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

The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood – a title that instills fear, tension and deep expectation in any loyal Monkey Island fan. When we click that big green DOWNLOAD button, we know we’re in for a real treat. And boy, we sure are! Chapter 4 is simply the most intriguing and exciting episode yet, and it can only get better with Chapter 5!

Remember that spoilers of Chapters 1 – 3 are very likely!

(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…)

A once cheerful land of forests, mountains and magic has succumbed to permanent winter. A permanent winter conjured up and constantly renewed by the terrible black fire attacks of a mighty ice dragon. As a result most human inhabitants have turned into ice statues and the prospects of the handful that are still able to keep their blood reasonably warm are no better. One of those is an old woodsman who lying ill in his bed has just explained the situation to his daughter in a speech very nicely stylized to archaic jargon. (more…)

Sam and Max face their toughest foe yet in the epic cartoon adventure, Sam and Max: Season Two. Note that spoilers of Season One are very likely! In fact, here’s one now…

A year after their successful case involving hypnotism and sentient bacteria, Sam and Max have had a little time to relax; everything turns upside down when their faithful companion Mr Spatula turns pure evil.

(more…)

There’s little doubt that travels to hidden magical dimensions often become the greatest secret desires. To kids anyway. And in a way we’re generously provided with all kinds of Narnias, Harry Potters or Simon the Sorcerers that allow to taste a bit of this sort of experience. So if you fancied at least one of the imaginary places from those pieces of fiction you’re now invited to venture into the world of troubled vampire pizza deliverers and pizza molding magicians via Pizza Morgana. (more…)

Mark (in the center) at PAX with Ryan Jones and Dave Grossman on his flanks

So here we are today talking this time to a truly accomplished adventure game designer who has gone from small, but great indie productions (Nick Bounty!!!) to become one of the lead creative forces at Telltale Games. Mark Darin after leading the design on the Strong Bad games is co-creating all the big titles currently in progress, including Tales of Monkey Island and the future Sam & Max episodes. As always we started the interview with the most difficult question. Next we started to differentiate between indie games and Telltale games which may be not entirely fair as Telltale is all independent as far as I know, just maybe a bit bigger than Mark’s own company Pinhead Games. Oh, and Pinhead‘s games are freeware. (more…)