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

Are adventures perceived as old and rusty?

As a long time adventure gamer, it has constantly amazed me over the years how the genre has gone from being gloriously at the forefront of interactive entertainment in the early 90′s, to now emerge as the downtrodden and shunted, would-rather-be-forgotten cousin of computer games in general. I often wonder why there has became such a sharp contrast in critical opinion of these games?

By no means am i suggesting that an adventure game, by its nature, will be a good one. Certainly, the classics of the genre often seem behind us, with the shift of Lucasarts in particular towards 3D Star Wars and Indiana Jones games indicating that this won’t change anytime soon.

Still, it saddens me to realize that a lot of good adventure games seem to be put down now simply because of the genre they happen to come under. Take, for example, the following review (from a well known British newspaper). (more…)

Yesterday was yet another one of my birthdays…     And Today I die… Released that very day… Was the best birthday surprise I could have hoped for. Refreshing, oneiric and inspirational.  And Today I decided to try to bring more people’s attention to this excellent game and some other titles I associate with it. (more…)

Action games’ fans often consider adventure games’ fans an eccentric bunch who likes to think hard during leisure time. Wrong! Adventure games are what you turn to when you need to release all those primal emotions accumulated and suppressed during the rest of the day. A true adventure gaming experience must contain the likes of instant dangers, hidden traps, fist fights, explosions, running away from angry mobs… So what, if many such obstacles require using some basic wits to get past – the wits part is there just to spice up the brutal aspects of the adventuring. (more…)

Deep in the Languedoc mountains… shrouded in darkness… lies Rennes-le-Chateau – the city of ancient secrets, hotels and museums in the must-play adventure game Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of The Sacred, Blood of The Damned. And it’s all based on reality… Is it?

Here’s how Gabriel Knight in person (and in Tim Curry‘s voice) described this town sometime in 1998 or 1999:

Colin Panetta's amazing Grim Fandango artwork (visit Mojo for higher res)

November 2009 – The 11th Grim Fandango Anniversary (more…)

When I started this blog I thought I was a bit late too include references to 2008 holiday celebrations, but it appears that I can – on the pretext of  others being late too.

The talented team behind Indiana Jones and The Fountain of Youth DEMO, which is still working on the full version of this very promising adventure game in the style of the classic Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis, have just released a very special (if a bit late) Christmas/New Year’s Greetings surprise making adventure fans happy all over the world. By doing so they prolonged (or at least brought back a little) holiday atmosphere far into January, which makes the experience even more nice. (more…)

2008 was an interesting year for adventure games, but none of the new releases I played was truly groundbreaking. The adventure game scene seems to be still heavily marred by the desperate  struggles to get funding and publishing deals and then to make the freshly assembled teams and  engines work. Even such “sure bets” of current adventure gaming as A Vampyre Story and Gray Matter suffered from flimsy marketing (GM), shameful bugs (AVS) and huge delays in production (both).

Germany is the biggest source for new titles in the genre now. However, (more…)