The International House of Mojo

As promised, the month draws to a close with a whole bunch of new hands-on impressions of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. No really, there’s a lot of them. Too many, frankly. We’re a little insulted.

Here’s what I rounded up before my hand fell off. People seem to be liking it.

• The Gamer
• Gamespot
• IGN
• GamesRadar
• Eurogamer
• Wccftech
• Gaming Bible
• GamesBeat
• Screen Rant
• VG247
• Checkpoint Gaming
• Game Rant
• Windows Central
• True Achievements
• Rock Paper Shotgun
• Sports Illustrated
• T3
• Noisy Pixel
• Shacknews
• The Sixth Axis
• Xbox Achievements
• Metro
• Pure Xbox
• Press Start
• Mirror

The game is out December 9th. Two weeks before you finish reading all of these, in other words.

To go along with this morning’s announcement, Jack Allin of Adventure Game Hotspot (Footnote: And who you may remember from Adventure Gamers) had a chat with Bill Tiller of Autumn Moon and Šarūnas Ledas of Tag of Joy (co-developer) to learn all the details behind the long-in-the-making revival of A Vampyre Story: A Bat’s Tale.

There’s a heck of a lot more in the full interview, including the somewhat sobering reveal that we may still be years out from release, but nevertheless it's all exciting stuff. Maybe even life-affirming.

The day actually came. Check out the announcement trailer for A Vampyre Story 2: A Bat's Tale (Footnote: Except it looks like they dropped the 2, possibly to avoid alienating people who haven't played a fifteen year old game.), which will be released by Autumn Moon games alongside a new partner, Tag of Joy.

The full press release can be read here, you can check out some new screenshots over on the Steam page, and last but not least there's Autumn Moon's relaunched web site. Let's hope they're able to bring Pedro Macedo Camacho back.

No doubt there's more to come, but for now let's just luxuriate in the fact that Halloween is saved.

As a game designer, Dave Grossman is celebrated, while as a pumpkin villain he remains unarrested. But we benefit from that, as he's carved up his annual entry for The Pumpkin House of Horrors to delight and disturb one and all. Behold "Mutual Assured Destruction":

Double Fine published their appropriately loving tribute to their sophomore release last week, so why shouldn’t Mojo get in on the action on this most prestigious anniversary?

For us, the fun was revisiting what it was like to follow the game’s development all those years back, and it was quite the odyssey. In fact, we think it all played out a bit spicier than you may have mellowed it down to in your headcanon, though we should probably speak for ourselves given our well-established signs of mental deterioration. Anyway, join us as we travel back to the Age of Metal and relive the ecstasy and pain of Brütal Legend’s storied forging. Embrace your inner Doviculus, and you may recognize there is no distinction.

As they do (mostly) every October, Skunkape has invited fans to submit Sam & Max fan art for the chance to win Big Prizes, which this year includes plushies and soundtrack keys for The Devil’s Playhouse (which I take as a hopeful sign that the soundtrack will in fact exist). You’ve still got a week to enter, so review the details and do us proud. We’ll only feel entitled to the usual 40% of your winnings.

If you think that’s the extent of Sam & Max Halloween news, then you must be one of those poor dears who didn’t even know that Steve Purcell auctioned off some new Sam & Max art as part of the Hero Initiative. Even if you hold the embarrassing position of not being the winning bidder who plunked down $5,500 to own the physical art, you can still enjoy it in cyberspace:

By the way, if you weren’t around for the piece Purcell contributed to the annual benefit last year, it was no slouch itself:

There’s no reason to ostracize Double Fine from the Halloween fun. Their claim on the occasion would be their trick ‘r treat RPG masterwork, Costume Quest, which is celebrating its fourteenth birthday. I think you know what to do.

All things considered, I’d say the only thing holding back October 2024 from perfection is that there sadly seem to have been no new developments on the A Vampyre Story front. But you’ll certainly want to find the time to play the still-unsequeled 2008 graphic adventure, what with its recent re-introduction to Steam in more stable form.

