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

It’s time to grab your gun and your guitar, to shoot and kick some zombie butt! No, this isn’t a review of Left 4 Dead or Dead Island, and yes, you’re still on HardyDevth. This is, however, a review of a zombie survival game… of sorts. (more…)

It’s taken a while, but after a few months, the third chapter of The Dream Machine is upon us. After getting reacquainted with the controls (not that they’re very complicated, but what few controls there were I’d forgotten), I was soon exploring this wonderful dream world again. The first two chapters impressed with their very atmospheric handmade sets. Can this chapter do the same? (more…)

If there’s one thing the adventure games based on Terry Pratchett’s Discworld have shown us, it is that they’re a great platform for humorous fantasy. So why haven’t there been more games like them? Yes, there’s Simon the Sorcerer, but that’s about it. But now there’s another hopeful on the scene, and it’s an ambitious project: The Book of Unwritten Tales. Can it deliver though? (more…)

Layton and Luke are invited to a mysterious opera called “The Eternal Kingdom”

From the get-go, it is pretty clear that one of the main objectives of making the film was marketing the Professor Layton puzzle games. The DVD opens briskly with a trailer for Professor Layton and the Lost Future (you should skip it, if you haven’t finished the game yet!). But what about the movie itself? Is it more than just a marketing tool?
Can it stand on its own? (more…)

When I heard about Enter The Story, I was immediately excited. This ambitious one-man project, with a bit of help from others, aims to turn classic literature into adventure games, combining two of my favourite things. Although I have great enthusiasm for classic books, and the 19th century is quite possibly my favourite century, I am a slow reader, and there are still many books I have yet to read.

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It’s time to dust off your old school books and brush up on your Latin and Greek mythology, because we’re going to play a game that closely follows the story of Ulysses as related by Homer’s Odyssey, in a faithful retelling of the epic.

Or so it would seem at first glance.

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A tree is known by its fruit, and you could say an adventure game is known by its aesthetics, even though that may be a bit oversimplified. If we apply that principle to Jolly Rover, you might come to the conclusion that this is a children’s game.        The gentle, charming dog characters and background art and the pleasing voices may make you think so. But is it really?

The hint system certainly suggests so, at first. Every couple of minutes, a parrot – in itself a likeable character – pops up, asking if you need help. This can easily get annoying, but fortunately there’s an option to just say no to its incessant offerings of help. When you couple that with the ingenious way in which you earn hints – you have to find crackers throughout the game to feed the parrot whenever you require a hint – it’s actually pretty clever, and not that annoying. (more…)