The International House of Mojo

The Brutal Legend Limited Edition Indiebox has shipped to those who ordered it in October, full of items using concept art from the game. If you missed it, but would like to order it, there's still time. You can pick it up at the indiebox store for $25 USD.

The Massive Chalice beta is now available to all via Steam Early Access. Everyone who backed it at $20 or more should get a Steam code for this version. Oh, and even though it's on Early Access, it is fully funded, so there's no worry about it not becoming fully realized. The 1.0 release is scheduled for Spring 2015, and the game has full funding to make it up to that point.

Game of Thrones is now more than just a title image and a string of cryptic clues. Telltale has revealed the first concrete information about their series based on the HBO show based on the novels. It will consist of six episodes, and will feature five different playable protagonists all from the same house, in this case, the House of Forrester. Some of the people may be blood relatives of the Forrester clan, others may be people who work for the house, but every decision that you make will have consequences that will affect the entire house. The first episode will be called Iron From Ice and is set to arrive for download soon on PC/Mac, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and iOS, with additional platforms to be announced.

After taking a sabbatical from pumpkin slaughter last year, beloved game designer Dave Grossman has resumed his almost as beloved annual tradition. Visit the Pumpkin House of Horrors and scroll to the bottom for this year's victim.

And on your way down, relive the hideous triumphs of previous years.

Source: The Pumpkin House of Horrors

Gamasutra released an article detailing the effort to rebuild and preserve the world's first commercial graphical massively multiplayer online game, Lucasfilm's Habitat.

The original Habitat, which had an interface and graphics similar to the adventure game Labyrinth, was released in beta form by Lucasfilm Games (now LucasArts) for the Quantum Link online service for Commodore 64 from 1986 until it was shut down in 1988. A sized down version was released as Club Caribe on Quantum link in January 1988. Fujitsu later licensed the code and released Fujitsu Habitat in Japan in 1990. Habitat and Club Caribe was highly influential, and it's code still lives on through WorldsAway, which premiered on CompuServe in 1995, and moved to the public internet in 1997. WorldsAway had multiple worlds, two of which survive today and are now known as Dreamscape and NewHorizone. Dreamscape was Fujitsu's first virtual world, and appeared when WorldsAway premiered in 1995. NewHorizone was originally Club Connect when it was launched by Fujitsu in 1998 and New Radio World when the WorldsAway worlds were sold and became part of an online world known as VZones in December 1998. New Radio World was renamed VZConnections in December 1999, and then newHorizone in September 2001. These two worlds are still a part of vZones, and the WorldsAway software has also recently been licensed for use in MetroWorlds.

The preservation project was spearheaded by Alex Handy, founder and director of the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment. The project has official permission from Fujitsu, the company that purchased Habitat from Lucasfilm, to get the Habitat software working again. In order to get the project off the ground, Handy enlisted the help of the creators of Habitat, Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer, and Stratus, the company who made the Nimbus servers that Habitat ran on. They were given a Stratus computer, manufactured in 1989, and upgraded to use a 1999 era TCP/IP protocol.

On September 25, 2014, Morningstar and Farmer, and over a dozen hackathon attendees at the MADE video game museum, as well as people working remotely through IRC, set out to get Habitat running again. The hardest part was the Quantum Link code, so they utilized the Quantum Link Reloaded open source project.

There is still a ways to go, as they don't have access to all the support libraries that are needed for the Quantum Link server, so those need to be emulated in order to work properly. But, they have come a long way, and still intend to finish. Once the project is complete, anyone will be able to log in using a C64 emulator.

You can read more about the effort, and donate to the cause if you so desire, over at the Habitat Preservation Project page at the MADE website.

The final issue of Maniac Mansion co-creator Gary Winnick's five part comic book series, Bad Dreams, was released on Wednesday. The print issues are somewhat hard to come by (if you want to pick them up at regular price) since they sold out pretty quick, but you can pick up all issues digitally from Comixology.

