Category Archives: adventure games

LucasArts classics on the iPhone?

By Rubes | Published: July 9, 2009

Not to just parrot another blog entry, but I thought this was interesting. I’m sure most of you are by now familiar with the news that LucasArts is in the process of reviving some of their classic point-and-clickers like Secret of Monkey Island and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis for XBLA and PCs, which is beautiful news indeed.

In addition to this, though, is the report from Joystiq (via TAUW) that we might be seeing some of these classics on the iPhone someday soon. As reported:

…we did get a vague answer in the affirmative (from LucasArts): “On iPhone, you know Apple’s policy that we can’t talk about a release until it’s ready to release. But it would make sense

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Gaming on the iPhone: Natural Selection In Real-Time

By Rubes | Published: March 13, 2009

It all started with a link. It always does.

I can’t even remember now where I first saw the link, but I was easily drawn in by the shiny little object: “Mystery House”, the 1980 aventure game by Ken and Roberta Williams of On-Line Systems (later Sierra On-Line, later later Sierra), had been ported to the iPhone by Artsiness (Josef W. Wankerl), in all of its original white-on-black lineart glory. This is the game that GamePro tagged the 51st Most Important Video Game of All Time — nine spots after E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, although I guess that’s fair since it wasn’t the list of Best Video Games of All Time.

My first thought was, How cool. What a sweet idea, even if today’s [More...] Read the rest

Also posted in indie game business | 9 Comments

Making the Rounds: Machinarium

By Rubes | Published: February 5, 2009

This game has topped my list for Most Anticipated Seriously Beautiful Game for some time now. Amanita Design is a small group of indie game developers responsible for some very cool, short point-and-click Flash games in the past: Samorost1, Samorost2, and Questionaut, which was nominated for a British Academy Award. Hell, they’ve even made a short little adventure for a band I’ve enjoyed listening to in the past, The Polyphonic Spree, which includes some previously unreleased music. In each case, the recognizable artwork is beautiful, the gameplay is light and engaging, and the accompanying music and sound effects are charming.

For a while now they’ve been bringing this same style to a full-length adventure, Machinarium, which is an IGF finalist [More...] Read the rest

Also posted in games as art, indie games | 2 Comments

Text Adventuring, MMO-Style

By Rubes | Published: January 15, 2009

Coyote and Scorpia beat me to it, but apparently a group is interested in bringing the Zork universe into the MMO realm, as reported on Ars Technica. It’s to be called Legends of Zork and published by Jolt Online Gaming, a group headquartered in Dublin. There isn’t a whole lot of information available yet, though.

From the press release:

“LegendsofZork.com will provide online gamers with a persistent online adventure, playable from any Internet browser. Players take up the role of a recently laid-off salesman and part-time loot-gatherer, as he explores the Great Underground Empire. Designed to provide gamers with a casual MMO game they can play on their laptop, desktop or Apple iPhone (in school, work or on the bus), there’s nothing to download,

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Also posted in interactive fiction | 3 Comments

2008′s Top (Mostly Windows-Only) Games

By Rubes | Published: January 7, 2009

As many folks in the blogosphere have duly pointed out, the end of one year and the start of another is usually accompanied by a proliferation of lists. Best of this, Top Ten of that, and so on. A couple of these that have particular interest to me are Game Tunnel’s Top Ten Indie Games of 2008 and GameSetWatch’s 20 Best Freeware Adventure Games of 2008.

Throughout the year I generally try to keep track of which games are making news in the indie gaming world, but it’s still interesting to see GameTunnel’s list to find out just how closely I’ve been paying attention. As it turns out, I’ve only even heard of 7 of their top 10 — I hadn’t seen or read [More...] Read the rest

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