The International House of Mojo

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.

"Q4 2014" isn't merely the vague release information Telltale has offered on its upcoming Game of Thrones adaptation; it's basically the only information. So you can imagine my surprise when Telltale re-states that the first episode will be released before the new year.

This coincidentally puts the release three hundred and eighty-seven years ahead of George R.R. Martin's next release in the book series, which is expected to hit shelves December 2401.

Update 2: The news is now official, so the link has been changed to the correct, working one.

Update: The link to the confirmation is now broken because it was a leak of information GOG intends to make public tomorrow. Check back then for the real deal.

Original Post: As Jennifer broke, the rumors were true! GOG has cut a deal with Disney to release LEC games on its service. And now we have titles. GOG confirmed that "about" 30 games will be made available in total, starting tomorrow with the following six:

You'll note that only three of those are digital debuts, but hey, Sam & Max Hit the Road and TIE Fighter are finally available again! Let's hope all fourteen classic adventures make the cut. Seriously, these are exciting times. Speculate below!

Source: Good Old Games

Update: The teaser fonts are confirmed to be real, as they are now live on the GOG.com website.

We've gotten our hopes up before that LucasArts games would be released on GOG.com when the site previously teased that they were going to add a large publisher to their catalog (not to mention the Night Dive rumors). Well, the rumors are here again, as GOG.com is teasing that another publisher will be adding their games to the catalog, with a countdown timer on their main page.

There might be some weight to the rumor that the publisher is LucasArts this time, as a GOG.com user has reportedly found three countdown images on the GOG.com website that use well known LucasArts fonts. Of course, if it does end up being LucasArts, it's uncertain if any games that aren't already released digitally will be released on GOG.com, as the three franchises represented (Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Monkey Island) already have games available digitally on Steam. But, at least this time signs do seem to point towards DRM-free versions of LucasArts games finally being available soon.

It's been awhile since we've had anything firm, hard, or otherwise unyielding to pressure with regard to the second half of Broken Age, but Double Fine has offered an update a few days ago. They published said update on their Kickstarter page, and since there's an installment of the ongoing 2 Player documentary to go along with it, the post is backer-exclusive. Which means I can't really do much but tell you to go check it out, a suggestion I make under the safe assumption that a few of your dollars rest among the 3+ million the project racked up.

In the absence of a link, I can give you the Cliff Notes version, which is that Tim has finished writing the game, and the voice recording is nearing an end. There's a few other milestone factoids like that, but what they get vague about real quick is the release date you likely sought. In light of that I'm gonna go ahead and assume we won't get to play this until 2015, which is fine by me, because Remi has made short work of my free time lately.

Source: Broken Age Kickstarter

Double Fine's remastered version of Tim Schafer's magnum opus of his LucasArts years, Grim Fandango, was demoed at Indiecade. Game journalists have played that demo and shared their thoughts.

IGN describes the new version as follows:

You have the ability to toggle back and forth between how the game originally looked, and how it looks now, and holy moly the difference is night and day. Thanks to the new lighting, shaders, and other technical enhancements that flew way over my head, Manny and company now look incredible. Their in-game models appear to be nearly identical to their cut-scene counterparts, which is great. The game is still presented in 4:3, but you have the ability to stretch it to widescreen (for the love of everything good, please don’t do this). The borders are black right now, but I was told that the developers are toying with some ideas for what could stand on the two sides of the screen.

In addition, Double Fine has also added some bonus features to the game:

The final big change I stumbled across was the awesome inclusion of nodes scattered throughout the world that contain small snippets of commentary from Tim Schafer, Peter Chan, Peter McConnell, and a ton of other folks who helped make the game so special back in 1998.

Polygon has also shared their thoughts on the demo, and have confirmed that the original's tank controls will be an option for the purists who prefer to play the game that way.

It looks like Grim Fandango Remastered is shaping up to be great. The rest of us will get a chance to play it for ourselves once it's released in early 2015.

