The International House of Mojo

Do you remember Marius Fietzek, the German adventure aficionado who won our hearts, not to mention a Telltale internship, along with his cohort Thorsten Fietzek with those "I Wonder What Happens in Tales of Monkey Island" flash videos? He's back to secure another dream job using another unconventional portfolio woven from the fabric of awesome.

Sensing that the success of Double Fine's Kickstarter campaign would translate into a need for new hires, Marius has submitted a resume to Tim Schafer's studio - an interactive one, taking the form of a brief, Monkey Island-cognizant flash adventure game (playable here) in which you're a Double Fine HR goon named Clark who is interviewing Marius, his skill set revealed via dialog tree.

Marius' method is brilliant, and functions either intentionally or unintentionally as homage to the very same technique Tim Schafer himself employed when he sent a resume to Lucasfilm Games in the form of a text adventure game depicting the happy ending to his job search. Hopefully Marius' creativity pays off - he seems to only be after a brief internship, and unlike Schafer he has the advantage of not inadvertently revealing to his prospective employer that he pirated one of their games. I don't know what happens next, but I hope someone will make a speculative flash video shedding light on the subject. I want this to get so meta that it consumes itself helplessly into a black hole.

Source: In-game

Telltale partnered up with its real friends at IGN to unveil this teaser trailer for The Walking Dead:

Kinda feels like an interface-less gameplay clip from one of their CSI games. Possibly to compensate for the relative scarcity of media they've dispersed for the project thus far, Telltale is promising to follow up this tease with a more revealing "debut trailer" come Monday, while you're still bristling from whatever's going to happen in Sunday's season finale of the TV show.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Tim made an interesting comment about how he intends to balance nostalgia and freshness with the Double Fine Adventure Project:

Here's why I find this interesting: I have a hard time believing that, had Tim followed up Grim Fandango immediately with an adventure game, it would have been a 2D point 'n clicker as Double Fine Adventure has been described from day one. If you look at Tim's projects up to Grim Fandango, you can see a relatively natural progression to the interface-free, direct control scheme of that game that Tim was never slow to defend. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Tim from 1998 would have told you that the idea of making his next adventure game in 2D and point 'n click would have represented taking a step backwards. Certainly, the Double Fine Adventure is a cede to tradition in some pretty specific ways, not just in the fact that it's a graphic adventure.

Which is no problem with me. The idea of Tim revisiting this sort of game is irresistible, welcome (to no fewer than 73,856 and counting!), and I'm sure something he genuinely came around to being passionate about during the fifteen years it's been since he's played in his original sandbox. Nonetheless, it'll be very interesting to see how much the team looks back as they craft an experience that is "fresh and modern."

Source: Eurogamer

If you've played either of Autumn Moon Entertainment's two games, A Vampyre Story and Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island, you know that their composer, Pedro Macedo Camacho, is a name that already belongs in the pantheon of great adventure game maestros, worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Land or McConnell. The collaborations between his music and Bill Tiller's gorgeous illustrations, hopefully to be continued, have resulted, in the estimation of this humble poetry reader, in some of the most captivating game scenes in the past several years.

That would be why we kidnapped Pedro from his birthplace of Portugal, locked him in a castle dungeon. beset him with a series of prying questions, and tortured the answers out of him for your amusement. Tortured him, that is, with the instrument of love.

Behold the exhaustive interview we pieced together from what Pedro managed to enunciate between screams and blood-gurgling, the responses covering everything from his time in music school to the way he landed the Vampyre gig to how his future stubbornly refuses to show any signs of dimming.

Unfortunately, Pedro ate a fatal amount of manifestly inedible Skink Toes and Eau d'Mojo we offered him after the ordeal as a peace offering, and he passed away soon after. Still, why not lift your spirits to the treble clef and go read our interview with the late, great Pedro Macedo Camacho that was one-and-a-half years* in the making?

*No, that's literally the case.

An editorial published on Gamasutra today ruminates on the effectiveness of the absence of voice acting in certain games. The author was apparently inspired to write the piece when she replayed Loom recently. Evidently having grown up with the original EGA version, she was surprised to find that the version found on Steam is in fact the Talkie VGA version, the existence of which she was unfamiliar with. Outrage, and the article, ensued.

Not that LucasArts gives a flying monkey bladder, but for me this reinforces the importance of having both the original and "enhanced" versions of Loom available because they are such different experiences. While the voicework in the Loom update was quality, the game's dialog had to be re-written, and the close-up art had to be struck, in order to accommodate technical limitations of the time. It is unclear if the new script, at least partially (but possibly mostly) rewritten by Orson Scott Card, even involved creator Brian Moriarty at all. Plus there's a legitimate argument to be made that Mark Ferrari's original, brilliant, and ingeniously animated 16-color EGA backgrounds justifies the respect of being perpetually offered as an option, rather than replaced.