Another Mojo-centric release is soon to be happening as well, since the Bill Tiller and Gene Mocsy designed The Perils of Man Episode 1 will be released on the Apple App Store in three days. Chapter One is out already. If you have an iOS device, make sure to pick it up, as it is excellent.

The latest daily builds of ResidualVM now officially support a game besides Grim Fandango, Myst III: Exile. In order for the game to be fully supported in the next stable release, they need your help to ind the last few rough edges by playing through the game in the latest daily build thoroughly and submitting any bugs that you find along the way to their issue tracker.

In other ResidualVM news, you might be wondering how ResidualVM's first Summer of Code went. Quite swimmingly, it seems, since Escape from Monkey Island is now completable with glitches in the latest daily builds. Unlike Myst III, this game isn't ready to be added to their supported list, but they are now accepting bug submissions for Escape from Monkey Island at their issue tracker if you want to give it a try.

This year's ScummVM Summer of Code went quite well too, as Sfinx is now completable in the latest daily builds (the English translation isn't yet up for public consumption though, so you'll have to use the Polish original to play). Galador: The Prince and the Coward is also completable, but you'll have to compile it from the sourcecode yourself if you want to try it at this point, since it hasn't yet been added to the main tree (and, likewise, the English translation isn't yet ready for public consumption).

Double Fine is hosting Devs & Bevs, which is a night of drinks and games with a quintet of game developers. The event will be held at the Hard Rock Cafe in Seattle, WA on Sunday, August 31st from 6:00 to 10:00. The lineup for the evening is extraordinary.

• 6:00—Fantasia from Harmonix
• 6:30—Firewatch from Campo Santo
• 7:00—Tharsis from Choice Provisions
• 7:30—Below from Capy
• 8:00—Massive Chalice from Double Fine
• 8:30—Costume Quest 2 from Double Fine
• 9:00—Gang Beasts from Boneloaf

If you are planning on going, you can find the Facebook event page here.

If you were wondering about Firewatch, the first game from Campo Santo, the studio co-founded by former Mojo staffer Jake Rodkin, you won't have to wait much longer. Campo Santo is going to be at Pax Prime this year, showing a live gameplay demonstration of Firewatch on August 30 at 10:30am in the Hedgehog Theatre.

Several members of the team will be present, including Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman (co-designers of Tales of Monkey Island, Puzzle Agent, The Walking Dead, and several other games at Telltale), Chris Remo (co-writer of Double Fine's The Cave), Jane Ng (environment artist for Double Fine's The Cave, Stacking, and Costume Quest, among others), Will Armstrong (programmer for games from LucasArts, Activision, and 2K Marin, among others), and James Benson (animator on Fable III by Lionhead Studios).

If you aren't able to make it to PAX Prime this year, don't worry, as Campo Santo will also be streaming the demonstration live on Twitch.

Since we're always on top of things (this forum post from last month and this comment from Rum Rogers telling us about the project totally don't count), Mojo is here to let you know about a fan project to re-create the SCUMM Bar in Lego form. If 10,000 people vote on the project, it could become an official Lego project, assuming Disney gives the OK to use their IP. I guess it's worth a shot to give it your vote, as Disney does seem to be at least aware now that they own the LucasArts adventure game catalog, and not just Star Wars.

Chapter Two of The Journey Down, the adventure game inspired by LucasArts classics such as Grim Fandango, is scheduled to release on August 25th. If you pre-order now, it's only $5.99 and you get The Journey Down Chapter One as well (the key is transferable if you already own Chapter One). Half of all pre-order revenue will go to help the Mavuno girl's school project. Find out more about the pre-order deal and see a couple of scenes from the upcoming chapter in the trailer embedded below:

There's a few comic related news bits that we missed. First, Zak Gorman, the creator of Magical Game Time, is creating a Costume Quest graphic novel called "Invasion of the Candy Snatchers". It flips the Costume Quest story around, telling the story of the original Costume Quest from the point of view of a Grubbin named Klem.

