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

The game is Dischord -- "a music-driven score challenge game" -- and the "odd thing" is the Leap Motion controller which looks pretty cool if it actually works as advertised.

Dischord will be available to play at SXSW and we assume more information will be available on the game's official site soon.

Source: Bosweid on the Twitters

(Granted, that might not have been a verbatim quote.)

But! Gary Whitta, writer of episode four? three? an episode of The Walking Dead did say more content will appear before season two is released. What does that mean? An expansion pack? Facebook game? Who knows?! But it's clear Telltale isn't quite ready to let go of this success story quite yet.

Source: Polygon

There's another interview with Dan Connors that talks about Telltale's upcoming Fables game, this time at Game Informer. In it, the protaganist is revealed to be Bigby, Fables' big bad wolf. There's also a hint as to how the choice based gameplay that was featured in The Walking Dead might work in Telltale's Fables game:

"Fables is coming along really well. We’ve gone back in and really tried to take a lot of what we learned from The Walking Dead and get that integrated into the story with Bigby and the characters that he meets. We want to make it a real interesting battle for Bigby between: Should he give in to the wolf side, or should he try to get along and keep everybody safe? There’s a lot of work in trying to make that work."

Also, Polygon posted an article with an image from the PlayStation Meeting 2013 showing all the third party companies that are committed to making games for the upcoming PlayStation 4. They mentioned Double Fine by name, but intrepid viewers can also spot the LucasArts and Telltale Games logos among those companies listed.

In an interview with Rock, Paper Shotgun, Tim Schafer reiterates his desire to eventually make Psychonauts 2 (and maybe I'm too sanguine, but at this point I feel like that one's just a matter of time), but also spares some optimism for a continuation of Double Fine's heavy metal saga:

Either way, Double Fine apparently has ambitions to expand the original game with more downloadable content - for the multiplayer campaign, anyway. From small enhancements to entire factions, the studio was forced to cut a number of features from the game that they could resurrect if the PC release proves successful enough. Recall that the company had even begun work on a full-fledged sequel before EA was all like, "Psyche!" - one imagines that there's a ton of vaulted ideas for Eddie Riggs' future just waiting for the disinfecting sunlight of capital investment.

Source: Rock, Paper Shotgun

All the details are in their latest blog post, but since you're lazy - Telltale is soon to relaunch their web site with a new design, and they want your assistance and feedback in finishing it up.

Assume the role of a company's uncompensated QA team and get to work. This is similar to how we're going to be focus testing the next design of Mojo, except of course there will be compensation: you will be paying us for the privilege.

Source: Telltale blog

Famous insect lover Mike Levine recently stopped by our forums to tell us all about the new game he's been working on: a side-scrolling brawler based on the comic Usagi Yojimbo for iOS!

Usagi Yojimbo: Way of the Ronin will be out soon and you can read more about it at its own website after checking out their Facebook page for all the latest news. Even Steve Purcell loves the comic!

Not keen to just sit on our laurels with one post this week of tidbits not quite juicy enough to warrant their own stand-alone post, here comes another slew of Mojo related tidbits:

Will the season five finale of The Clone Wars animated television series tie into Star Wars 1313? The HD Room thinks so, and they provide some compelling side-by-sides screenshots of the finale trailer and the 1313 trailer. If nothing else, it certainly does look like the underworld Coruscant from the game.

PC World has an article on "How Adventure Games Came Back from the Dead". It features interviews with Dan Connors (the co-founder and CEO of Telltale Games), Jane Jensen (of Gabriel Knight fame) and Dave Gilbert (of Blackwell fame).

There's no news on Telltale's King's Quest, but there is news for King's Quest fans. Under the Half Dome is a kickstarter project for an album made up of orchestrated versions of Sierra songs by Ken Allen. If you don't know, Ken Allen was the composer of the music from the VGA remake of King's Quest and King's Quest V (as well as many other Sierra games), and he may or may not work on the music for Telltale's King's Quest (no composer has been announced yet, like everything else about the game). The kickstarter has many interesting tiers to choose from, so much so that it was part of Forbes' 10 Most Clever Kickstarter Rewards list (for their $500 USD and $1,000 USD tier). The base price of the album is $15 USD (for the digital version), and if they hit the $20,000 USD mark, all kickstarter backers will have their first names included in a song inspired by the "Nations of the World" song from Animaniacs.

The rumors were true, Brütal Legend for PC is now up for preorder on Steam, and the Multiplayer Beta is available now to those who preorder.