Source: Gamasutra

Over at Kotaku, Chris Person has put together a nice little montage of all the words he learned while playing Sam & Max Hit the Road.

If I had thought about using this as a studying tool, I wouldn't have had to spend all that money on an SAT tutor. Instead, I just stuck to using "how pavlovian" as a catchphrase to bewilder my friends (which is obviously the best line in the game). It's also nice to see there's another AdLib soundtrack aficionado out there.

Source: Kotaku

Crimson Cow Games, who hold the publishing rights to the first two A Vampyre Story games, have made a post on their Facebook page regarding the sequel, which has infamously been in a state of arrested development for three years. Unfortunately, the post is in German, so the best I can do is the best Bing can do:

"Until today" sounds hopeful to me, and it looks like they're considering making it episodic now. I wonder what the "high pressure" refers to - are their rights about to expire? Anyway, with Crimson Cow finally talking about the game there'll probably be more to report soon.

Source: Crimson Cow Facebook

So reveals this interview with Tim that Giant Bomb published yesterday.Do not settle for that snippet! It's an excellent interview.

Source: Giant Bomb

Thought you were done with surreal Double Fine news for the week? Yeah, well, you're suffering from a malady we in the medical profession like to refer to as "confusion," because Double Fine just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new graphic adventure game. From the project site, which includes important information about how this all works:

The goal is $400,000 dollars, which is probably how much it costs to keep the Old Republic servers humming over a weekend. So, were you one of those people bitching when Tim "sold out" to the allure of the ample bossomed action/adventure? Tell your kids that community college is the more logical choice these days anyway and make this happen. The rewards offered for major contributions are rather awesome even if they're out of your reach, but pledge whatever amount you can and enjoy the company of the aggressively sensuous people listed here.

jp edit: $400,000 in half a day. We have a Schafer/Gilbert point & click adventure game! Now, let's up the funds to get iOS versions and the London Philharmonic...

Source: Kickstarter

A few Telltale forumites observed that, unlike previous Telltale seasons, the PC/Mac release of Law & Order: Legacy episodes did not come with information about the traditional end-of-season DVD. Sure enough, customer service rep Michael Parks replied with this:

That's kind of interesting simply because I think it's a first. Is this a new trend, or does Telltale simply figure that Law & Order fans won't miss the perk of a collector's disc as much a fans of more geeky licenses (aka all their others) would?

Source: Telltale forums

The AGS Bake Sale Bundle is a bundle of games made with the popular Adventure Game Studio game creation utility. Like the Humble Indie Bundle and other similar bundles, the AGS Bake Sale bundle is available for whatever price you feel the games are worth, and proceeds go to charity (in this case Child's Play, a charity which helps sick children by giving them video games to enjoy).

All fourteen of the games in the bundle are all new and were designed specifically for the AGS Bake Sale. While all the games use the Adventure Game Studio, not all the games are adventures. There are a few games from other genres in there too, such as the Indiana Jones inspired platformer Indiana Rodent and the Raiders Of The Lost Cheese, starring a mouse in a tiny fedora.

So what are you waiting for? Name your price, help sick children take their mind off their illness, and get fourteen new games right here.

The clever chaps at ResidualVM (the 3D sister to ScummVM) have finally discovered the reason for the missing dialogue at the end of Grim Fandango. As it turns out it wasn't a design choice, it was a simple bug...

A bug so buried that apparently not even Tim Schafer was aware of its existence:

The bug is now fixed for players using the latest version of ResidualVM to play Grim Fandango.

You can get ResidualVM for free here: http://www.residualvm.org

Source: ResidualVM.org

A bleak report on the status of A Vampyre Story 2: A Bat's Tale has been making the rounds, and while it's not super-revealing if you read Mojo it does bring the source of the project's ailments into a bit more focus. While updating PC release dates, German game site GBase contacted Bill Tiller for a more accurate target for the trouble sequel. Here's the translated response they received that's been spreading across the internet:

This shines a bit more light onto what exactly the nebulous financial troubles that have beset the project are. It seems that the budget Crimson Cow allotted for the game ran dry when Autumn Moon outsourced some of the programming duties to undisclosed parties that proved incompetent. I'm assuming this went down during the end of the first game's production and is what caused its year-long delay.

