The Random Adventure Game News Thread

[jfrisby]

A new Leisure suit larry has appeared on steam. release date is 24 oct. 2018
https://store.steampowered.com/sub/226432/

 

[Infinitron]

A new Leisure suit larry has appeared on steam. release date is 24 oct. 2018
https://store.steampowered.com/sub/226432/

https://www.pcgamesn.com/leisure-su...loaded/leisure-suit-larry-wet-dreams-dont-dry

Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry pops up on Steam

A possible new Leisure Suit Larry game appeared on Steam over the weekend, and was swiftly pulled from the store. The game is supposedly (and disgustingly) titled Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry, and according to the listing is due out October 24.

Apart from the cost ($29.99) there is no information about this new game in the Larry series. No developer or publisher was listed, so we don’t know if it’s coming from Replay Games or Codemasters.

Codemasters are the current Leisure Suit Larry rights holders, but the IP was secured by Replay for the crowdfunded remake of the first game in the series - 2013’s Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded, which had the involvement of original creator Al Lowe.

Lowe left Replay Games in 2013, and Replay CEO Paul Trowe was found guilty of displaying harmful material to a minor, so it’s unknown if the team behind Larry’s most recent adventure would have anything to do with this game - if it’s even real. It seems unusual that a specific release date would be mentioned and not the game’s developers or publishers.

Now is probably the worst time for Leisure Suit Larry to return, as just this weekend adult game developers reported that Valve have started cracking down on pornographic material on Steam. They’ve reportedly walked back a little, but HuniePop developer Ryan Koons suggested that they aren’t “out of the woods” yet.

No matter whether the listing is real or not, we hope we can at least all agree that Wet Dreams Don’t Dry is a terrible, terrible title.

 

[MicoSelva]

Application Systems and Backwoods Entertainment join forces to develop "Unforeseen Incidents" - a humorous point and click mystery adventure in a beautifully hand-painted 2D world. The game is currently under development and scheduled to ship in early 2017 for PC, Mac and Linux.



Please help them get greenlit here.
Check out the screens here.

Quote:
Unforeseen Incidents - Description

The world is threatened by a deadly virus. The highly contagious disease is spreading relentlessly, the survival of mankind is at stake. Amid this apocalyptic disaster, young Harper Pendrell receives a message that leads him on a journey full of mysteries, inexplicable questions, and terrifying revelations. Before he knows it, Harper finds himself in the middle of an adventure which affects the future of the whole human race. Unforeseen Incidents is a humorous point and click mystery adventure in a beautifully hand-painted 2D world. On his journey, Harper explores plenty of intriguing locations, meets a lot of interesting characters, and unveils some conspiratorial dark secrets behind the ongoing catastrophe that threatens to exterminate all humankind. Join Harper on his adventure and experience twisted humor, witty dialog, and demanding puzzles in a thrilling new adventure from Backwoods Entertainment and Application Systems Heidelberg. Alasdair Beckett-King recently joined the team as advisor and English script editor. Check out his nautical comedy point and click adventure Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet.

History

Backwoods is a small indie game development team from Germany. Marcus, Matthias and Tristan know each other from growing up in the same small city in the West of Germany and found together again after years of studies in the fields of Media Science, Media Design and Composition. They have a deep passion for video games and great stories and endeavor combining both in their future interactive multimedia projects. The classic style point and click adventure Unforeseen Incidents is their first big project.

Features

Enjoy a humorous point and click mystery adventure.
Behold beautiful, lovingly hand-painted 2D graphics.
Listen to an elaborately arranged soundtrack and full English or German voice acting.
Explore plenty of intriguing locations.
Meet lots of interesting characters.
Uncover and solve the dark mysteries behind the ongoing catastrophe and try and save the human race!​

The trailer doesn't really show much, and the artwork is................ interesting? At least it is point and click

Unforseen Incidents has been released on GOG and Steam.

https://af.gog.com/game/unforeseen_incidents?as=1649904300

https://store.steampowered.com/app/501790/Unforeseen_Incidents/

 

[V_K]

The world is threatened by a deadly virus. The highly contagious disease is spreading relentlessly, the survival of mankind is at stake.

humorous

The deadly clownitis virus. I shudder to think what the symptoms might be.

 

[Darth Roxor]

The world is threatened by a deadly virus. The highly contagious disease is spreading relentlessly, the survival of mankind is at stake.

humorous

The deadly clownitis virus. I shudder to think what the symptoms might be.

 

[Infinitron]

The Digital Antiquarian on the Dynamix adventure games: https://www.filfre.net/2018/05/the-dynamic-interactive-narratives-of-dynamix/

No Betrayal at Krondor unfortunately.

 

[toro]

Unforseen Incidents has been released on GOG and Steam.

https://af.gog.com/game/unforeseen_incidents?as=1649904300

https://store.steampowered.com/app/501790/Unforeseen_Incidents/

The loading times are atrocious thanks to Unity and the story is somewhat retarded.