25% off the usual price at the moment, so get on over to steam now!

Source: Facebook

Apparently part of a series analyzing "gonzo guns" in video games (so, all of them), Gamaustra has a brief piece up examining the legendary Land Shark Gun from Planet Moon's should-have-been blockbuster Armed & Dangerous.

Never played Armed & Dangerous? Dude, it's $4.99 on Steam.

Source: Gamasutra

I revive myself from my Mardi Gras-induced stupor to alert you to a piece on Mobiledia about Lucy Bradshaw, a key figure in LucasArts product development back when they developed products worth rallying attention behind.

Bradshaw, whose name might be familiar to you from the opening credits of games like Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, graduated from her "training ground" at LEC in the 90s to become an executive for Maxis/EA. It is the later part of her career that the article largely concerns, but I think she would agree that it was her days being rotoscoped in a wetsuit for The Dig animation tests that truly legitimized the games business as a vocation.

Source: Mobiledia

It seems I may have jumped the gun a bit when I teased Telltale Games for only openly talking about The Walking Dead Season Two rather than their other announced projects.

In an interview with IGN, Dan Connors finally revealed some of the details about Fables that fans have been wondering for years. Namely, that Fables won't be called Fables (presumably due to legal reasons due to the title's close similarity to that of the RPG Fable).

Secondly, and most importantly to readers of Mojo, some news about how the game will play has finally been revealed. The game has taken longer to release than Telltale originally anticipated due to the success of The Walking Dead. Telltale is taking that success to heart, and is working hard to incorporate many of that season's game mechanics into their as-of-yet unnamed series based on Fables.

ResidualVM, the sister project of ScummVM designed to run Grim Fandango on modern systems (with official builds on Windows, Mac, and Linux), has received a bug fix update. And what an update it is! There's around 40 gameplay fixes in the newest release, including fixes for 14 bugs that were present in the original 1998 release, making ResidualVM the best way to run Grim even if you have a computer that can handle the original executable.

Here's three Mojo tidbits for the new year:

Firstly, Did you miss the first public Double Fine Amnesia fortnight? If so, you still have a chance to redeem yourself for your misdeeds. Head to Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight page where you can still buy the games in digital form for $10 USD. If that's not enough for you, for an extra $20 USD, you can now pre-order a collector's package that comes with a DVD with all five Amnesia Fortnight prototypes (plus the bonus prototypes Brazen, Happy Song, and Costume Quest), the 15-track Amnesia Fortnight 2012 Soundtrack, and a Blu-Ray disc of 2-Player Productions' Amnesia Fortnight documentary footage. If that's still not enough for you, for an extra $15 on top of that, you can have the package include a collector's edition cover featuring art of one of the five 2012 protoypes signed by the project leader for that prototype. If you're still not satisfied with these awesome options, feel free to pay $70 USD for a collector's package featuring covers with art from all six prototypes, all signed by each project leader.

Secondly, Telltale's finally openly talking about their upcoming announced projects, but it's not Fables or King's Quest. Instead, they're talking about The Walking Dead Season Two (which should surprise no one). In an interview with Polygon, Telltale CEO Dan Connors talks about the next season's pre-production story meetings. It seems the next season will feature at least some of the same characters as season one, since according to Mr. Connors:

"We're talking through different scenarios, though I don't think we've talked through one where we just start with a new set of characters."

Another interesting bit from that interview is that Telltale is open to the possibility of having the game characters meet the television show characters. It will be interesting to see if they can work that out, since it seems the television show and comic book are handled by two separate corporate entities (judging by the Terminal Reality developed shooter based on the television show that's coming out next month, and the fact that Telltale's game got no publicity from AMC, the network that produces the show).

Lastly, do you remember the Wallace & Gromit's Musical Marvels show at the BBC Proms last year? The one that Mojo covered because it was Ben Whitehead's (of Telltale's Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures) first official credited appearance as Wallace in plasticine form? Well, the good news is that if you missed it last year, you still have a chance to see it live since it's proved popular enough to now become a full touring show. It just premiered yesterday at The Plenary in Melbourne, Australia, and will be touring elsewhere later this year (with the short A Matter of Loaf and Death screened at each performance as a bonus). You can view a list of the full touring locations at the Wallace & Gromit's Musical Marvels website.

