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.
Since the release date of the second episode of The Wolf Among Us is looming, Telltale has released the trailer for the game, which they have tagged as a red band trailer due to the violent and sexual content within. The Wolf Among Us: Episode 2 - Smoke & Mirrors will be released some time next week.
For those of us who backed Double Fine's legendary Kickstarter, it may feel like Broken Age has been out for eons (well, two weeks), but actually the game is officially released to the general public today, nearly two years after being funded.
To celebrate its release, Double Fine has added Steam Trading Cards and Badges to the game, so even if you are a backer and have long finished Act I, you have a reason to go back and enjoy it again.
If you're late to the party, here's your invitation: Broken Age on Steam
Additionally, Peter McConnell's wonderful score is available to purchase, too:
Broken Age Original Score on Bandcamp
Congratulations to Double Fine on this momentous day!
Source: DoubleFine
They also have an interview with Tim Schafer, where he answers Kickstarter questions.
The currently North American exclusive closed beta period for Area 52 Games and Disney Mobile's Star Wars space combat simulator Star Wars: Attack Squadrons has been going on from January 21st and will continue to January 28th. If you already signed up for the beta, you should be receiving a code soon, if you haven't already. I just received mine, but I can't comment on the game yet, as the beta currently runs from 11AM to 9PM PST, and I entered my code a little late.
If you didn't sign up for the beta (or didn't yet get a code), but are in North America and still would like to join, keep an eye on their Facebook page. They have posted first-come-first-serve beta codes on there in the past, so it's possible you could get lucky.
Note also that this is currently the second closed beta period (the first beta period started on January 14th). So if you missed this beta, if they do a third beta test, it's possible you'll receive a code then. If they do continue doing closed beta testing, hopefully they'll open it up to worldwide gamers the next go-around.
After hitting the big-time with a co-director credit on 2012's Brave, Sam & Max creator and longtime Pixar employee Steve Purcell will be helming a new Toy Story television special to air on ABC in December, the second of such shorts. Den of Geek reports:
Following in the tiny plastic footsteps of Disney Pixar's first made-for-television special Toy Story Of Terror, is Toy Story That Time Forgot, due to air on ABC in the US this coming December.
Here's the official synopsis for the twenty-two minute special: "During a post-Christmas play date, the gang find themselves in uncharted territory when the coolest set of action figures ever turn out to be dangerously delusional. It's all up to Trixie, the triceratops, if the gang hopes to return to Bonnie's room in this "Toy Story That Time Forgot."
That means more Kristen Schaal in the talented voice cast, alongside regulars Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Wallace Shawn, Timothy Dalton, and Don Rickles. Toy Story That Time Forgot is being headed up by Brave co-writer and co-director, Steve Purcell and produced by Toy Story stalwart, Galyn Susman.
According to the transitive property of pulling stuff out of my ass, we're one step closer to that $350 million Pixar animated Sam & Max feature with all the trimmings. Hey, you can argue with Math or you can win an argument.
Source: Den of Geek
In what is largely a passionate tirade directed at the careless mishandling of classic titles when re-released on modern platforms, the A.V. Club spares some room toward the end to rail against the complete failure of certain treasured games to be made available at all:
Game preservation’s worst-kept secret is that piracy has done the best job of keeping classic games available and relevant. Since the mid-’90s, the Internet’s vast and varied emulation scene has made the history of video games available to anyone willing to skirt the law. And unfortunately, playing some of the best games ever made requires a disregard for copyright. Take Maniac Mansion. An icon of the LucasArts studio’s golden age, it’s one of the most important adventure games ever made, and it’s still entertaining today. If you want to play in 2014, though, you’ll need to download it illegally and run it through an emulator, since it hasn’t been in print for close to 20 years.
Disney, which now owns the rights to the LucasArts library, may never acknowledge the studio’s legacy, but that would just maintain the status quo. Most of the developer’s best titles have never been made available to any digital marketplace. If you’re just learning about LucasArts and want to play games like Sam & Max Hit The Road, Day Of The Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango, you’re on your own. Disney would rather hot-glue lightsabers to the hands of Mickey and Donald dolls than offer players the chance to buy games that Disney executives might not even realize they own.
I feel like he may be painting with too broad of a brush by indicting hot glue in this, but his point stands firm.
Source: The A.V. Club
There's bad news for fans of Wallace & Gromit and Telltale Games. Telltale's digital distribution agreement with Aardman Studios expired, and Telltale doesn't have plans to renew that agreement. That means that Wallace & Gromit is no longer available for digital distribution anywhere. If you previously purchased it from XBLA, iTunes, Steam, GOG.com, or the Telltale Store, you will be able to re-download it. But, unfortunately if you hadn't already purchased it, you will no longer be able to buy it, unless you can track down a site selling the PC DVD version (which is currently in-stock at Amazon, if you want to pick it up before it's gone forever, or at least while it's still reasonably priced).
