The Journey Down Chapter Two, the second part of Skygoblin's episodic adventure game inspired by LucasArts classics such as Monkey Island 2 and Grim Fandango, is out now for Mac, Linux, and PC on Steam and for iOS.
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The latest daily builds of ResidualVM now officially support a game besides Grim Fandango, Myst III: Exile. In order for the game to be fully supported in the next stable release, they need your help to ind the last few rough edges by playing through the game in the latest daily build thoroughly and submitting any bugs that you find along the way to their issue tracker.
In other ResidualVM news, you might be wondering how ResidualVM's first Summer of Code went. Quite swimmingly, it seems, since Escape from Monkey Island is now completable with glitches in the latest daily builds. Unlike Myst III, this game isn't ready to be added to their supported list, but they are now accepting bug submissions for Escape from Monkey Island at their issue tracker if you want to give it a try.
This year's ScummVM Summer of Code went quite well too, as Sfinx is now completable in the latest daily builds (the English translation isn't yet up for public consumption though, so you'll have to use the Polish original to play). Galador: The Prince and the Coward is also completable, but you'll have to compile it from the sourcecode yourself if you want to try it at this point, since it hasn't yet been added to the main tree (and, likewise, the English translation isn't yet ready for public consumption).
Well, if you, like the rest of the world, were not following us on Twitter ¬¬, you probably don't know any of this stuff. Because, where else than the internet Mojo would you learn all of it? PAX, in a nutshell:
The Firewatch trailer! Campo "Mojo" Santo's sequel to WONKY is looking good.
Cliqist has an interview up with Bill Tiller about Duke Grabowski, including the hows and whys of choosing to go to Kickstarter, why they chose to make another pirate themed game, and a fine selection of haikus, including this gem:
Duke, red with fury
Terrifies men and women
No one sees his heart
There is also an update on the Kickstarter where Bill Tiller draws an Inn with no name and is holding a contest to find the best name for it. It should be something piratey and fun, probably incorporating the word "Inn". For more details about the contest, see the above link to the update.
In an effort to raise awareness for their adventure game Kickstarter, Bill Tiller and two of his Autumn Moon cohorts, operating under the label Venture Moon Industries, have set up a Steam Greenlight page for Duke Grabowski: Mighty Swashbuckler!, which has garnered a little attention.
As for the Kickstarter itself, after quickly raising $15,000 of its $40,000 goal, things seem to have stalled a bit, but there's still 46 days to go. This should be far more achievable than last summer's A Vampyre Story: Year One Kickstarter, which rang up $77,000 despite the recurring complaint that it was not an original adventure. With that issue addressed and with a much more modest goal, I'd like to think this one should have a happy ending. Unless you snatch it away, ya penny-pinchers!
Source: Steam
Double Fine is going to be holding a panel at this year's Penny Arcade Expo, entitled Grim Fandango: Bringing the Dead Back to Life! The panel will be jam packed full of people who worked on the game, including creator Tim Schafer, artist Peter Chan, musician Peter McConnell, Double Fine Productions executive producer Matt Hansen and Sony’s Gio Corsi as moderator.
They will discuss development of both the original game and the new remastered version. They will also be unveiling a new development documentary episode from 2 Player Productions. If you are going to PAX this year, you won't want to miss the panel. It is happening on Saturday, August 30th at 4:30 in the Main Theater.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Mike Stemmle (co-creator of Sam & Max Hit the Road and Escape from Monkey Island) left Telltale Games back in May. His credits list the first version of The Wolf Among Us, before it was redesigned, and Tales from the Borderlands. So, we'll likely see a little bit of Michael Stemmle's work in the next few months when Telltale's Borderlands series starts.
Now, IGN is reporting that Dave Grossman (co-creator of Monkey Island 1+2 and Day of the Tentacle) has left Telltale too. Now, more than even before, it feels like the end of an era. We at Mojo wish Mr. Stemmle and Mr. Grossman the best of luck in their future endeavors.
The Sierra website is back online because Activision is bringing Sierra back as their indie label. They have also announced that The Odd Gentlemen, the developers of the puzzle game The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, are developing a new King's Quest title. When Telltale Games announced that their King's Quest title was cancelled because Activision revoked the license, the article that announced the cancellation stated that Activision had their own plans for the series. Hopefully, this time King's Quest IX actually comes into being, as fans have been waiting patiently to discover what the Graham clan have been up to after all these years. We'll soon find out if King Graham and his family will have better luck this time, as the game is scheduled to be released in 2015.
2014 marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the classic point-and-click adventure game Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb. The Wormkeep Entertainment Company is developing a sequel to the game named Inherit the Earth: Sand and Shadows.
There is a Kickstarter for the sequel, which will once again be set in the world of humanoid anthropomorphic animals and will follow Rif the fox as he tries to confirm the rumors that an important relic of the legendary humans has survived, discovers who is responsible for the relic's recovery, and deals with the sinister forces behind the rumors that endanger Rif, his friends, and his society.
You can watch a video demo of the game at the game's website and back the game at the back the game at the Inherit the Earth: Sand and Shadows Kickstarter.
It was with justifiable outrage that avid Mojo groupie Rum Rogers seethed the following rebuke at us in the comments of the prior news post:
It's incredible to see Mojo's not mentioning Ronzo's handwritten notes for building SCUMM.
We stand chastened. Or do we? Can you really prove that we haven't been sitting on this intel deliberately in an attempt to spur a gesture of your pledged love for us? Seems it's you who had the wool pulled over his eyes! Also: we're pregnant.
