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

May I present the interview I conducted for ACG with Larry Ahern (Full Throttle, Curse of Monkey Island, Insecticide) concerning a bunch of adventure games that sadly none of us – the players – ever got our mandibles on – like Vanishing Act, Full Throttle 2 and Insecticide Part 2.

The highlights include not only some really cool behind-the-scenes stories from up to 20 years ago, but also a gallery of concept art from the aforementioned games, as well as the never before seen cutscenes from Insecticide: Part 2 which wrap up most of the storyline!

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8oWnnsJ_GWBQwZyzmFgVPA/videos?view=1

Lastly, I’ve been recommending the relatively unloved Insecticide: Part 1 for ages and still do. You can get it cheap on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/16710/

Where do video games go when they die? Most of them end up on the scrapheap, forever forgotten by new generations of gamers. But some rise from the grave, haunting the gaming universe for a long, long time. One such game is Curse of Monkey Island. With its distinct art style, it revolutionized adventure games, and left quite an impression on game makers, who are not afraid to use its legacy in their own games.

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After many years of development and troubles with finding a publisher, Autumn Moon Entertainment finally released its first game, A Vampyre Story. AME is the company of Bill Tiller, who is probably best-known for the fantastic backgrounds he created for Curse of Monkey Island. With Tiller at the helm, great quality visuals are pretty much a guarantee, but how does this adventure stack up in other aspects? (more…)

Finally, there has come the moment that I was waiting for a very long time – I can start a production diary for my own adventure game! Not because I have just put together a loose concept or created the first artwork, no. It is the right moment to begin writing about the game because I have now finished a working version of one of three acts of the full project – to be tweaked and released soon (next month) as a WIP demo. So, while much much work still needs to be done, even on the demo, from this moment on there will be always  some solid virtual entity to refer to. In other words, Frantic Franko now lives! (more…)

They say there is only one true pirate adventure game/game series, the rest just tries to take a piece of its glory for themselves. They are a little bit more forgiving, though, when the game in question is intentionally a love letter to the classic adventure games of yore. Yet there also exists a certain title that is a piratey love letter in both this and a quite different meaning of the expression.

Yes, it’s all true! Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! – the game in question – was made using the freeware AGS engine specifically for the girlfriend of its creator Alasdair Beckett (but don’t worry, YOU can play it too)! Well, actually Alasdair doesn’t really try to hide who is the game’s primary addressee any more than the fact that it was heavily inspired by the Monkey Island series. How could he do that anyway, when the game even borrows the icon coin interface known from Curse of Monkey Island. A very heartfelt tribute to Monkey Island then? (more…)