Secondly, Maniac Mansion co-creator Gary Winnick's Bad Dreams #1 comic was in the list of the top 6 new comics and sold out in it's first week of release. Mojo wishes Mr. Winnick a (very) belated congratulations. Oh, and while we're on the subject of comics, Dirt Nap by Gabe Miller, the Double Fine comic about zombies, is oddly the only one that's still alive. And it's awesome. So, read it, if you haven't already.

ScummVM, the program that allows you to run many adventure games from many different developers, such as LucasArts, Sierra, Revolution, Coktel Vision, and more, on modern operating systems, phones, tablets, and consoles, is gearing up for their latest release. That means that they have made quite a few improvements, and added new games, and they need your help to test them to make sure they play as they should.

The new games that will be added in 1.7.0 are Chivalry Is Not Dead, Mortville Manor, Return to Ringworld, The Neverhood, and Voyeur. They have also changed their Adlib player for the DOS floppy versions of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Loom, so they need your help testing these games as well.

If you own any of these games and would like to help out, then fire up ScummVM on your platform of choice and test. Let them know how you made out on the ScummVM forums and if you find any bugs, submit them on the ScummVM bug tracker. The results of testing will be posted on the ScummVM wiki.

In related news, keep an eye on the ScummVM Planet. The Google Summer of Code is going on now, ScummVM is a part of it again, and this year their sister project ResidualVM is involved too (with ScummVM acting as an umbrella for both projects). GSoC students are adding support for Sfinx and The Prince and the Coward to ScummVM, as well as improving support for Escape from Monkey Island and improving the TinyGL renderer in ResidualVM. They've already accomplished a lot on these tasks, so it will be really interesting to see what they manage to get done by the end of the summer.

While we were down, things kept right on going. So, here's what we missed during our downtime:

The Wolf Among Us Episode 4 finished releasing on the already announced platforms (PC/Mac/PSN/XBLA/iOS) and The Walking Dead: Season Two Episode 3 finally received a release date for PS Vita: June 3rd in North America and June 4th in Europe. Also, Telltale announced a bunch of disc versions of their games: PS4 and Xbox One will be getting The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and The Walking Dead: Season Two. There will also be disc versions of The Walking Dead: Season Two and The Wolf Among Us for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. No release dates yet have been announced.

And last but not least, Ron Gilbert's Match 3 puzzle game, Scurvy Scallywags, is now on Android, Tommo and Night Dive released 5 more Humongous Entertainment games on Steam, and bjbennyboy's Telltale Explorer now supports Poker Night 2, Law & Order: Legacies, and The Walking Dead: Season One.

Fans of the acclaimed HBO series True Detective should get a kick out of this video. Heck, I got a kick out of it, and I haven't even watched True Detective, so your odds are pretty good.

Source: Kotaku

Campo Santo's first game is called Firewatch. They've only been working on it since January, so there's not much revealed yet. All that is known is it's a single player first person mystery game set in the Wyoming wilderness, where your only emotional lifeline is the person on the other end of a handheld radio. There is no release date set yet, but Campo Santo announced that it will be released on Windows, OS X, and Linux.

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.

The Campo Santo team keeps getting bigger and better. On top of its founders Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman (of The Walking Dead fame, not to mention countless other Telltale titles), Nels Anderson (the lead designer of Mark of the Ninja), and Olly Moss (known for his awesome film posters), and later team additions Jane Y. Ng (former lead artist of Double Fine) and Will Armstrong (gameplay programmer for LucasArts and Activision), they can now count one more talented individual among their ranks.

Chris Remo, the co-writer of The Cave, has left Double Fine to join his fellow Idle Thumbs co-hosts at the new studio. With all this talent, it will be really interesting to see what they come up with.

Source: Joystiq

The co-creator of Maniac Mansion, Gary Winnick, may not have had a successful Kickstarter campaign, but the physical compilation of his webcomic is still going to be a reality thanks to a publishing deal with Red 5 comics.

Bad Dreams #1 is scheduled to be released on April 23, 2014. As this is labeled 1 out of 5, it would seem four additional volumes are slated for release at a later date as well.

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.