The International House of Mojo

Those who didn't back the Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter at a tier high enough to get a boxed copy have a chance to get a retail version of Broken Age (although not the same one as the one on the Kickstarter, as that one is a Kickstarter exclusive). Nordic Games will be publishing Broken Age at retail in Europe and North America shortly after Act 2 is released online.

The Kickstarter boxed collector's edition will be arriving at some point after that, since it also includes the documentary, and that can't be mastered until the final episode of the documentary is released.

In other Double Fine news, they have started a new YouTube series with 2 Player Productions called Devs Play, where Double Fine developers play through and talk about games from time gone by, and sometimes are joined by the developers of those games. They've covered Aladdin and Lion King for Genesis, Mother, Earthbound, and Mother 3, and Gauntlet for the Nintendo DS so far. They'll be playing through The Legend of Zelda, Doom, and speed running through Psychonauts with a YouTube speedrunner who has found some techniques to speed through the game by way of glitches (and the Psychonauts team will be there to talk about the glitches, which should prove interesting).

Adventure Gamers has posted an informative interview with Dave Grossman, as interviewed by former Telltale PR person Emily Morganti. Dave talks about his time at LucasArts, leaving Telltale, joining Reactive Studios as chief creative officer on their interactive audio dramas, working with Bill Tiller on Duke Grabowski: Mighty Swashbuckler, and hints at future projects.

Some of the most interesting points brought up in the interview include the fact that Brian Moriarty, the creator of Loom and project lead of the unreleased first version of The Dig is on the board at Reactive too, and the team is going to try to do a text adventure style audio drama at some point, with Dave hinting towards a Sherlock Holmes story and one based on Jekyll and Hyde. Another interesting tidbit is that Dave Grossman is going to be helping out with another game project that had a successful Kickstarter, but he can't talk about that yet. So, even though Dave is working from home now, 2015 certainly looks to be a busy year.

The SpaceVenture team finally posted an update with news about the space themed game by the Two Guys from Andromeda, the creators of Space Quest. They've hired Josh Mandel on as a writer. If you don't know who Josh Mandel is, he's honorary third guy of Andromeda, who co-directed Space Quest 6, as well as Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist, and most recently Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded and Fester Mudd: Curse of the Gold.

The bumps they have been having have been ironed out, as the main problems have been on the programming end, and that is going much more smoothly now. They are now on the final third of game development, and feel confident that the game is on track to be released some time in 2015.

While we were down, ResidualVM, the project that aims to support 3D adventure games on a wide range of modern computer platforms, received its latest stable release.

This release brings Myst III: Exile support, fixes some bugs in Grim Fandango, and adds game data verification on first launch (so that you'll know if your game data was copied correctly from your CDs). There are builds available for Windows, Linux and OS X.

In the unstable builds of ResidualVM, Escape from Monkey Island is also completable with a few glitches. The ResidualVM team is going to continue to work to get that game supported in 2015.

The testing period for ResidualVM 0.2.0 is now here. They need people to test Myst III and Grim Fandango for the latest release. If you want to help, pick up or compile the latest daily build on the platform of your choice. Play through the game, without skipping dialog, and without updating ResidualVM during your entire play through.

If you find any bugs, submit them to the ResidualVM issue tracker. Then report whether you were able to complete the game and any bugs you might have found on their forums.

It seems that Dave Grossman joining Reactive Studios brought some interesting changes to their Codename Cygnus interactive audio adventure.

The latest update for iOS and Android brings a new mission to their spy drama, Holiday Party. It's the first story designed by Dave Grossman, and it makes many changes to make the series less linear, and more interactive. According to their blog it adds multiple choices for paths through the plot, leading to three different endings.

The best part is it's free to download. You just have to download the app, and you can download and jump right into this episode. You don't have to purchase the rest of the episodes to play this one. It's a nice holiday treat from Reactive Studios and Dave Grossman, and is a sample of the experimental ideas that Dave Grossman is going to be bringing to the table during his tenure at Reactive.

Turns out it's just that you're not giving the later sequels enough credit.

Every decade or so it's necessary to write an article delving into the "meaning" behind Monkey Island just to remind you of how stale the topic really is. Today comes my contribution to this tradition of over-analysis, but my "twist" is arguing that picking over the subtext of the first two games only casts the post-Ron installments in a more favorable light.

I'm just a merchant of controversy these days, aren't I?

Thanks to Remi for the header image.

More maniacs have joined the team for Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick's Thimbleweed Park.

The first is Ken Macklin, who designed the cover for Maniac Mansion. He will be doing the cover for Thimbleweed Park as well.

Secondly, is the creator of Zak McKracken, David Fox. He worked on Maniac Mansion as well, doing most of the SCUMM scripting for the game, and is apparently the one we have to thank for the hamster in the microwave joke.

So if you haven't backed yet, or want to move up a pledge tier, now's the perfect time to head over to the kickstarter and back the game.

