adventuregame
Latest
Amazon makes it easier to build audio adventure games for the Echo
If you grew up in the early age of computing, you likely encountered text-based adventure games. That ancient form of gaming got a new lease on life thanks to the Amazon Echo -- you can play some audio-based adventure games (including a Batman one) in which you talk to the Echo to move forward in the narrative. Amazon is now making it easier for developers to build more interactive audio games by releasing a tool that lets you graphically design audio adventures for the Echo.
Telltale's 'Batman' game does Bruce Wayne justice
Batman comics excel when they dive into the psyche of Bruce Wayne. The moody billionaire is conflicted by his desire to be a good person while protecting Gotham by any means necessary. How much force is excessive? Where do you draw the line? It's easy for the Caped Crusader to lose sight. Bruce is also a genius, capable of unraveling the most complex mysteries. Watching him scour the city and piece together a supervillain's plot is as rewarding for the reader as seeing the Dark Knight foil it with fists.
'Minecraft: Story Mode' gets three extra episodes in 2016
The first four episodes of Minecraft: Story Mode came out in quick succession, giving players a tightly crafted tale before Christmas. But with one episode remaining, developer Telltale suddenly went quiet about when its adventure would be wrapping up. Today, we have a date -- and it's not quite what we were expecting. Episode five will launch on March 29th, followed by a further three episodes later this year. These are being described as "additional escapades" and won't form part of the season pass, so you'll need to pay a little extra if you want the complete story.
Kickstarter-funded Double Fine Adventure game coming to Mac, iOS
Double Fine's CEO Tim Schafer, who made almost two million dollars last week through Kickstarter for his next game, has announced that thanks to all the extra donations (the project was originally budgeted at just US$400,000), Double Fine will be able to put all sorts of extra features and compatibility into the title. Most important for us, the game will be available on the Mac and iOS right away. Originally Mac support was listed but not confirmed. Now Schafer says that yes, Mac users will get a native version. The game will also include voicework, and get translated into several languages. Buyers who've already picked up the game through Kickstarter will get access to a closed beta, a DRM-free version of the final product and codes for the title through Steam. Presumably, that Steam version will include the Mac port through SteamPlay. It's not clear how the iOS versions will be distributed. At any rate, this is all great to hear. Double Fine got a tremendous show of support from fans and this is the first sign that the company is ready to get to work. The stil unnamed game is due out this fall, so look for it then.
Phoenix Wright: Sales for All
Amazon has cut the price of Phoenix Wright: Justice for All, the sequel to everyone's favorite court-based adventure game, bringing it down to $19.99. We don't expect this deal to last for long, so race your shopping cart to the checkout lane as fast as your feet will allow.If for some reason, God forbid, you haven't played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney yet and are hesitant to start the series midway through, don't forget that you can also pick up a used copy at GameStop or EB Games for as low as $21.99! We admit, that's still pretty expensive for a game as old as this one, but it's better than paying full price. All you'll need to take advantage of this sorta-bargain is the coupon we posted earlier this morning.
Stock Trader Shun screens
DS fans have been following Capcom's Stock Trader Shun with interest, and let's be honest, it's not because we're all crazy about the stock market. Our interest in Stock Trader Shun stems entirely from the fact that it kinda sorta looks like a financial version of Phoenix Wright.We aren't sure that the game is going to appeal to the Phoenix Wright audience (i.e. us) because, while Phoenix Wright's lawyering relied on traditional adventure game skills like conversation trees and item collecting, Stock Trader Shun's main gameplay is closer to a simulation of stock trading than an adventure game model with a stock-trading veneer. When out of the courtroom in Phoenix Wright, you're still talking to people and presenting items; but the non-trading portions of Shun seem fundamentally different from the number-crunching.But just because it's not exactly Phoenix Wright doesn't mean this game can't be enjoyable. We'll find out sometime after the June 7th release date when importers' impressions start coming in.
