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

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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Freelance adventurers Ben & Dan don’t have any extravagant goals in life. A nice, meaty session sat in front of the telly watching Magnum P.I is usually all they wish for. Unfortunately, it’s not the safest possible way of spending one’s time. In the award-winning game Ben There, Dan That it has caused our heroes to be teleported on an alien spaceship filled with gates to alternate versions of Great Britain -  from one where UK is ruled by the USA, to one where dinosaurs remain the dominant species and evolved to the point of producing electronic entertainment. (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…)

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…)