In all seriousness, we apologize for not being on top of this. But you've got to expect this kind of lassitude now that Mojo is a publicly-funded entity. Oh, you heard me. Yeah, might want to pay closer attention to those little amendments that get tacked on to the highway bill before you pull the lever next time, ya saps!
Source: Grumpy Gamer
So apparently Dan Adelman, former "Indie Lead" of Nintendo, had the idea of bringing back Grim Fandango a long time ago!
Which were some games that you work really hard to get them on Nintendo's platforms, but for some reason at the end you couldn't?
Grim Fandango. I mentioned the idea of an HD remake to Tim Schafer about 7-8 years ago. I was so jealous that PlayStation got that. Curse you, Adam Boyes!
I suppose we can guess why it didn't work out. Adelman could have petitioned Tim all he wanted, but it was LucasLegal he would have had to strike a deal with. Maybe Sony just screams louder?
I think it's kind of awesome that Nintendo was pursuing this. It also potentially just goes to show how much of a massive asshole you apparently had to be to score a job as a gatekeeper for Lucas-owned licenses.
Source: IGN
Bill Tiller, Jeremiah Grant, and Gene Moscy started a new company (Venture Moon Industries) and a new kickstarter to fund a pirate themed adventure game inspired by Monkey Island. It's called Duke Grabowski, Mighty Swashbuckler, and will be set in the Azurbbean, the fictional version of the Caribbean from Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island.
The three created a tech demo for an homage and spoof of The Secret of Monkey Island, but liked it so much they decided to extend it into a full, small adventure game. The game puts a twist on the concept, as the main character is a big, dim, angry man who turns out to be a man of honor. Bill Tiller is going to be the project lead and art director, Gene Mocsy is going to design, produce, and write for it, and Jeremiah Grant is going to be the programmer. They founded a new company to produce the game because the three wanted to be equal partners and since Autumn Moon Entertainment belonged solely to Bill Tiller, a new company was decided the best way to do so. Because of this, Autumn Moon Entertainment will be licensing the Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island intellectual property to Venture Moon Industries for this game.
They're looking for $40,000 which will fund the game, which will have about ten to twelve rooms and be a quarter of the size of A Vampyre Story. So, if this interests you, what are you waiting for? Pick a tier and back it now.
The Humongous Flash Bundle is on now, with a bunch of Humongous Entertainment games for cheap, with a portion to go to charity. Best of all, if you pay $20 or more, you can get all of the games that have been released on Steam so far (that's 1/5 of the usual price). You'll also get DRM-free versions for Windows, but if you run a different operating system, rest assured that most of the games run on ScummVM, so if you run the Windows versions of the game through ScummVM on the platform of your choice, you'll still be getting the same experience.
In a move that surprised absolutely no one, Telltale's president Kevin Bruner and the creator of The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman, announced The Walking Dead: Season Three at this year's Comic Con. Since Season Two is not even finished yet, nothing was revealed other than the fact that Telltale is working on it. More details will likely come after the current season wraps up.
Chapter Two of The Journey Down, the adventure game inspired by LucasArts classics such as Grim Fandango, is scheduled to release on August 25th. If you pre-order now, it's only $5.99 and you get The Journey Down Chapter One as well (the key is transferable if you already own Chapter One). Half of all pre-order revenue will go to help the Mavuno girl's school project. Find out more about the pre-order deal and see a couple of scenes from the upcoming chapter in the trailer embedded below:
From recording tests with Noah Falstein as Bobbin Threadbare in 1992 to her present work voice directing Broken Age, Khris Brown has played a crucial role in making your favorite Mojo classics talk.
In a new interview with Gamastura, Brown discusses her career, sharing insights she gained from her decades in the field:
In short: know your stuff, be supportive, have no ego, and be ready to laugh. Do not give up after 3 takes. Do give up after 10 takes. We had 27 takes of Indiana Jones saying, "It's a cup full of lava." The actor was exhausted, and we ended up Frankensteining the line anyway (pasting two takes together to create our ideal).
Source: Gamasutra
The latest release of ScummVM, the interpreter that lets you play classic adventure games on modern (and not so modern) systems, is now available. This release adds support for 5 new games: The Neverhood, Mortville Manor, Voyeur, Return to Ringworld, and Chivalry is Not Dead.
In addition, the MT-32 emulator has been updated, an OpenGL backend has been added, many aspects of the GUI have been improved, the AGOS engine has been enhanced, Urban Runner's videos are now less CPU-demanding, tons of bugs have been fixed in dozens of SCI games, the Adlib sound in Loom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has been made to sound more like the original, and platform portability for the Tony and Tinsel engines has been improved. The Steam versions of the four LucasArts adventures that were released on that platform are now supported as well.
You can pick up the latest version for your platform of choice at the ScummVM homepage.
Another Kickstarter is up for Kaptain Brawe 2, the adventure game with a story by ex-Revolution writer Steve Ince and art by ex-LucasArts artist Bill Tiller. This time they're looking for a smaller amount, so hopefully they'll make their goal this time. So go ahead and back it to help make their goal distance that much shorter.
The penultimate episode of The Walking Dead Season Two is coming out next week. It will be released for PC, Mac, and PSN on PlayStation 3 and on Vita in North America on July 22nd, on PSN on PlayStation 3 and on Vita in Europe and on XBLA on Xbox 360 worldwide on July 23rd, and on iOS on July 24th. Release dates for Android versions haven't been announced yet. As usual, Telltale has also released a trailer for episode 4, which is embedded below.
