The International House of Mojo

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:

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!

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:

I'm not sure I agree - everyone knows that Doug Lee's best work comes after twenty-five takes, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Anyway, read the full interview.

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.

Your final excuse has just been abolished. Autumn Moon's first (of two) games is now on the one last digital distribution service it had been glaringly missing from. So get on it - aren't you hankering to know what all that fuss was about six years ago?

It seems Bill Tiller had some help getting the game fitted to Steam's specifications. I'm sure many of you share his gratitude:

Buy it for yourself and then a friend! Every million sales make a difference for that sequel's chances.

The Double Fine Action News page has been updated with news that the remastered version of Grim Fandango will will be releasing simultaneously on Windows, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, and Vita.

The final episode of Telltale's episodic series based on the Fables comics, The Wolf Among Us, is going to be released next week. It will be released for PC, Mac, and for PlayStation Network on PlayStation 3 in North America on July 8, on PSN for PS3 in Europe and on Xbox Live Arcade for Xbox 360 worldwide on July 9, and on iOS on July 10th. Release dates for the Android and PlayStation Vita versions haven't been announced yet. The trailer is out now as well, which you can view below:

ScummVM, the program that allows you to run many adventure games from many different developers, such as LucasArts, Sierra, Revolution, Coktel Vision, and more, on modern operating systems, phones, tablets, and consoles, is gearing up for their latest release. That means that they have made quite a few improvements, and added new games, and they need your help to test them to make sure they play as they should.

The new games that will be added in 1.7.0 are Chivalry Is Not Dead, Mortville Manor, Return to Ringworld, The Neverhood, and Voyeur. They have also changed their Adlib player for the DOS floppy versions of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Loom, so they need your help testing these games as well.

If you own any of these games and would like to help out, then fire up ScummVM on your platform of choice and test. Let them know how you made out on the ScummVM forums and if you find any bugs, submit them on the ScummVM bug tracker. The results of testing will be posted on the ScummVM wiki.

In related news, keep an eye on the ScummVM Planet. The Google Summer of Code is going on now, ScummVM is a part of it again, and this year their sister project ResidualVM is involved too (with ScummVM acting as an umbrella for both projects). GSoC students are adding support for Sfinx and The Prince and the Coward to ScummVM, as well as improving support for Escape from Monkey Island and improving the TinyGL renderer in ResidualVM. They've already accomplished a lot on these tasks, so it will be really interesting to see what they manage to get done by the end of the summer.

Well, hell, Double Fine is remastering Grim Fandango -- what can you do to sustain this high?!

First, you can stop whining about it not being released for PC up front. You know it'll be available for non-Sony platforms soon enough.

Then! Then you can bask in nostalgia heaven!

For example, you can check out our various screenshots. Concept art, in-jokes, covers… It's all there. And you probably want to re-watch the trailer and enjoy a G4 special on the game too, right in our video section.

This is probably a good time to re-read Jason in-depth Secret History article too. (LEC might not have acknowledged Grim's existence, but, bizarrely enough, Disney has.)

Word has it that Thrik is resurrecting his Grim Fandango site. You should nag him to get that going.

And the soundtrack! Go listen to the soundtrack!

2 Player Productions has a retrospective too. What the hell?

Feel free to link to more Grim in the comments, or on Twitter. Tweet it to us and we shall retweet.

Kaptain Brawe 2: A Space Travesty is now on Kickstarter. It is an adventure game with a story by Steve Ince (who worked with Revolution on most of its games, and created the So Blonde series) and 2D art by Autumn Moon founder (and Curse of Monkey Island lead artist) Bill Tiller.

This seems like a perfect pairing, since just about everyone would agree that it's always great to see Bill Tiller artwork in adventure games, and Steve Ince has been nominated for multiple awards for his adventure game scripts. So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and pick a tier to help get the game made.

While we were down, things kept right on going. So, here's what we missed during our downtime:

The Wolf Among Us Episode 4 finished releasing on the already announced platforms (PC/Mac/PSN/XBLA/iOS) and The Walking Dead: Season Two Episode 3 finally received a release date for PS Vita: June 3rd in North America and June 4th in Europe. Also, Telltale announced a bunch of disc versions of their games: PS4 and Xbox One will be getting The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and The Walking Dead: Season Two. There will also be disc versions of The Walking Dead: Season Two and The Wolf Among Us for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. No release dates yet have been announced.

And last but not least, Ron Gilbert's Match 3 puzzle game, Scurvy Scallywags, is now on Android, Tommo and Night Dive released 5 more Humongous Entertainment games on Steam, and bjbennyboy's Telltale Explorer now supports Poker Night 2, Law & Order: Legacies, and The Walking Dead: Season One.