Fans of Loom have been waiting for the sequel to Loom for decades. Luckily, some creative Loom fans have decided to stop waiting for an official sequel and have created one of their own.
The game is called Forge, and uses bits of information that have been revealed by Loom's creator, Brian Moriarty, over the years. The game follows the blacksmith Rusty Nailbender, and uses a new magical item to conduct spells, the Blacksmith Guantlets, rather than the weaver's distaff. It uses a graphical style similar to the 256 colour art of the Loom PC CD and FM-Towns versions, and is created using the Adventure Game Studio engine.
If that sounds like something that's of interest to you, then you can pick it up for free over at the Forge homepage.
Hey, a timely review? You bet! Our thoughts on Broken Age are out there, and they're loving it. Or we're loving it. Whichever.
Read if you so feel like it.
Telltale's co-founder and president Kevin Bruner just posted on the Telltale forums that The Wolf Among Us episode 2 will finally be released in the first week of February.
He had the following to say about the delay:
Ep 2 should be available the first week of February. We are working hard with all of our partners (Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, Apple) to coordinate everything, but we’re confident enough to announce that here. The episode is looking really good (as is the rest of the season!). We are very concerned about the long delay for this episode, but this is one of those occasions where several things conspired against us (not to mention the additional delays due to the holidays). I won't dive into the details, but it’s been an unusual and specific set of circumstances and we do not anticipate it happening again as we go forward with the rest of the season.So there you have it. First week of February!
It's out, all over our faces! (Except for Zaarin's, who has been deemed unworthy.)
But why are you reading this? Play it, damn you!
Tommo purchased Humongous Entertainment in Atari's bankruptcy auction last July (except for the Backyard Sports franchise, which went to The Evergreen Group, and Moonbase Commander, which went to Rebellion).
They've been doing all the right things with their acquisition so far. They renamed the company back to Humongous Entertainment, brought back the Humongous website, brought Putt-Putt Joins the Circus to Android, and they're looking for more avenues to re-release the junior adventures produced by the company that Ron Gilbert and Shelly Day built in 1992.
Humongous Entertainment just re-tweeted a message from twitter user George Q. Greg: "Night Dive. That gives me hope." In addition, last month Night Dive asked their Facebook followers if there was any children's games that they remember fondly.
This is just as much of a rumour as the Night Dive/LucasArts situation. However, this one probably holds more weight, as Tommo actually has proven they want to do the sensible thing and sell the games they own through digital distribution to get some of their money back. As usual with rumours like these, we'll just have to take them with a grain of salt, and see how they pan out.
The wait is almost over. Broken Age Part I (the project formerly known as the Double Fine Adventure) will be available to Kickstarter backers on January 14th. It will follow shortly afterward on Steam Early Access, where it can be picked up by those who want to experience the game before the second part is out, but who didn't participate in the crowdfunding.
Broken Age Part II is scheduled to be released some time between April and May 2014.
Source: Joystiq
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.
On December 19th, The Amazon Appstore added a version of The Walking Dead to their service for the Kindle Fire HDX. At the moment, it's not available for any other Android based system.
However, another Android platform is indeed confirmed to be getting The Walking Dead: Season One in the future: the Ouya. Now that it's out on an Android platform, it's certainly possible it may come out on the main Google Play store for more Android platforms at some point.
Source: Android Police
My Alien Buddy, Double Fine's free downloadable content for Sony's augmented reality game The Playroom, was released on Christmas Eve. It's an augmented reality mini-game where you play with deformable alien toys.
Double Fine previously developed Happy Action Theater and Kinect Party, which were both among the best reviewed games for the Kinect, so this is probably worth checking out if you own a PlayStation 4 and a PlayStation Camera. Plus, you can't beat the price.
Source: PlayStation Life
To ring out the old year with a bang, here's some adventure related Mojo tidbits for you all.
First, do you remember the Marius Winter's adventure game application that got him an internship at Double Fine? Well, Diego Delfino was inspired by that, and took it one step further, creating a full playable adventure game application in an attempt to a job at Telltale Games.
Second, if you're like me, you might be wondering how chapter 2 of The Journey Down is coming along. Luckily, the Chapter 2 Work in Progress thread at Desura has just been updated with news and new screenshots.
They've got an internal preliminary playable-to-the-end build of the game up and running, but there's a lot of things missing yet and most of the movies are still animated storyboards. There are still some puzzles that need inside knowledge to solve, but they hope to have an internal beta version of the game ready by February that will allow the game to be completed by people who don't know the solutions to all the puzzles.
And, lastly, to wrap up the last Mojo tidbits post of 2013, I'll leave you with a Monkey Island music video set to the song Payphone. It was created by Artisa, and posted on our forums nearly a month ago (which is only a few days in Mojo Time™).
