About a week ago, Bill posted on the A Vampyre Story Facebook page with this:
The game was on hold for a few good reasons, which I can't talk about - yet, but one of those possibilities fell through, so now I'm back working on it as of today.
"The game" must be A Vampyre Story: Year One, but what fell through? Will we ever know?
If you get a crash in year 3 when entering the engine room, you might have to compile Grim Mouse from source, as it is caused by a bug that was fixed in ResidualVM, but isn't in the new Grim Mouse build (although it is in its source tree). The author said he'd release a new version of Grim Mouse with the fix for this problem. It only seems to affect a small amount of people (which did include myself, so I can confirm it plays fine when compiling it yourself from source), so you can try playing through 0.4 now, since it's possible this bug won't affect your playthrough.
Brandon Boyer is a video game journalist and video game developer who was denied coverage for his surgery to remove his cancer by his medical provider Humana (leaving him with over $100,000 in medical bills).
There's a humble bundle going on now that will donate all proceeds to the Brandon Boyer Cancer Relief Fund (with any excess funds from this promotion being donated to a select cancer research organization). The minimum purchase price for the bundle is $25, and will get you 27 indie games and 18 game soundtracks (both of which include Double Fine's Stacking).
Update: 1954: Alcatraz is now available on Steam as well, at the same limited time $2 discount as GOG.com.
Two new adventure games co-developed by Gene Mocsy, the co-writer of Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island, have been released today!
The first release is 1954: Alcatraz, the first game by Gene Mocsy's studio Irresponsible Games (and co-developed by German adventure game developer Daedalic). The game has two lead characters, a man who must escape Alcatraz prison in 1954, and his wife, who is trying to avoid gangsters who are after the money that her husband stole. The game has multiple solutions to puzzles, which will affect the characters in different ways. 1954: Alcatraz is out now on GOG.com (currently discounted at $2 off it's usual $19.99 price tag), and will also be released in a few hours on Steam.
The second game is Perils of Man: Chapter One, the first chapter of a seven chapter adventure game about risks and consequences developed by IF Games with a game design by Gene Mocsy and Bill Tiller of Autumn Moon. Chapter One is currently available for free from iTunes for iPad and will be updated soon for support for iPhone and iPod touch devices as well. They also have expressed interest in releasing the game for Android and Windows, OS X, and Linux, and ask for people to post on their forums to express their interest in the game for these platforms.
It seems that March will be full of games developed by Gene Mocsy. According to Steam, 1954: Alcatraz, the adventure game co-developed by his studio Irresponsible Games and German adventure game developer Daedalic, which was originally scheduled to release in 2012, is finally coming out on the 11th of March.
The game will have two player characters: a man who attempts to escape from Alcatraz prison, and his wife who is trying to avoid gangsters who are seeking the money that her husband stole from an armored truck. The puzzles will have multiple solutions, which will lead to different consequences for the characters. If this sounds interesting to you, check out this interview from December that GamingLives conducted with Gene Mocsy to find out more about this intriguing sounding adventure game.
They have also stated that they intend to release some teaser tracks of music from Perils of Man from composer Paul Shapera soon, and hint at a possible full soundtrack album release. To see some of his previous work, you can check out his bandcamp page here.
Update 2: iOS has apparently gotten the release one day early, as episode 2 is now available on iTunes as well. The European PSN for PlayStation 3 release date has not yet been announced. It is also scheduled to be released some time at the end of March for PlayStation Vita (along with episode 1).
Update: It's out now on Xbox 360 through the Xbox Live Arcade.The Walking Dead: Season Two - Episode 2: A House Divided is out now for PC and Mac through Steam and the Telltale store and on PSN for PlayStation 3 in North America. It will be released later today for XBLA on Xbox 360 and tomorrow on iOS.
Hopefully the imminent release of The Walking Dead Season Two on Vita means that platform will be receiving The Wolf Among Us soon as well, as that game is currently AWOL on Vita as well.
In related news, Telltale has brought back Playing Dead, this time through IGN, with Greg Miller replacing AJ Locascio as host. The latest episode contains an interview with the voice of Luke, Scott Porter, and a new trailer for The Walking Dead: Season Two: Episode 2.