Polygon was able to prod Tim a bit about the recently announced Day of the Tentacle remake, which is still in its earliest phases but which he promises will remain 2D. Beyond assurances of faithfulness, we'll just have to wait to learn what this upgrade will really look or sound like (while wondering what the LEC Singapore sweat shop kids came up with first).

When asked about the business side of securing the license in the first place, Tim describes a situation that really makes me hopeful for the future.

Perhaps Tim's dream of revisiting all the old adventures is a bit too good to be true, but still, it's hard to imagine the future of these games ever being more bright, or for a better group of custodians to be assigned their preservation than Schafer's studio. Hopefully those fans strategically positioned at Disney stick around long enough for Double Fine to keep going through the catalog.

Source: Polygon

Hopefully it appears for you below. I understand that our faultless embedding technology doesn't serve everyone equally well, so you can alternatively make the pilgrimage to Youtube.

Oh dear, I do believe I'm getting the vapors!

During the keynote of something called the "Playstation Experience", Double Fine announced a few minor things. One is that Grim Fandango Remastered will come out on January 27th (previously known as "early 2015"). The second is that the complete Broken Age is headed to PS4 and Vita once Act II makes it to Steam.

Oh, they also threw in that they're making a special edition of Day of the Tentacle. No big deal.

While we wait for details on that, here's a new look at Grim Remastered.

Source: Shacknews

Though they unquestionably achieved all the reach they could ever hope to by talking with Mojo, Ron and Gary are doing the polite thing by promoting their absurdly successful Kickstarter for Thimbleweed Park elsewhere as well.

See what Gamasutra was able to wrangle from the duo before checking out IGN's interview for comparison. Then feel bad for both of them when you re-read our own.

The first episode of Game of Thrones, Iron From Ice, now has release dates. It will be available on December 2 on PC/Mac through the Telltale Store and Steam. On December 3, it will release for the PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One worldwide. On December 4, it will release for iOS, and then on December 9 it will release for the PlayStation 3 worldwide. It will also be coming to Android at an as of yet unannounced date in December.

Greg Rice has posted an update on the release of the second act of Broken Age. Both Shay and Vella's half of Act II is now in alpha, and the finale is expected to get to an alpha state by the end of this year. On top of that, Shay's half of Act II has the voice overs and animation in, so it's heading towards beta. The last recording session for Vella's half of Act II is happening now, so the animation for all of the voice overs can now be done, which will allow the rest of the game to head towards beta as well.

Since the game is now playable in alpha state to the finale, and they're now almost wrapped with the remainder of the development of the game, that means that they're now aiming to release of Broken Age Act II early next year.

The first episode of Tales from the Borderlands, Zer0 Sum is out now for PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One worldwide, and for PS3 and PS4 in North America. There's still no release date set for the Mac version, and the PS3 and PS4 release in Europe will be happening on the 3rd of December.

GameInformer is reporting that the twitter account @lifelower, which is dedicated to releasing information on upcoming XBLA games, has released what appears to be leaked screenshots from Telltale's upcoming Game of Thrones.

If these are the first images of Telltale's series, it's looking pretty good. Telltale's Job Stauffer described the style as a living oil painting, and I'd have to concur. I can't wait to see how it looks in motion. You can see some of the images below (click to enlarge):

(Again, this will be a retread for the Twitter crowd, but allow us to return from downtime with an artificial splash. We need this.)

When the remaster of Grim Fandango was announced, the first thought that rushed to everyone's head was, "That's great, but what about sprucing up the most beloved installment of the Monkey Island series while you're at it?"

That's where our own bgbennyboy comes in. With some gentle nudging from yours truly, Benny has put out a new release of his excellent Escape from Monkey Island launcher. Here is the full list of features, the killer one being that the cutscenes now play at twice their original resolution, which I believe was accomplished by violating the PS2 version of the game, which always had the better quality cutscenes.

But Benny needs your help testing his noble work. So grab your EMI discs and enjoy the fruits of his labors, which were literally four years in the making. (No, seriously - go to the beginning of that thread.)

Source: The Forums

I'm just saying. While it's little more than a splash screen for the special edition, there's something fundamentally disturbing about the fact that Disney is even acknowledging the game on its own web site.

I mistrust it, somehow.

Source: Disney.com

My assigned part it, anyway. In a show of support for Jennifer, I strove to ensure that whatever she could possibly come up with would be considerably less humiliating by comparison.

As you were promised, here is my incident-free re-enactment of the wedding scene from The Secret of Monkey Island as a reward for the support you damned well should have shown to Venture Moon's Duke Grabowski.

Note: We provided subtitles this time out in case the combination of my Cajun accent and the home movie audio fidelity prove to be too much of a barrier.

The goal that the team at GOG.com has been working towards since it opened its doors back in 2008 has been accomplished. LucasArts games are now on GOG.com. X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Knights of the Old Republic, and The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition are only available for Windows, while Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Sam & Max Hit the Road are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

That's right, the SCUMM games are actually using ScummVM! The lawyers who used to work for Lucas legal probably nearly had a heart attack when they read this news.