The International House of Mojo

A recent thread on the official Autumn Moon forums sure seems to indicate so! With the art side of A Vampyre Story completed the team has already begun work on the sequel. The less Christmas for Draxsylvania, the more for us.

The post, made by an unknown team member, also suggests that you check out the Autumn Moon site before Christmas day. So you're going to do that, aren't you?

According to a certain Internet source, today is Bill Tiller's birthday! He will be three hundred and seventy seven ? practically a baby in Vampire years.

Everyone wish him a happy birthday or you'll get no Vampyre Story!

The Autumn Moon blog has been updated once more by Bill, and he has a few things to share with you on this Halloween day. Like:

• This AVS card by artist Jean Louis Sirios
  
• The promise that a second card will be showing up on the official site some time in the future
  
• Bill's submission to Double Fine's pumpkin contest (I daresay it's almost as good as Spaff's), and some general hyping of Br?tal Legend
  
• A status update on AVS's production as well as on AVS 2, which they'll begin working on in December!

Well, what are you waiting for? The candy doesn't come to you, that's the whole point of trick-or-treating.

The Pumpkin Post have scribbled out a new Interview, this time with Will Holland, a student programmer working on A Vampyre Story. He has lots of interesting things to say about the game:

"Working on A Vampyre Story has been different from other projects because of the 2.5-d perspective. On the art side, it's an ideal situation for our team because we have a lot of talent in both 3-d character animation and the 2-d environments. For the programmers however, it's quite a pain! Always projecting from 3-d world coordinates to 2-d screen coordinates, tweaking strange perspective and scaling issues, or whatever. As Froderick says: "It's tough bein a 3D model in a 2D world". Concerned fans needn't fret though, this game's gonna look amazing, and we're gonna type til our fingers bleed and debug til our eyes pop out to make sure of that!"

Read it all here, and then drink a yummy glass of milk (?)

Adventure Gamers has added a brand spankin' new interview with Bill Tiller who's preparing to unleash his beautiful looking graphic adventure on the world.

Well, we designed so much of the game and then the story became so big that we realized we are probably going to have to make three games to tell the whole story. The budget and the time we have are also much shorter than we had at LucasArts, so we have to do it that way. It isn't episodic like the Bone or Sam & Max games. I think A Vampyre Story is probably a good size, about Full Throttle size. And it'll feel more like how The Lord of the Rings had been divided up into three books, or like Star Wars. It's an epic story so it just makes more sense to tell it in three games.

Take a look for yourself.

Source: Adventure Gamers

As pointed out by the auspicious The Pumpkin Post, Gaming Today has got a new Q&A with Bill about A Vampyre Story which you'll surely want to be reading.

GT: LucasArts was very popular in the 90's for their adventure games. Nowadays, it seems LucasArts has abandoned its roots and are focusing mostly on Star Wars games. Do you think they should try to dabble in the adventure games business once again, or are they doing the right thing by sticking to the cash cow that is Star Wars?

Bill Tiller: I think there's room for both. Even if they lost money on adventure games I think they should still do them. Then they could do animated movies and an amusement park based on the game and make a ton of money off of Guybrush and Le Chuck plush toys, night lights, and pajamas. I wish them the best of luck, but I'm sad not to see Guybrush for another five years.

Oh, and there's a new screenshot in there too! Woot.

Posted on the new official web site is the two-minute trailer for the game that was shown at the Games Convention in Leipzig. It is the first available footage of the game ever, as far as I know, and it makes quite an impression.

Your thoughts?

Update: You should all be aware that acclaimed Mojo reader Haggis has recently launched his own Autumn Moon fan blog, which you should visit regularly!

That's right, Adventure Gamers has the first preview of the long avaited A Vampyre Story from Bill Tiller's Autumn Moon Entertainment.

Whether A Vampyre Story can deliver on the expectations remains to be seen, but Autumn Moon certainly exudes confidence in their project. In fact, their ambitions have grown since the game got signed by a publisher. A Vampyre Story will end on a cliffhanger, with plans already in place for a trilogy of games, and with ports to console systems being actively considered. The succes of Telltale Games has perhaps had some role in inspiring this confidence, and with any luck Autumn Moon will be able to shape its own identity independent of its LucasArts roots, the same way Telltale Games has managed to do so over time.

Head on over to Adventure Gamers' new website and take a look.

Source: Adventure Gamers

Though it's hardly a credible source, I've noticed that many sites and online retailers are listing A Vampyre Story as coming out in January 2008. When the internet lies about release dates it's traditionally to make them earlier, not later, than expected.

So I shot Crimson Cow an email and was told that "we will release early 2008 in Germany, and in USA as well." D'oh!

Ah well. Maybe when it became clear that the game couldn't make a Halloween release they decided to push it to next year to avoid pitting Mona against the unholy AAA terrors of the Christmas season. Or maybe it's just delayed. Not to worry though, we've still got Battlefront PSP and Thrillville 2 to end the year on a high note!