For those of you, who, like me, would need to look it up, Ouya is the Kickstarter-funded, Android powered game console that will made be available to its backers come March (and hit the streets this summer). The main bullet points for Ouya are its Open Development Kit (no licensing fee - anyone can make a game!) and the requirement of every title to have some sort of free-to-play aspect.

This makes the platform sound like a rather good fit for an independent studio like Double Fine, and... well gosh-a-roonie, what a co-inky-dink!

Both The Cave and REDS (code name just revealed, apparently) already confirmed? Sounds like the studio is fully supporting Ouya going forward. The pinball machine ports remain an open question.

Source: GamesIndustry International

Graham Annable -- you know him from Grickle, Puzzle Agent, and much more -- is set to co-direct an animated/stop-motion movie. Yes, another LEC artist is hitting the big-time, after Purcell co-directed Pixar's Brave last year.

The movie, The Boxtrolls, is based on Alan Snow's Here Be Monsters and will feature a host of famous voice actors, including Ben Kingsley and Toni Collette. And the co-director? You might recognize his name from the cancelled Curse of Monkey Island movie: Tony Stacchi; he worked on the concept art for the film. What the hell is up with that coincidence, right?

For more, check out Hollywood Reporter. Then get appropriately excited.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Today Gamaustra has published an article by psychologist and semi-regular contributor Jamie Madigan, who explores the neuroscience of how Telltale's eight hundred time Game of the Year winner The Walking Dead emotionally manipulated us.

Just what sort of malignant intent was the moonstruck Jake Rodkin embedding into the design document with crooked-grinned glee? Read to find out.

Source: Gamasutra

i09 (via AICN) is reporting a standalone Yoda movie may be in the works.
Here's a link to the original AICN story, but it's pretty much unreadable.
The clip of Bob Iger in this article confirms that both Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg are writing standalone films. Each film will be "derived from great Star Wars characters."
How many websites will report this rumor using exaggerated Yoda backwards-speak in their headline? Start counting.
Update: Much of the above is confirmed true on starwars.com - Kasdan and Kinberg are writing two standalone Star Wars movies. The lead roles are yet to be announced.

Source: i09

In a surprise move, we will be getting new games adorned with the LucasArts logo in the very near future.

Any fans of digital recreations of pinball tables in the house?

Source: Zen Studios

Remember when Notch said he'd maybe fund a Psychonauts sequel last year and then nothing more came of it? On Saturday, he revealed that the actual cost for such a game would lie in the vicinity of 18 million dollars, far beyond the "couple of million" he initially thought it would cost.

Source: Digital Trends

You can finally play out your own adventures with the figurines based on the characters from The Cave! Just click here. Now, if they just made a figurine of the cave itself as well...

Source: Double Fine Company Store

According to Mojo commenter AlfredJ, Brutal Legend may be coming to PC, since it's appeared in the Steam registry.

It might take a while to be released though, since Iron Brigade showed up in the registry almost a year before its Steam release.

Update (February 2, 2012): The Linux release of The Cave has been delayed a bit longer.

It's delayed another week according to a Steam forum post by Justin from Double Fine:

"The Linux version will be released for anyone on Linux. It's delayed another week unfortunately, due to some tricky driver/GL bugs we still have to resolve. Sorry for the delay guys =/"

Original Post:

Those of you who are waiting for the Linux version of The Cave won't have to wait very long.

Ron Gilbert has updated his blog with news that the Linux version of The Cave will be released next week.

Source: GozzoMan

Disney has just announced it is closing down its Austin, Texas based Junction Point Studios gaming company, led by Warren Spector, shortly after the release of Epic Mickey 2.

While what Disney does with things that aren't LucasArts is dubious in its relevance to Mix N Mojo, I think we can all see a possible outcome of the LucasFilm acquisition if the shift from AAA titles to casual / mobile isn't successful for LucasArts.

Still, when LucasArts used a line very similar to "the fast-evolving gaming platforms and marketplace" as the rationale behind shutting a project down, it led to the formation of Telltale Games.

Source: Huffington Post

In his spare time, Telltale Games' programmer and designer (and former Mojo staffer), Andrew "telarium" Langley, apparently likes to creep people out. This tendency is no better shown than by the video embedded below of real life animatronics programmed to sing the "Ted E. Bear's Mafia Free Playland and Casino" song from Sam & Max Season One: Episode 3: The Mole, the Mob, and the Meatball.It's actually a pretty clever feat, accomplished by replacing the innards of Wowee's Chimpanzee Alive and Elvis Alive animatronics with a custom programmed controller.