The International House of Mojo

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.

The iOS version of The Wolf Among Us now has episode 2 available, which can be purchased and downloaded inside of the application.

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.

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:

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.

The wait is almost over. Broken Age Part I (the project formerly known as the Double Fine Adventure) will be available to Kickstarter backers on January 14th. It will follow shortly afterward on Steam Early Access, where it can be picked up by those who want to experience the game before the second part is out, but who didn't participate in the crowdfunding.

Broken Age Part II is scheduled to be released some time between April and May 2014.

Source: Joystiq

Presto Studios has been working on a remake of The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime, which itself is a remake of the original The Journeyman Project, with re-created graphics and gameplay, for quite a while now.

Those who use a Mac don't have to wait any longer, as The Journeyman Project Store now has a DVD available for Mac OS X. Those on other platforms will have to wait a little bit longer, as it's scheduled to come out in February 2014 for Windows and at a later, as of yet unannounced date for Linux.

On December 19th, The Amazon Appstore added a version of The Walking Dead to their service for the Kindle Fire HDX. At the moment, it's not available for any other Android based system.

However, another Android platform is indeed confirmed to be getting The Walking Dead: Season One in the future: the Ouya. Now that it's out on an Android platform, it's certainly possible it may come out on the main Google Play store for more Android platforms at some point.

Source: Android Police

To ring out the old year with a bang, here's some adventure related Mojo tidbits for you all.

First, do you remember the Marius Winter's adventure game application that got him an internship at Double Fine? Well, Diego Delfino was inspired by that, and took it one step further, creating a full playable adventure game application in an attempt to a job at Telltale Games.

Second, if you're like me, you might be wondering how chapter 2 of The Journey Down is coming along. Luckily, the Chapter 2 Work in Progress thread at Desura has just been updated with news and new screenshots.

They've got an internal preliminary playable-to-the-end build of the game up and running, but there's a lot of things missing yet and most of the movies are still animated storyboards. There are still some puzzles that need inside knowledge to solve, but they hope to have an internal beta version of the game ready by February that will allow the game to be completed by people who don't know the solutions to all the puzzles.

And, lastly, to wrap up the last Mojo tidbits post of 2013, I'll leave you with a Monkey Island music video set to the song Payphone. It was created by Artisa, and posted on our forums nearly a month ago (which is only a few days in Mojo Time™).

While the rest of us were distracted by the insidious influence of loved ones, reader Threepwood4life spent his Christmas noticing that former LEC animator/artist Anson Jew, already known for his LEC animation reel that includes a rare Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix clip, has put together a new compilation comprised exclusively of discarded material. It's basically What Mojo Exists To Report On: The Movie.

Source: Anson Jew's Blog

It's time again for a post that lets you know all the small tidbits of Mojo related news that are happening now.

First, ex-Mojoer (and multiple Game of the Year award winner) Jake Rodkin's new studio Campo Santo has become just that much cooler with the addition of former Double Fine lead artist Jane Y. Ng to the team. Seriously, with the roster of talent they have at the studio already, their first game is sure to be awesome.

Secondly, you might remember the Kickstarted album by Sierra veteran composer Ken Allen of orchestrated versions of his video game songs. You might be wondering about the progress of the album. Mr. Allen reiterated last month in the comments section of that Kickstarter campaign that the project is currently on hold as he works on sound design and makes new compositions for SpaceVenture, the upcoming space comedy adventure game by The Two Guys From Andromeda (the creators of Space Quest). As music was always an important piece of what made Sierra's games popular, and Ken Allen was a big part of that, it's great to see the Two Guys and Ken Allen working together on a project again.

The Walking Dead: Season Two Episode 1: All That Remains is out now for most platforms. It's available for PC and Mac through Steam and the Telltale Store, for Xbox 360's Live Arcade and PS3's PlayStation Network in Europe and North America, and on iTunes (where the title gets even larger as Walking Dead: The Game - Season Two).

Telltale's PR Person Laura Perusco posted in the PlayStation blog that news about the PlayStation Vita release will be coming shortly after the holidays. There's no word on the release date for the Ouya version (although The Walking Dead: Season One is scheduled to be released on Ouya in Winter 2014, so it won't be releasing sooner than that).

Develop has run a two part (1, 2) interview with industry and LucasArts veteran Noah Falstein. The designer discusses the old days, including how he dressed up as a fallen cosmonaut for the Rescue on Fractalus! manual, how he wishes his initial version of The Dig had gotten made, and how you owe him for the hiring of Ron Gilbert.

Falstein’s anecdotes are great, although I guess if you know your Lucasfilm history this interview largely treads old ground. Still, it’s hard to ever get enough stories of the formative years of George Lucas' wonderful, expensive experiment that resulted in not only the SCUMM games, but Pixar Animation Studios and Avid’s nonlinear editing tools as well. More importantly, Thrillville.

Source: Develop