Update by Jennifer: The campaign is also now accepting Paypal donations for the digital tiers (you'll find the Paypal links at the bottom of the main page). So, if you wait for that option before backing a crowdfunding campaign, and if you want to play a campaign with an awesome art design by Bill Tiller and a game design by Dave Grossman, Bill Tiller, and Gene Mocsy, then you can now be a backer as well.

Oh, and my rendition of the pirate song is on its way. Since I actually made that promise myself, I'll try to get it done soonish. :)

Original post:

There's a first time for everything.

Duke Grabowski up and got itself funded by the skin of its teeth, and there was much rejoicing. Don't forget that although the minimum amount has been reached, you can still pledge money to the project so that it can hit some of its stretch goals. One of them is "new swashbuckling music," which I'm taking to mean that Pedro Macedo Camacho will compose new stuff as opposed to his Ghost Pirates tracks being recycled.

As for me, I apparently owe you guys some sort of re-creation of the wedding scene from Monkey Island 1? At least, that's what Remi seems to have effeminately (and unilaterally) obligated me to, and I'm nothing if not a man of Remi's word. So while I'm not putting a clock on it, stay tuned for a deranged grotesquerie of some sort.

Source: Kickstarter

The Walking Dead Season One and Season Two is coming to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on October 24. Both physical and digital versions of the game will be released on the same day.

The Duke Grabowski Kickstarter now needs less than $5,000 to make it's goal. There's just three days left to go, but it's certainly doable. They've posted an interesting update about how Dave Grossman got onboard. Apparently Bill's helping Dave out with art for one of his projects, and Dave's helping Bill out with game design on his. So, we'll hopefully be seeing the results of another Dave Grossman and Bill Tiller collaboration in the future.

The update also includes information about slots being opened up for the higher tiers. So, if you've been holding back because you wanted to back at one of the sold out higher tiers, you're in luck, as more slots have been added to these tiers. Go ahead and grab them quick if you're interested (there's some neat goodies in there, like getting to voice a character named after you for $300, or if you have some money to burn, having Bill fly to your house and paint a mural on your wall for $10,000).

Of course, the most important incentive is that if this is funded, you'll get to watch Jason reenact the Melee Island wedding scene, and watch me perform the Curse of Monkey Island pirate song. So, go ahead and back. You know you want to.

The Perils of Man: Episode 1, the first part of the two part adventure with a game design by Bill Tiller and Gene Mocsy of Autumn Moon (and co-written by Mocsy as well), is now out for iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch for $4.99. Your five bucks will get you all seven chapters of The Perils of Man, as you'll get the first three chapters now in episode one, and the remaining four chapters at no additional cost once episode two is released in December.

The game is excellent, but if you'd prefer to try before you buy, chapter one (the first third of episode 1) is available on iTunes for free.

Update: If you don't have an iOS device, you'll have to wait a bit longer. According to The Perils of Man Frequently Asked Questions page, they are currently developing the game for Android devices as well as PC, Mac, and Linux.

The final issue of Maniac Mansion co-creator Gary Winnick's five part comic book series, Bad Dreams, was released on Wednesday. The print issues are somewhat hard to come by (if you want to pick them up at regular price) since they sold out pretty quick, but you can pick up all issues digitally from Comixology.

Another Mojo-centric release is soon to be happening as well, since the Bill Tiller and Gene Mocsy designed The Perils of Man Episode 1 will be released on the Apple App Store in three days. Chapter One is out already. If you have an iOS device, make sure to pick it up, as it is excellent.

A little over $15k remains before Bill Tiller and his good friends (who now include Dave Grossman!) have their modest graphic adventure game Duke Grabowski funded, and there's only twelve days to go pick your favorite tier (among them a brand new option).

Don't get me wrong, it's cute that you're this fashionably late with your pledge, but you really don't want to be the reason Bill's painting Bounty Bots 56 instead of an adventure game background. Because you will be forced to wear a T-shirt to that effect.

Source: Kickstarter

For a good twenty minutes! Twenty minutes that were recorded.

Source: GameNGuide

It be that day again! Talk like a pirate and hoist your sails to go over to Steam to pick up a load of pirate booty at sale prices, including the two special editions and Tales of Monkey Island at 75% off each! Arr!