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Indie Royale Stuffing Bundle crams together Dream Machine, Puzzle Agent 2 and more
Before the holidays have you engorged to the point where the only game you can play is called nap, Indie Royale wanted to proposition you with a new tempting smorgasbord of indie games. The Indie Royale Stuffing Bundle groups together Dream Machine: Chapters 1-3, Puzzle Agent 2, Anomaly: Warzone Earth, Children of the Nile and Adventure Apes and the Mayan Mystery. Dream Machine uses cardboard and clay to tell the story of Victor Neff and his wife who just moved into an apartment building that just isn't quite right. (Dream Machine is a five-part series, so keep in mind you won't get the entire award-winning point-and-click adventure experience in this bundle.) Puzzle Agent 2 is the 2011 sequel to Telltale Games' and Graham Annable's original adventure/puzzle outing and Pilot Program winner. Anomaly: Warzone Earth you've probably heard of since it's on every platform ever invented, while Adventure Apes and the Mayan Mystery is a Metroidvania game with lots of exploration. Finally, Children of the Nile is a city-building sim set in ancient Egypt – the Enhanced Edition is a Steam key, while the Desura/DRM-free code included in the bundle is based on the 2004 original, Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile.
TUAW's Daily iPhone App: Puzzle Agent 2
I've been looking forward to this one. I first enjoyed Graham Annable's Puzzle Agent last summer actually on the iPhone, even though it was also released for the Mac and PC previously. The sequel is now available on iOS, and I can't wait to play it. Annable's weird mix of homespun comedy and creepy gnomes is fascinating to me (and you'll love it too, especially if you have a taste for the weird and slightly frightening), and Puzzle Agent's puzzles were ingenious little bite-sized affairs, paced perfectly well with a story full of wacky characters and twists. There's no Game Center integration here, and the presentation might not be perfect -- the first iPhone title suffered a little from weird graphical glitches (though there were no game-breaking bugs that I found). But nevertheless, the Puzzle Agent series is much-loved by a certain crowd, myself definitely included. If you know you'll like it already, you can pick it up on the iPhone for US$4.99 or on the iPad in HD for $6.99. If you've never played the series before, you can check out the first title for the same prices, play through the free version, or just wait a bit for them to go on sale.
Puzzle Agent's art and inspirations investigated in first developer video
Game designer Mark Darin and artist/animator/"creative instigator" Graham Annable provide a look at the inspirations, unique visual style, and creepy gnome-filled plot of the recently announced Puzzle Agent in a developer featurette fresh from Telltale Games. There isn't a wealth of gameplay to be seen, but it's still a nice treat for those of us who've been trying to wrap our noggins around the mystery of Scoggins. It seems that something's amiss at the White House's eraser supplier and ... well, we'll let Darin and Annable explain the rest. Be sure to watch it all the way to the end for a special surprise. %Gallery-92249%
Telltale's 'Scoggins' project related to artist Graham Annable
No one's completely cracked the mystery of Scoggins, as teased on Telltale's official site, but Gamasutra has placed a big part of the puzzle. The outlet has connected the work of artist Graham Annable, responsible for the "Grickle" short films and books, to the teaser. Not only does the Scoggins art closely match that of Annable's, he has a history with Telltale, formerly serving as creative director at the company. Moreover, we noticed the same gnomes from the teaser image (which he calls "The Hidden People") in these Flickr samples of Annable's work. It tells us little of what kind of games we can expect from the collaboration, but we'd expect questions about that to be answered on May 4, as you can see in the teaser above.