DS wishlist is an excuse to talk about Snatcher
We'd like to thank Racketboy for composing this list of games he'd like to see on the DS. Sure, everyone's got their own wishlist, but they're not online, and they don't all include Snatcher and Policenauts. And we want more opportunities to talk about those two games. He's absolutely right that these games are a good fit for the DS: between Hotel Dusk, Phoenix Wright and stuff like Suda 51's The Silver Case, the DS is pretty much the only system that can be said to be experiencing a graphical-text-adventure boom. It also happens to be the current sales leader. If there were ever a time to shovel all your old adventure games onto a console, this is it.Snatcher and Policenauts are high-quality games that would both sell to and satisfy the Phoenix Wright crowd. Throw a "FROM HIDEO KOJIMA, PRODUCER OF METAL GEAR" sticker on the box and you've got a game that is guaranteed to sell. Here's our totally unsolicited advice for Konami: port Snatcher first, and then if that sells, put some of the profits into translating Policenauts.Other notable games on the list include Metroids (yay) and Pac-Man Vs. We can get behind that, since with Wi-Fi play, we'd actually get to try Pac-Man Vs. against another person for once. Unfortunately, we kind of think that Nintendo is loath to embarrass themselves further by referring back to the GBA/GC connectivity experiment. But more adventure games? That's an easy call.
Agatha Christie adventure game to mysteriously appear on Wii
Seems like everyone finally picked up on the idea to port their PC adventure games to the Wii! Console players are starved enough for pointing and clicking that we'll gladly take leftovers. The Adventure Company has announced that Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, an adaptation of a novel of the same name ("The World's Best Selling Mystery Novel," according to the game's website), will be released on the Wii in November.Maybe a game based on the work of a popular mainstream author will bring the Wii even more attention from the non-traditional audience that Nintendo's after. And then we'd see an adventure boom like the one we're experiencing with minigames! Okay, maybe not-- but maybe it'll at least be kind of fun?
Avast! More Treasure Island Z scans spotted
A NeoGAFfer and frequent Wii Fanboy tipster named creamsugar posted these new, higher-quality scans of Capcom's Treasure Island Z, and later in the thread Xboxyde's Blimblim cleaned up the images, which we have provided for you. After a careful inspection, we must say, that if we were excited about the game yesterday, today we are in full hype hype hype mode! We're ready to start freaking out about this game without really knowing anything about it!The graphics look so great (and we aren't going to assume that it's because of Blimblim's filter)-- finally, next-generation cel shading is here! And the art style and general piracy motif reminds us of one of the best Capcom games ever, the Mega Man Legends spinoff The Misadventures of Tron Bonne. Please, Capcom, let it be like Tron Bonne.Click the post break to see the scans, and then click those to see them in their original resolution.
Text adventures arrive on the DS via unofficial channels
We can't tell you to download them (in fact, we'll tell you not to), but we can definitely applaud the technical achievement. A homebrew genius called papafuji has ported a massive selection of classic text adventures and early graphic adventure games to the DS, including all of Infocom's text adventures and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams' interactive fiction.These aren't just barebones ports, either: you can save games, and you can choose to enter text via an onscreen keyboard or handwriting input! And the game engine contains shorthand functionality for common commands like cardinal directions and "get". Some of the games are public domain, but most aren't, and we aren't sure which games fall in which category. Therefore, we're officially warning you: if you download these games, there's a good chance that you are a pirate.[Thanks, Joq!]
Ankh and Luminator coming to British DS
Xider Interactive, who we previously reported as not actually bringing Sam & Max to the DS, have announced their real DS releases for the UK. The titles, which are probably familiar to German PC gamers but definitely not familiar to us, are: Luminator DS (May) Ankh 1 (August) Ankh appears to be the first in a series of Egyptian-themed adventure games-- and there's no part of that description we don't like. Luminator (PC version shown above), from what we can tell, is ... let's say a faithful tribute to Lumines.We don't know if either of these games will be headed to the US. Have any of our European friends played either of these? We need to know about the quality of Ankh before we get too excited about OMG ADVENTURE GAME.[Via Cubed3]