A Little Something A Schtick to the Past Ron’s as yet untitled RPG has been a fun project to track on his Mastodon account, where he regularly offers tantalizing glimpses or charming anecdotes about a stubborn bug he's looking to squash.

It’s always come across as a project he is largely flying solo on his own nickel, but perhaps A Little Something more will be required to get it to the finish line, as earlier in the month he ran this little poll:

Hey, he’s just putting feelers out. Still, now’s as good a time as any to look into renegotiating the terms of your mortgage.

Source: Ron's Mastodon

Wake up on the Bright Side of the Moon (Footnote: I think we can all agree that was way better than "something-something 'Bad Day on the Moon-Shoe".) with these fluffy critters adorning your tootsies.

Again, in collaboration with Steve Purcell, the Uncute crew behind such fluffy friends such as "Max" the stuffed animal and more recently "Sam" the stuffed animal, have done the impossible. Two Max's, which we haven't seen the likes of together since Season 2: Ep 4 "Chariots of the Dogs". The pre-order price is $35 dollars and should arrive in time for your family tradition of replaying Season 2: Ep 1 "Ice Station Santa".

You either die a gumshoe detective or it's a slippery slope to become the villain. (Footnote: I'll stop.)

Source: Uncute

It feels like only yesterday that Brütal Legend released—Rocktober 13th, if you remember.

The face-melting solo, guitar-axe-wielding open world action game (with a surprise RTS mode in the middle) featured Eddie Riggs (played by Jack Black), a roadie whose yearning for authenticity in metal music ("Like, the 70s?" "No, earlier. Like, the early 70s") has him gleefully murdering metal music-inspired demons in a metal music-inspired fantasy world when he's transported to it.

As you do.

It was a game Mojo enjoyed, more or less.

Double Fine has a little write-up on the game's legacy fifteen years on. I look back on the game fondly, personally, so this was a fun read.

Source: Double Fine Action News

I’m not sure why you’d look for the latest Indiana Jones and the Great Circle news here on the front page when the forum coverage by “Threepwood4life” is far more dependable, but perhaps the time has come to play catch-up, if only to keep up appearances and maintain our eligibility for government subsidies. (Footnote: We respect your outrage, but maybe now you’ll read those amendments to the end before you pull the lever.)

The last non-LEGO Indy title back in 2009 was, shall we say, a furtive affair, and I think we’re starting to bear witness to what unrelieved repression ultimately leads to. Wanting to project a show of force in marketing gimmick game, Microsoft is offering up an exclusive, Indy-themed Xbox Series X console to the lucky few who want that thing in their home. What you do is haul yourself over to one of three metropolitan hubs (London, Sydney, and New York) starting November 12th. At these “Microsoft Experience Centers” you will find an Indy display that will challenge your ego with some sort of puzzle. Use your background in adventure games to solve it, and you’ve done and gone and entered for your chance to win. It’s all terribly cute. Full details of the sweepstakes are here, and below is a look at the hardware you’ll be publicly debasing yourself for:

Not exhibitionist enough for you? Then try on for size the four-wheeled promotional consideration the game will be enjoying at the Circuit of the Americas racetrack in Austin this weekend:

Somewhere in all of this you might have maintained some curiosity about the game itself. As we are drawing closer to release, more hands-on impressions are fixing to emerge. Fans are already photo-journaling extravagant Great Circle events that Bethesda is putting on, and word is that we can expect previews to turn up before the month’s out.

Indiana Jones and the Middling Parallelogram releases December 9, 2024 on the Xbox Series S|X and on PC, with a Playstation 5 version to follow in 2025.

I mean, not in the classic sense, but rather that we’ve added another section to MojoDB Preview Edition: Cover Art. Frankly, LucasArts Posters is where you want to go for high-quality scans (Footnote: thx jan!), but then, do you really want to forego browsing classic artworks like this?

That’s the kind of bespoke content you can only find at MojoDB, your friend in LucasArts+ covers.