The International House of Mojo

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.

While we're on the subject of Gene Mocsy, you might remember that he started a company called Irresponsible Games, whose first game will be a point-and-click adventure game called Alcatraz: 1954, which, unsurprisingly is about escaping from Alcatraz prison in 1954. Gene originally designed the game himself using the Panda3D-based engine that MunkyFun designed for Autumn Moon's adventure games A Vampyre Story and Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island. However, the game soon was picked up by the German adventure developer Daedalic, and it was converted to their Unity-based engine.

GamingLives has an interview with Mr. Mocsy which details that event, and gives many more details about his company's first game. One of the most interesting details in the interview is about the wide choice the player has in solving the puzzles, and the consequences some of those choices might have:

"Multiple solutions are something I always want when I play games – that and an overhead map. I made sure those were in my game. It was a bit of a hassle, but I scripted the original game myself, so it was just a matter of my time. When Daedalic bought the game and re-ported it to their engine, they created an enormous flowchart of all the possibilities – that was when I realised the headache I’d caused everyone! It’s all for the player. I want you to keep moving ahead and not waste time guessing what the designer intended."

"Certain quest-lines get even more exciting and tension-filled [depending on your earlier actions], I’ll put it that way. Don’t worry about making wrong choices – you’re escaping from Alcatraz, there’s no time to second-guess yourself. Just go."

The game will be coming soon to PC. Daedalic had announced that it would be released this year, however, as no concrete release date has yet been set, it probably won't make that release window.

Source: GamingLives

Here's the press release:

No idea what this game is? We mentioned it once awhile back - it is a graphic adventure game headed up by Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island team member Gene Mocsy, who apparently struck out on his own with Irresponsible Games after work dried up at Autumn Moon. The connections to that studio do not end with Mocsy - Pedro Macedo Camacho is handling the score, and Bill Tiller may have contributed some artwork. Might be one to keep an eye out for.