Crimson Cow's official A Vampyre Story web site is no longer a placeholder as you can clearly see for yourself with the chilling new site for the game now up! Much like yesterday's Double Fine revamp, the site contains some groovy new content as well as some yet to be available features.

New stuff includes some extensive details about the story, characters, and locations (where you'll find some stupendous new background art) as well as a new blog by Lead Writer Dave Harris. On the Coming Soon front we have a Downloads section and some spooky new forums to look forward to. It would also appear that an upgraded online store is in our future, which hopefully means the abandonment of Cafepress. Halloween's come early.

Okay, so it's time to fill in the news gap with another one of our Whenever-We-Feel-Like-It Indiana Jones 4 updates. Enjoy the following outdated coverage that you could have easily found elsewhere:

First off, the production has recently left Hawaii, which was apparently the setting of the film's opener as well as some out of control action sequences. The tropical state was standing in for South America, as was also the case for the opening sequence of Raider of the Lost Ark. Hmmm. This marks the end of the film's location shooting (which included New Mexico and Connecticut), and the rest of principle photography will take place on sets in LA.

As revealed at the Comic-Con (and leaked everywhere else in the weeks leading up to it), Karen Allen will be reprising her role from Raiders as Indy's old flame, Marion Ravenwood. Expect to see some other Ravenwoods make an appearance too, much to the chagrin of anyone who dislikes Shia LaBeouf or the resurrection of characters previously said to be dead. It is pretty great to see some of these guys together again though.

Finally, as JP mentioned earlier, the official Indiana Jones web site has experienced a complete overhaul to accommodate the influx of news courtesy of the new film, and there's a bunch of stuff there for you to fiddle around with, such as wallpapers and new videos. You can find tons more, spoiler-y information about Indiana Jones 4 floating around the internet, but if you intend to completely ruin the movie for yourself, you're doing it without my help.

Incidentally, Autumn Moon is hiring! Why not be their Lead Programmer?

The latest issue of PCZone came out/comes out this week (delete as applicable to how often you visit Mojo) and featured a small but nice preview of A Vampyre Story, alongside some new screenshots and (another - man he's getting around a bit) interview with Bill Tiller.

Thankfully, perhaps anticipating Mojo's superior scanning skills, CVG have stuck the preview and all the screenies on their website. Cheers for that, guys!

Pro-G have published a new interview with Bill Tiller. Here?s a quote:

Pro-G: What do you think of other recent adventure games, like the episodic Sam and Max or Bone? Are you a fan?

BT: Yes and no. I love the fact they are making comedic adventure games and they are doing a great job of promotion. But I wish the games were hand painted or like the ones Peter Chan, Bill Eaken, Steve Purcell and I did, or fully rendered like Grim Fandango was. I like that better than real time 3D environments. Their engine has really neat capabilities too.

Thanks to the giant, unblinking, lid-less eye of Ddrunkymonkey for the tip off!

As he's prone to do every half a year, Tiller the Killer has updated the Autumn Moon blog. In this entry he reiterates the A Vampyre Story's scheduled Q4 release, reveals his extensive sequel plans, and lists several of his artistic influences. Reading the blog will reward you with lots of insight, so don't delay.

And just a reminder for the imaginary populous who reads this site, is subscribed to Gametap, and has never played Psychonauts: the Excellent Game has been uploaded to the client today. Don't blow your nineteenth chance to play it.

They just won't stop! These five come from German site PC Games Online:

- Mona talking to some gypsy lady
- Mona in the castle (maybe?)
- Mona and Froderick studying a map
- Mona examining a mirror
- Mona checking out a horse

It's like, just when you thought the game couldn't look any more gorgeous, this happens.

Source: PC Games

It would seem that the folks responsible for A Vampyre Story's retail presence in the UK have been selected.

93 Games have signed the UK publishing rights to "A Vampyre Story" from Crimson Cow, while Ascaron Entertainment have been appointed as the UK distribution partner. The collective agreement will see the adventure title on UK retail shelves in Q4 2007.

Read the full press release here.

Usually those seeking sexual stimulation would be better served by web sites other than Mojo, but today several new screenshots from Autumn Moon's A Vampyre Story have appeared on one of the game's many official pages. If you'd rather not view the beauties in clumsy Flash slideshow form, check them all out at Adventure Gamers.

What part of that screen displaying the interface doesn't look amazing? Hint: It was a trick question.

When Mr Bill Tiller of Autumn Moon Entertainment announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Petaluma.

Read all about it here!

...a new holiday!

Happy Easter from Autumn Moon. And Mojo.

Source: Autumn Moon

Apparently they're using every holiday as an opportunity to draw some awesome A Vampyre Story art and share it with everyone. And I ain't complaining.