A few sites are jumping on Bill's case for describing the game as been 30% complete when earlier he apparently estimated it at 40%, but that seems kind of pedantic. Bottom line is that while both the developer and the holder of the publishing rights would like to see A Vampyre Story 2 made, its fate is predicated on the materialization of an investor, and there's possibly a closing window of opportunity (else why the threat of cancellation?). Any takers?

Source: GBase

As is tradition, Steve drew the grateful world a holiday card starring the indomitable Freelance Police. From the Sam & Max blog:

I especially like the city burning outside. Note that this year is the 25th anniversary of Sam & Max. If you're anything like me and I know I am, you can probably think of some great ways for Purcell/Telltale/LucasArts to commemorate the occasion, but just work up a good belch and you'll feel better.

Source: Sam & Max Blog

The venerable Adventure Gamers is counting down the top 100 adventure games of all time. They did, of course, do a top 20 way back when, and quite "controversial" it was (or "wrong" as most would say, seeing how it didn't include LeChuck's Revenge), but that was then and now is now and now they're doing a top 100.

Keep checking it out over the next few days to see who'll be the winner. The Dig has already hit #92.

CLONE2727 UPDATE: They've finished the list and apparently King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow is better than The Secret of Monkey Island and Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers now. Forget December 2012, this is the real apocalypse! Of course our buddy Tim still grabbed the top spot anyway.

You may recall that a novelization of Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings penned by Rob MacGregor, author of seven previous Indy books, was supposed to accompany the game's release but was bizarrely cancelled despite having been long completed. In a blog post, MacGregor recalls the incident in detail.

Basically, the publisher (Del Rey) had set the release of the novel to coincide with the release date for the game that was slated at the time, but when LucasArts changed the release schedule for Staff of Kings to the tune of a year long delay in a harbinger of the whole We're Abandoning The Internal Version To Focus On Force Unleashed fiasco, they did not let Del Ray know. Despite MacGregor's attempts to communicate this development with his editor, the game came out with no book. Rather than release the book even slightly belatedly, it was decided that it wasn't worth releasing it at all (?!). At one point, Howard Roffman (Lucas Licensing exec and interim LEC president) told an inquiring fan the point-blank falsehood that the reason for the novel's mysterious absence was that MacGregor had "missed the deadline," despite the fact that the manuscript had been submitted an entire year before the game came out.

It's completely ridiculous and a little heartbreaking to think that a completed Indiana Jones novel will not see the light of day simply due to a communication failure and boneheaded business decision. I think I know what MacGuffin Indy should be searching for in the fifth movie. For his part, MacGregor seems more flummoxed than pissed off, noting that he was "paid quite well" for the adaptation, but the publisher lost money and us Indy fans are left to cry.

Think you can hold in the tears? MacGregor has this image of the novel's cover to help get you going:

Source: Seven Realms Publishing

Jurassic Park: The Game is spreading to European retail next year for Xbox 360 and Windows, courtesy of Kalypso Media: The approving cries from Far East Asia are particularly deafening.

Source: Telltale Blog

No doubt in response to relentless pestering by us that he was too polite to identify as such, Bill Tiller has used the A Vampyre Story Facebook page to deliver a status update on the A Vampyre Story series. Let's read the whole thing, won't we?

So, not a wealth of information we didn't know or couldn't glean, but it's still nice to get the straight dope from Bill, and hopefully there are happy endings in the destiny of all these various AVS related efforts.

The Steam hurdle they've experienced surprises and fascinates me. I know AVS had a showstopping bug that got corrected in a patch, but what else could be causing it to fail Valve's screening process that is predicated on "rewriting major sections of the engine?" Is the same thing keeping Ghost Pirates off the service as well? Paging that guy who funded Costume Quest PC...

Update: Bill shortly followed up with a brief Ghost Pirates status report as well:

Source: A Vampyre Story Facebook page

Remember that Indiana Jones Facebook game that you don't care about because it's a Facebook game? Well, someone over at TheRaider.net forums found out something interesting about it: apparently, Hal Barwood was somehow involved. On his web site, Hal credits himself on Adventure World in the area of "Narrative Design."

Who knew? And what does that mean? Perhaps more importantly, does it work like crazy?

Source: Finite Arts

Today, finally, is the release day for Jurassic Park: The Game! Breaking tradition, the four episodes that constitute the game are all available at once. Grab Jurassic Park for PC or Mac here, for iPad via the Apple Store, for Playstation 3 via the PSN, or for Xbox 360 from your local retailer. Those last two are going to be true only if you're in North America, but they will be true for other territories "soon," along with a retail PC release that North America doesn't appear to be getting.

Anyway, go play the game! Hurry along now, before I'm forced to tell everybody on Reddit about that time you did that thing.

Source: Telltale Store