but I enjoyed it a lot all the same. It was great fun!

Ha-ha Struzzo. If I play this one soon I'll let you know of my 'struggles' also.

Hi struzzo it's good to see you again. Thank you for letting us know about this game. It sounds like a good litle story.   

hatshepsut

Hi Hatshepsut, how nice to meet you!   
I hope you'll have a lot of fun with Donald!

We met in October in Mystery Manor but you don't know... After reading LadyKestrel announcement for the Halloween Tournament I subscribed to participate, using a nickname I love a lot: Carmilla, from a Poe's novel, but when I saw friends from AP I was sorry not to be recognized. So I stated it in my presentation post, but obviously I couldn't think that all of you would read it...

@ I'll wait for your opinion Gelert; I'm sure you'll manage better than me...  

Hi struzzo. I did recognize you at MM, I didn't say anything in case you didn't want to be recognized. I have been reading your post on food and recipes with interest. I enjoy reading cookbooks and finding recipes and collecting them   

I have Donald downloaded. I'll do the setup later this evening

hatshepsut

I just downloaded this game today after reading about it on the AGS game announcement forum. It does look pretty epic from the description. My game playing time will be extremely limited up till the end of the year given how much family is here for Christmas. This will definitely get a play from me though. Your friend is a dedicated adventure developer struzzo do put this much time/effort/love into a game given away for free. More and more AGS developers are now charging for their AAA titles.

Hello All. So far I only did a quick play of it. But early on I could feel that this Donald Dowell Adventure Game is something special. All ages will enjoy this one. I wish I had marketing advice on how to reach senior citizens online - they'd love it. I'm amazed the humor translates between cultures. This thing is hilarious - yet insightful. I hate to go on and on about it.
I only wish that the effort that went into this project, produces the returns that you guys hoped for.

Thanks so much for the beautiful things you have written Lakerz and Haroldw.  Andrea will be extremely pleased!
You know, many italian  gamers told him that he could have charged a price for a long-lasting, beautiful game as Donald Dowell, but he always replied that he'd rather give it for free... it contains all his passion for the adventures of the good old times.
I myself was amazed from the translation   I'd never think that it would be possible for all the "word jokes" and the "Italy related" humor the game was full of...

@ Hatshepsut, I'm glad that now you know that I wanted to be recognized! It was silly of me... when I first saw the dark atmosphere of the Manor during Halloween time I thought "that's the right place for old Carmilla!"; and I didn't think about the obvious consequences...   
If there is any italian recipe you are particularly interested in let me know and I'll post it  

I'm debating whether I should try to download this game or not as I have problems with downloading from links where one needs to unzip things, or some other complicated (for me) manuevers! I can do RUN very well. So, how easy or hard is it?

Mindysue... the game is a file.zip. After downloading you'll only need to unzip it, but if you have installed a tool as Winzip in your hard disk it will only take a double click on the game.zip icon. Then just install it and launch the game.  

Hi everybody.

My name's Andrea and I'm the developer of the game.

I was so happy reading your comments and I want to thank you and give you a hug.
Of course I want to thank Struzzo (with a lot of love).

I hope you'll enjoy my game.

To installa the game is easy:
- Download the zip file
- Extract or just doubleclick
- inside the zip file there's a folder - double click ---> you'll find a file called SETUP.exe
- Just double-click on SETUP.exe
it will install the game and create a desktop icon to easy lunch the game

Cheers

Andrea

Hi AprilSkies and welcome to Adventure Point. I hope you will like it here. Thank you for offering your game to us gamers   

mindysue it was one of the easiest downloads I ever did.

struzzo, if old Carmilla is the vampire Carmilla then I would say MM was a good place for her  
I am in yet another puzzle contest right now so when it's over I'll look through my list of Italian recipes that I want   

hatshepsut

Yes hatshepsut, Carmilla is the mysterious Poe's vampire, but "old" belongs to poor old struzzo   
I've seen the contest you refers to... the prize, LadyKestrel calendar I mean, is something really special and precious! But I can't recognize a single face. Aaaghhh... why don't I ever play 3rd person games!!!   

Okay, I bit the bullet and with my heart pounding I tried to download the game. Get that "tried" as I didn't succeed. I got stumped when something called "MySearchDial" came up and would add a toolbar to change the way I web surfed. First, I don't surf the web and second, I don't want yet another toolbar on my computer as I already have more than I know how to use. I chickened out at that point and left, clicking on all the exit "X"s.
The only downloads I'm okay with are for the casual games at BigFishGames. Oh, and my Peter's Jigsaws from Mulawa Dreaming. Over the years I've made hundreds of these and am fairly skilled at it. Maybe I'm just too old for adventuring! Guess I'll go along with King Graham and hang up my adventurer's hat.

mindysue wrote:

I got stumped when something called "MySearchDial" came up and would add a toolbar to change the way I web surfed. First, I don't surf the web and second, I don't want yet another toolbar on my computer as I already have more than I know how to use. I chickened out at that point and left, clicking on all the exit "X"s.

If you want to browse (more) safely, I suggest you use Firefox with NoScript add-on.

I downloaded Donald Dowell and the Ghost of Barker Manor without a problem.

The very very direct download can be done by this link, directly from our server .. no browsing needend here:
http: http://oldgames.arena80.it/arenauta11/Donald_Dowell_ENG.zip
(I put space between http: and // cause I'm not allowed to post links)

Anyway, I hope you can just have fun.

p.s. I love your website!

Thanks for the link and your kind comment about Adventure Point AprilSkies. It's always nice to hear.  

Yes I will agree struzzo those characters are a little tricky to recognize in their Santa getup

Thank you AprilSkies for the link. Glad you like the website. Gelert has worked hard to make it wonderful   

mindysue try the link that AprilSkies provided. It works very well and easily.

hatshepsut