The International House of Mojo

Maybe we should have noticed this before, but this past Halloween, dtp entertainment proposed Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island on Steam Greenlight, the facility where publishers encourage Valve to consider their game for inclusion on Steam by attracting sufficient community support.

The absence of Autumn Moon's two games from Steam is glaring, considering they're available from every other digital outlet known to man. Bill revealed that the games failed to pass Valve's quality standards; this baffles me, as A Vampyre Story and Ghost Pirates are way more polished than some games you can find on Steam. At any rate, the engine changes that would have been required to satisfy the gatekeepers rendered the pursuit non-viable for Bill.

So if you have a Steam account visit this page and click the "Yes" button. The worst that will happen is nothing. Bill once speculated that Ghost Pirates was a break even game for dtp, so they haven't exactly been pounding down his door for him to deliver the planned sequel, but if it didn't lose money, perhaps every additional sale or show of support will prevent the candle of hope from being snuffed out.

Source: Steam Greenlight

Want the absolute latest on what Bill Tiller's been up to? Well, don't check his Twitter, the Autumn Moon web site, either of his blogs or Facebook - Bill knows that if you want maximum exposure, you want the Adventure Gamers forums. There he contributed to a thread rightfully exalting his well-known SCUMM Bar painting and went on to share some updates on the A Vampyre Story situation.

Cliff Notes: the Kickstarter video is 80% done, the campaign will launch "after New Year," and Bill is semi-hopeful that A Vampyre Story 2 could be his next project after Year One. He is also apparently full-on freelance again, having completed his stint as staff art director at MunkyFun.

Source: AG forums

Yesterday, Bill Tiller uploaded a picture (as seen below) from the making of the video for the upcoming A Vampyre Story Kickstarter campaign. There's also a small video clip available of Froderick.

Bill Tiller revealed today that he's still working on a video for a future Kickstarter to fund the prequel A Vampyre Story: Year One. The plan is to launch it in September.

He also posted an image of a prop that will feature in the video:

Source: Bill's twitter

Autumn Moon will jumping on the Kickstarter bandwagon soon. This is not conjecture, or have you not seen Bill's Twitter?

I presume that A Vampyre Story 2 is still tied up with Crimson Cow and that this would be for the prequel and/or altogether new Autumn Moon projects. The Double Fine Kickstarter has inspired a saturation of copycats, but it had the unparagoned advantage of Tim's celebrity status within the industry combined with the ridiculous amount of goodwill his studio has accreted over the past ten years that has expanded beyond niche circles. With household adventure icons like Al Lowe straining to raise half a million dollars, I hope Bill Tiller sets a reachable goal when he joins the fray.

I hate to be cynical, though, and it's hard to be when there's any indication that we'll be getting more graphic adventure games from Bill. The Autumn Moon logo has been collecting dust for three years too many, and I know my wallet will be opening to the cause.

Source: Bill Tiller's Twitter

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.

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

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

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

Halloween came and went with nary a hint of news on A Vampyre Story: Year One...at least, not for anyone who doesn't follow Bill Tiller on Twitter. Apparently, Bill has joined up with Munky Fun, another one of those ex-LEC startups, to lend his talents to an iOS5 FPS that he describes as "free, cartoony, fun, and silly."

Bill taking this gig means that production on the AVS prequel is "pretty much on hold till December at the soonest," but it may also translate into quid pro quo. Bill speculates that he and Munky Fun (who assisted Autumn Moon with creating their proprietary engine) may end up collaborating on the completion of Year One after this project is done.

In the meantime, enjoy the latest delay of A Vampyre Story: Year One!

Source: Bill Tiller's Twitter

Our last Autumn Moon related feature (for now) is Jason's review of their second game, Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island.

Have fun!

This time we have two Autumn Moon related features for you: Jason's A Vampyre Story review from 2008 and our second Bill Tiller interview from 2010, also by Jason. Tiller talks about the making of his then newly released second game, Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island; additional back story that didn't make it into the game; and sequels that unfortunately are yet to be released.

As the second feature of our Autumn Moon themed series, we present to you the Bill Tiller chat from 2007. Tiller joined us on December 30th, 2007 in the #monkey-island IRC channel. This resulted in a two hour Q&A session that Gabez edited down to a more coherent format which is again available for you to read! For those that want to read every word typed, the complete chat log is also available in our media archive.

Enjoy!

As Halloween is approaching, we'll be bringing back some of the features about the company most closely related to this holiday: Autumn Moon Entertainment. Since Bill Tiller quit LucasArts and founded his own company to make adventure games, Mojo has kept up with his actions. The first feature to return from the dusty Mojo archives is Gabez's interview with the man himself from 2007. Bill discusses his then upcoming game, A Vampyre Story, cancelled Full Throttle sequels (with images!), and takes Gabez out for an action filled lunch!

Read on!

I sort of figured the U.S. would find Bin Laden before A Bat's Tale found funding. On Facebook, Bill Tiller volunteered status updates on A Vampyre Story 2: A Bat's Tale and A Vampyre Story: Year One, respectively. The prospects of the latter are way better than the former:

The reasons for AVS2's predicament would appear to be contractual. As they do with the first game, Crimson Cow owns the worldwide publishing rights to AVS2. While the Germany based publisher doesn't appear unwilling to fund the game, they are financially incapable of doing so (with their web site consisting entirely of this for years now), and since the rights remain theirs for however long the agreement states, Autumn Moon isn't free to shop elsewhere. The episodic Year One, which Autumn Moon is self-publishing, is apparently entrenched in no such red tape.

Source: AVS Facebook page

Well, now you can! Amazon is currently selling the game for $1. Or $4 if you want to buy it used.

Source: Amazon.com

Bill Tiller has posted a new "in-progress rough sketch" for A Vampyre Story: Year One. It is of a Castle Warg location, and you will presumably be walking through and picking up objects in it while experiencing a sensation that I like to refer to as, "the happy."

And let me just toss this one in here to conserve on the Mojo energy bill: Stacking got stroked in a Gamasutra article dealing with game difficulty.

Source: Bill Tiller's twitter feed

Details on A Vampyre Story: Year One remain hard to put one's hands to, but Bill Tiller has made another twitter update with evidence that its production falls firmly in the category of non-fiction: this image of a yet to be skinned character model. Looks like some kind of carnivorous plant. Will there be a Maniac Mansion in-joke? Will a nasty if obscure dead-end result if Mona pours developer fluid on it? Is Alan Turing's halting problem really unsolvable? The answer will no doubt arrive whenever the episodic, iPad-bound prequel to A Vampyre Story does.

And if you find out when that is, let us know.

Source: Bill Tiller's twitter feed

Touch arcade is reporting on the forthcoming release of the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch/web game 'Smuggle Truck' a side scrolling physics based driving game where you have to stop your cargo of illegal aliens/stowaways/kidnapped hostages/extended family members [Note to self: delete as applicable before going to press] from flying out of your truck.

What sets this new Owlchemy Labs title apart is that Autumn Moon's Bill Tiller has been hired to redo the art from scratch. The game started out as an entry to a 48 hour game creation contest, where all the games had an Immigration theme.



The game also features a full level editor, and there's a contest to get your own likeness as one of the cargo into the game by using that editor to design your own level prior to the game's March release. Check out the Owlchemy Labs website for more details, or watch the below clip.

Source: Touch Arcade

Don't make the mistake of thinking that sentiment comes from us; we loathe you. But the folks at Autumn Moon sure don't, as evidenced by this wonderful yuletide greeting they made especially for you.

Happy Holidays, all!