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

Has nothing to do with U2's guitarist.

Over The Edge is the first chapter in the four-part series, The Journey Down. Written and designed by Theodor Waern, the game tells the story of Bwana, a simple fuel station attendant attempting to get he and his sidekick Kito’s plane airworthy in order to take a strange and beautiful woman to the mysterious area known as “The Underland” by going over what is known as “The Edge.” If you haven’t already, prepare yourself for some incredible freeware adventure gaming.

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…)

Things just got more complicated, partner!

Somehow almost all my entries seem to go along with cartoony pictures. It’s hard to stay serious in such circumstances. Thankfully I have now dabbled in a realistic, gritty, FMV whodunit adventure game series called Casebook and am able to offer you a taste of something much more dark and realistic for a change. Dedicated especially to fans of solving crimes through methodical clue and evidence gathering and patience-demanding forensic work.

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This little comic strip was originally created to sweeten the reading time for people brave enough to venture into my giant-sized, almost philosophical essay Gamer’s (illusion of) freedom about how games limit your actions to the extreme and make you love it. Still, the comic is a minor masterpiece in itself, so it should be made possible to be admired by everyone. (more…)

Since the very first post the blog has grown quite a bit in content and even more attractions and surprises are already in the works. In consequence, I can already see that my production diaries and the actual productions won’t be the most prominent part of The Workshop anytime soon (although they’ll certainly keep appearing and shocking everyone). Instead, I decided that there are still many facets of gaming, especially adventure gaming and particularly the indie (and almost indie) parts of adventure gaming, that I don’t get to explore in my articles for Adventure Classic Gaming, but have an excellent chance to do it here. Expect both unorthodox methodology as well as odes to old school charms. Maybe even some in-depth conversations with the creators behind the most interesting titles. (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…)

Hal Barwood

I was very happy to have been recently able to do an interview with Hal Barwood on behalf of ACG. His Indiana Jones and The Fate Atlantis was the first adventure game I ever played (that’s like winning a lottery) and remains one of my favorites. It is not some kind of sentimental affection on my part, mind you (I’m a notoriously unsentimental person). The game is just really that good and perfectly represents the good old days (absolutely no sentimental connotations on my part!) when the care went first of all into the game design and storytelling departments instead of in making things more and more flashy. (more…)