The International House of Mojo

The Humble Weekly Sale this week is a Telltale Bundle. Pay what you want and get Back to the Future: The Game, Hector: Badge of Carnage, Poker Night 1, Puzzle Agent 1, Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, and Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures. The games are all on PC and Mac (except for Wallace & Gromit which is PC only) for Steam and DRM-free (except, strangely Hector episode 2 (and only episode 2) for Mac, which is Steam only). You'll also get downloadable soundtracks for Hector and Puzzle Agent.

If you pay more than the average (currently less than $5 USD), you'll also get The Walking Dead for Steam.

So what is going on here? A new Double Fine Kickstarter? To Kickstart a tactical strategy PC game? Called Massive Chalice (Kickstarter)?

Well, don't read this; go read and watch the Kickstarter instead! The game, which you can Kickstart, is aimed for a September release for PC, Mac, and Linux, and is helmed by Brad Muir.

Kickstart it! At the time of writing, the project has been Kickstarted up to $9,791 of its $725,000 goal.

Some guy started a thread on NeoGAF, observing that Lucasfilm, now a Disney subsidiary, filed four trademarks for Maniac Mansion on May 22nd. You can find the USPTO links within; check out the goods and services that Disney is reserving the rights for under the Maniac Mansion name:

While this shouldn't be necessarily interpreted as evidence that Disney is about to start pumping out Green Tentacle footwear, there does seem to be an education theme, doesn't there?

A few publications have picked up on the story, and there is some speculation that Disney is giving the classic game the HD remake treatment. While we advise against that kind of optimism, the NeoGAF guy makes a decent case for why Disney must be fixing to do something with the property and that this isn't just standard trademark renewal.

Source: NeoGAF

Update: Bill thinks Monday Thursday.

As has been his way, Bill transmits his latest update on the A Vampyre Story: Year One Kickstarter launch via Facebook.

Until the next hang-fire!

Source: AVS Facebook page

Update: May 19: I originally linked to the wrong part of the interview. Thanks to Vainamoinen on the Telltale forums for pointing out my mistake.

Remember the strange time towards the end of the run of Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures where Telltale started releasing Tales of Monkey Island before the former had even finished? According to an interview with Telltale's Ken Bruner over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, that won't be such a strange situation anymore.

Telltale is planning on releasing multiple seasons at the same time, provided that the release of The Wolf Among Us goes smoothly. They want to make sure that this release doesn't have the save bugs and other major problems that The Walking Dead had. If the release goes according to plan, they plan to release another season concurrently at some point after The Wolf Among Us launch. This seems to be a result of the expansion Telltale just recently underwent. Exactly which games will be the first to recieve this treatment is unknown at this point. Could it be the end of The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead Season Two (similar to the aforementioned Tales situation)? Could it be a completely unannounced season? Or perhaps the bonus that's supposed to take place in The Walking Dead universe to ease the wait between seasons? It's anyone's guess at this point, but I think I speak for all of Mixnmojo in hoping that it is Sam & Max Season Four (since Tales of Monkey Island Season Two seems pretty unlikely after the Disney buyout of Lucasfilm).

There's some other interesting tidbits to be found in the second part of the interview, such as the talk of the Pilot Program. Apparently, it's still alive and well. And, pieces of the ideas appear in the games that have been released. It was previously thought to only be Telltale's spring board for testing new, quirky ideas as one episode releases to minimize risk (an idea that brought us the Puzzle Agent and Poker Night games). However, it's now been revealed that it is the name for their prototyping sessions, and that portions of these prototypes have wound up in released games. One of the most interesting things revealed is that The Walking Dead actually started out as Telltale's Pilot Program zombie prototype.

One of the factoids that is of the most importance to Mojo is the bit in the first part of the interview where Kevin Bruner talks more about how The Wolf Among Us is going to play, how different it is from The Walking Dead, and how many traditional adventure game elements are going to be in it (hint: not much, although there are going to be detective elements that are said to be as mentally challenging as traditional adventure puzzles).

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Ron Gilbert is watching and commenting. Click here and be happy.

Geek Exchange has lovingly complied a list of many of LucasArts' best loved older games and linked to the best places to purchase them. Some of the games are probably easier to find in the UK, Australia and New Zealand due to the relatively recent Activision re-releases under the LucasArts Classics banner.

It's the sort of thing we should probably do here at Mojo someday. Until that day though, enjoy Geek Exchange's hard work.

Feel free to add to the list in the Comments section if you know of more places to legally obtain these, and any other classic LucasArts games.

Source: Geek Exchange

LucasArts Fan Felipe Machado has put together a loving tribute to the SCUMM era by mashing up several classic characters and locations.

Neat!

Source: YouTube

And not just one sequel... potentially three more Gungan Frontier games!

Fusible has found a few new domain names that Lucasfilm has registered. There's a few interesting ones in here besides Gungan Frontier:

Source: Fusible

The latest Humble Indie Bundle is all about the Double Fine.

Pay what you want, and get Costume Quest, Stacking, and Psychonauts for PC, Mac, and Linux as DRM-free downloads (and as a Steam key if you pay more than $1 USD)! Pay more than the average (currently just under $8 USD), and you'll also get Brütal Legend (also for Windows, Mac, and Linux DRM-free and with a Steam key).

If you have the money, you may also pay $70 or more, which will net you an exclusive Humble Double Fine Bundle T-shirt (available in black or cream).

Like all Humble Indie Bundles, a portion goes to charity (Child's Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation), and there's a slider available which you can decide how much of your payment goes to which charity, how much goes to Double Fine, and how much goes to Humble Bundle. If you haven't picked up these games yet, want to get a Steam key for the games, want to support charity and/or Double Fine, or just want to get them again for whatever reason, the Humble Double Fine Bundle is for you.

Game Informer's exclusive first look at Telltale's game based on Bill Willingham's Fables comics, The Wolf Among Us, is now available online for those who don't subscribe to the print magazine (or its digital counterpart).

There's quite a few screenshots showing the game's excellent comic book inspired style in action, as well as some more information about how the game is going to play. It's definitely worth a read (if you haven't read it already).

Yeah, so this happened.
Lucasfilm Ltd. and Disney Interactive are entering into a multi-year, multi-title exclusive licensing agreement with Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) for the creation of new high quality Star Wars games spanning multiple genres for console, PC, mobile, and tablets.
"Exclusive"!? Holy sith.

Source: Star Wars Official Site

Noah Falstien, of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis fame, has been hired by Google as their 'Chief Game Designer' for their new Android Play Studio. Unfortunately, the news is a bit sparse so far, as There's no word yet on what games he'll be making for the studio (or anything else really, beyond his title).

But, it should be interesting to see what comes from this though, at the very least.

Source: Wired

Polygon is reporting that Leap Motion has pushed back their Motion Controller for PC and Mac from May to the 22nd of July. The company pushed back the release to allow for a new round of beta testing that will begin in June.

This means that Double Fine's "music driven score challenge game", Dropchord, has also been pushed back, as it will be a launch title for the device. There are also plans to release Dropchord on smartphones and tablets, but no specific platforms or release dates have been set for those versions as of yet.

Source: Polygon