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

Everyone enjoys a good, long fantasy (fairy-)tale depicting the adventures of a true hero. It’s a pity then that it’s so difficult to come by an adventure game that matches this seemingly broad description. The days of regular King’s Quest and Quest for Glory entries with occasional great one-shots like my personal favorite Death Gate seem to be long over. The few new games that encompass traditional fantasy elements tend to push them towards cartoony slapstick and parody rather than offer a serious treatment of the genre.

Similarly, most new adventure games suffer from shortness, often even choosing an episodic format of publishing – not the best fit for an epic story of heroic daring-do. It is then an experience not totally unlike that of a starving hobbit coming upon a delicious feast to finally play an adventure game which not only captures the spirit of epic fantasy, but it is able to feel fresh, exciting and have a personality all of its own. It is a game that fully deserves the title Tale of a Hero. (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:

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…)

Two months have gone by as the revamped and refocused Monkey Island Speech Project started its course. The project was originally launched in October 2008 by Joe Davison and was dedicated to providing voices for the characters of Secret of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (as the first part of the series didn’t seem to be technically viable for such a feat at the time). Amused by the sheer arrogance of the idea, mixnmojo has granted it with a nice home address. (more…)

As of January 2009, I played a fair amount of indie adventure games released in 2008 (well, just a few of those that were heavily lauded actually). While there are still some last year highlights out there waiting for me, Mental Repairs Inc. is without any doubt the best one I came across. What’s more, although it’s completely freeware it matches (and in some areas surpasses) the technical quality of games that require some kind of financial investment before playing. (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…)