With all the Amnesia Fortnight madness going on, we managed to miss the news that Broken Age Act I is now available DRM-free to those who already ordered it from your download page at humblebundle.com. If you haven't already ordered, Double Fine has set up a website for you to purchase the DRM-free version here.
Speaking of Amnesia Fortnight, Double Fine has graciously allowed the community to create their own version of one of the pitches that didn't make it this year. That pitch is one that didn't make it through both years of public Amnesia Fortnight, Patrick Hackett's Bad Golf (and Bad Golf 2). Bad Golf: Community Edition is being created with Unity under the creative commons no commercial license, and is being coordinated through github. They are still actively seeking anyone who wants to help. They still need programmers, artists, musicians, foley and voice artists, and 3D and 2D artists. If you want to see where you can help, check out their issue tracker and check out the project's forum thread for updates on the progress.
In Telltale news, The Walking Dead Season Two episode 2 has received a release window. Episode one will be released in early March, at least for the platforms that have already received episode one. There is still no sign of when the PlayStation Vita and Ouya versions of Season 2 episode 1 will be released.
Lastly, Telltale and Gearbox will be at SXSW at a panel at 5:30 on March 8th, where they will reveal the first information about their upcoming episodic series, Tales of The Borderlands.
Gold Rush, one of the last official adventure games created on Sierra's AGI engine, developed by the MacNeill bros. and published by Sierra, is receiving a high definition remake, courtesy of Sunlight Games.
The adventure follows a man named Jerrod travel from New York to California in search of gold in 1848, at the cusp of the California Gold Rush. The game had three seperate routes to take to get to California, and the remake will be faithful to the original, with all three routes in-tact, and containing the original storyline. The remake will also allow you to optionally use a verb parser to control the game along with point and click for movement, or through complete point and click control. It is scheduled to be released some time from late 2014 to 2015, but if you'd rather not wait to play the remake, the original game will be re-released for PC and iOS later this spring.
A programmer named Tobias Pfaff has released Grim Mouse, a modified ResidualVM and Grim Fandango so that the game can be played completely with point and click mouse control.
Grim Fandango can now be played with point and click control in all scenes, including the scenes where the camera shifts to close-up view. It also has a new point-and-click inventory system. In order to accomplish this feat, Tobias had to make major modifications to both the ResidualVM code and the game source. Luckily, ResidualVM's PatchR code allows for fan patches to be applied at run time, so all that is required to run this is the original game, just as the main ResidualVM branch.
Tobias has released a Mac and Windows build of Grim Mouse, and the sourcecode is freely available if you want to compile it to try it on other platforms. It is currently in early alpha phase, so there are likely to be bugs present since it hasn't been fully tested yet. If you want to participate in the testing, or just want to try it out for yourself, head over to the Grim Mouse thread on the ResidualVM forums.
With this, most of the season's announced platforms are up to date. However, there's still no sign of when the PlayStation Vita version of episode 1 and 2 will be released.
Source: TabTimes
Update 2/6: Microsoft is sending out download codes to those who purchased the season pass for The Wolf Among Us on XBLA. Check your Live inbox for the message. If you haven't received yours yet, you should be getting it soon.
Update 2/5: It's out on XBLA and on PSN in Europe now too. There's apparently a problem with season passes on XBLA, where the system will not let you download episode 2 if you purchased a season pass. Do not click to buy episode 2, as you will be charged twice. Microsoft updated their Xbox live status page stating that they are working on it now, and should have a fix out by tomorrow.
Update 2/4: It's out on the Telltale Games store, Steam, and on PlayStation Network in North America now.The Telltale Blog has just been updated with release dates for The Wolf Among Us: Episode 2 - Smoke and Mirrors.
It will be released on February 4th for PC, Mac, and PSN in North America, and on February 5th for PSN in Europe and XBLA. The iOS version will be released next week as well. The Vita version won't be releasing at that time, as there's still no word on the Vita release of episode one (nor is there any word on the Vita version of The Walking Dead: Season Two - Episode 1 for that matter).
Since the release date of the second episode of The Wolf Among Us is looming, Telltale has released the trailer for the game, which they have tagged as a red band trailer due to the violent and sexual content within. The Wolf Among Us: Episode 2 - Smoke & Mirrors will be released some time next week.
