A Hardy Developer's Journal – as written by indie adventure game developers

I have to say that past years visit to the Monkey Islandish Caribbean has turned out to be a truly epic journey filled to the brim with piratey adventures and charming concepts. And here is where we are now. Right at the end. But is it the last chapter of one big story? Or more like the end to an episodic series? And how good is it exactly? (more…)

Hello there in the new year 2010, Dear Reader! I hope it is already treating you well. Welcome after our long December slumber which was caused by many different things (that I was busy with). Among them was my determination to release the reinvented version of Frantic Franko demo right for 2010′s start and HardyDev‘s 1st birthday which happens today.

Franko will get a whole, separate article soon, so I won’t divulge too much on the game right now beyond providing the link to the new demo and mentioning that the game will still undergo all kinds of tweaks and modifications before the full release in March, so any kind of feedback will always be very valuable to me, especially since I made many risky design choices you won’t find in other games. (more…)

Don’t worry, dear reader – I haven’t conducted an interview with myself by myself.

Not yet. But somebody else did (with me, I mean, not with themselves).

Here’s Part 1 and here’s Part 2. Have a great read!

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I’m a big admirer of Czech animated movies. The Czech school of animation really perfected the thing that is so great about this medium – making the most real behave unreal. First, start by reconstructing frame by frame our experiences with objects like plants, machines, and all types of grit. And then twist them around and attribute with a completely different nature. In this kind of manner, the game Machinarium by Jakub Dvorak and Amanita Design offers us a whole city created and inhabited by a population of machines (more…)

This time we introduce Borut Pfeifer who already has a career in the gaming industry and is a specialist in AI design. Now he set up to create his own independent game that while may not be an adventure game in the strictest sense, nevertheless is definitely within our scope of interests. Firstly, the main heroes have an enticing quest to accomplish. Secondly, it relies a lot on character interactions that represent real life people interactions. Finally, the game goes directly for what almost every game designer seems to yearn for (more…)

Marek and his wife

High Res 2D is coming back to the adventure genre! And it doesn’t stop with the recently released Machinarium and The Whispered World haunting your senses with their beauty. The story continues with The Trader of Stories – a fresh new escapist fantasy world that extends beyond just the video game medium. It’s the work of yet another talented Polish adventure game developer (and draughtsman, and writer, and chemist) Marek Rudowski. (more…)

Our Tales of Monkey Island Episode 3 review comes a bit late, however, this has allowed me to already get some notion of what other people thought of it. Actually, the review statistics show this has become the highest rated episode of the series so far. (more…)