They also have an interview with Tim Schafer, where he answers Kickstarter questions.
In what is largely a passionate tirade directed at the careless mishandling of classic titles when re-released on modern platforms, the A.V. Club spares some room toward the end to rail against the complete failure of certain treasured games to be made available at all:
Game preservation’s worst-kept secret is that piracy has done the best job of keeping classic games available and relevant. Since the mid-’90s, the Internet’s vast and varied emulation scene has made the history of video games available to anyone willing to skirt the law. And unfortunately, playing some of the best games ever made requires a disregard for copyright. Take Maniac Mansion. An icon of the LucasArts studio’s golden age, it’s one of the most important adventure games ever made, and it’s still entertaining today. If you want to play in 2014, though, you’ll need to download it illegally and run it through an emulator, since it hasn’t been in print for close to 20 years.
Disney, which now owns the rights to the LucasArts library, may never acknowledge the studio’s legacy, but that would just maintain the status quo. Most of the developer’s best titles have never been made available to any digital marketplace. If you’re just learning about LucasArts and want to play games like Sam & Max Hit The Road, Day Of The Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango, you’re on your own. Disney would rather hot-glue lightsabers to the hands of Mickey and Donald dolls than offer players the chance to buy games that Disney executives might not even realize they own.
I feel like he may be painting with too broad of a brush by indicting hot glue in this, but his point stands firm.
Source: The A.V. Club
There's bad news for fans of Wallace & Gromit and Telltale Games. Telltale's digital distribution agreement with Aardman Studios expired, and Telltale doesn't have plans to renew that agreement. That means that Wallace & Gromit is no longer available for digital distribution anywhere. If you previously purchased it from XBLA, iTunes, Steam, GOG.com, or the Telltale Store, you will be able to re-download it. But, unfortunately if you hadn't already purchased it, you will no longer be able to buy it, unless you can track down a site selling the PC DVD version (which is currently in-stock at Amazon, if you want to pick it up before it's gone forever, or at least while it's still reasonably priced).
Fans of Loom have been waiting for the sequel to Loom for decades. Luckily, some creative Loom fans have decided to stop waiting for an official sequel and have created one of their own.
The game is called Forge, and uses bits of information that have been revealed by Loom's creator, Brian Moriarty, over the years. The game follows the blacksmith Rusty Nailbender, and uses a new magical item to conduct spells, the Blacksmith Guantlets, rather than the weaver's distaff. It uses a graphical style similar to the 256 colour art of the Loom PC CD and FM-Towns versions, and is created using the Adventure Game Studio engine.
If that sounds like something that's of interest to you, then you can pick it up for free over at the Forge homepage.
Telltale's co-founder and president Kevin Bruner just posted on the Telltale forums that The Wolf Among Us episode 2 will finally be released in the first week of February.
He had the following to say about the delay:
Ep 2 should be available the first week of February. We are working hard with all of our partners (Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, Apple) to coordinate everything, but we’re confident enough to announce that here. The episode is looking really good (as is the rest of the season!). We are very concerned about the long delay for this episode, but this is one of those occasions where several things conspired against us (not to mention the additional delays due to the holidays). I won't dive into the details, but it’s been an unusual and specific set of circumstances and we do not anticipate it happening again as we go forward with the rest of the season.So there you have it. First week of February!
Tommo purchased Humongous Entertainment in Atari's bankruptcy auction last July (except for the Backyard Sports franchise, which went to The Evergreen Group, and Moonbase Commander, which went to Rebellion).
They've been doing all the right things with their acquisition so far. They renamed the company back to Humongous Entertainment, brought back the Humongous website, brought Putt-Putt Joins the Circus to Android, and they're looking for more avenues to re-release the junior adventures produced by the company that Ron Gilbert and Shelly Day built in 1992.
Humongous Entertainment just re-tweeted a message from twitter user George Q. Greg: "Night Dive. That gives me hope." In addition, last month Night Dive asked their Facebook followers if there was any children's games that they remember fondly.
This is just as much of a rumour as the Night Dive/LucasArts situation. However, this one probably holds more weight, as Tommo actually has proven they want to do the sensible thing and sell the games they own through digital distribution to get some of their money back. As usual with rumours like these, we'll just have to take them with a grain of salt, and see how they pan out.