But the game is charming except that ... for me it bugged near the end of chapter I. Cannot do shit because some dialogue options doesn't trigger. I have to replay like one hour and I'm not in the mood for that.

So, buyer beware, the game is not tested properly and it's not worth 19euro.

 

[toro]

AG reviewed Unforeseen Incidents tl;dr 4/5, anyone played it? Looks good on paper

Yes, you blind fatty.

The visuals are good, the puzzle are intuitive and well-designed (not all of them), there is items highlighting (if you press Space) and the game got charm. It's made by Germans but it's not the standard Daedalic shit. It's quite good.

On the opposite side, the story is not great, the loading times are long (wtf!?) and there are critical bugs (if you cancel animations). I lost like 1-2 hours of progress. Really frustrating.

Note: There is one thing which is really annoys me: puzzle items must be triggered. That's why I wasted a lot of time, because it doesn't matter how many times you search a pile of junk, the items will appear there only after some conversation. Shitty scripting.

I will give the game another chance but if it bugs again then I will drop it.

 

[CryptRat]

Only 3 days to wait :

 

[CryptRat]

It's also on GoG : https://www.gog.com/game/detective_gallo

I'm currently downloading the game.

 

[Dexter]

https://blog.eu.playstation.com/201...-hidetaka-miyazaki-fromsoftware-japan-studio/

Introducing Déraciné, a new PS VR adventure from Hidetaka Miyazaki, FromSoftware & Japan Studio
The Bloodborne creator returns with an idiosyncratic virtual reality mystery

By Masaaki Yamagiwa
Producer, Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Studio

Hello, PlayStation fans. This is Masaaki Yamagiwa from Japan Studio. Déraciné is an all new adventure game that brings Japan Studio, FromSoftware and director Hidetaka Miyazaki together for the first time since Bloodborne.

The story unfolds in a secluded boarding school where six children quietly spend their days. It is into this environment that you appear, an unseen faerie existing in a world of frozen time. As the story progresses, time shifts around you, at times even throwing you into the past.


Our goal as we develop this title is to use the latest in VR technology to create a traditional adventure game or visual novel where the user explores a quiet world teeming with mysteries.

Déraciné’s most important element is the bond between the player, an unseen faerie, and the children of the boarding school. This is shown using fragmented storytelling, where the user pieces events together from scattered story elements and a setting where time is frozen. All of this comes together in a compelling, emotional narrative.


I also have a special message from Miyazaki himself:

“This title got its start when I asked myself whether I could recreate the classic adventure game with its relaxed pace in virtual reality, giving users an entirely unique experience. SIE was interested, and I am very grateful to have them as a partner as we develop this game together.


“The result is that the concept behind the title has changed little since those initial thoughts, and Déraciné has a warm, peculiar feel to it that is completely different from anything we have done before. I’d love for as many users as possible to give it a try.”

Déraciné is scheduled to release exclusively for PlayStation VR in 2018.

 

[Wapcaplet]

Looks like Escape from Monkey Island will be available on GOG shortly.

 

[CryptRat]

The creators of ASA : A space Adventure released Kitrinos, a small game which looks fun :

By the way it seems it was made for the AdventureJam2018 and I've not played it yet, but from the games I've played from the jam I can recommend :
- SnowSpirit, very atmospheric game by the guy making Cascade quest who also made Void quest and the Snails Trek series.

- Space Quest 1 which really plays like a tiny Sierra game like the presentation suggests.

 

[Infinitron]

MRY Sceptic Unkillable Cat The plot of Space Quest IV was based on a true event!!

https://www.pcgamer.com/how-leisure-suit-larry-bootlegs-infected-the-european-banking-system/

How Leisure Suit Larry bootlegs infected the European banking system

Remember when a new Leisure Suit Larry popped up on Steam earlier this year? Well, here's a reminder: a new Leisure Suit Larry popped up on Steam earlier this year. It's called (brace yourself) Wet Dreams Won't Dry, and publisher Assemble Entertainment says it's legit. Larry is back, against all odds, and his titles are still groan-worthy. That said, the art on this one actually doesn't look half-bad. And with a new-age Larry on the horizon, now's as good a time as any to look back on the history of the cult-classic adventure games, as MEL Magazinedid in their excellent write-up on the series' origins—and its unexpected role in a banking disaster.

Larry Laffer, the face of the game, was created by designer Al Lowe. As Lowe explained to MEL, Larry's design was partly inspired by the hustlers he'd seen at bars in his time as a musician, and also by an insufferable coworker at Sierra Entertainment who loved to brag "about all the different women he had laid on his sales trips." As for the iconic leisure suit: that came from a joke Lowe made at a pitch meeting. "This game is so out of touch, it should be wearing a leisure suit," Lowe said, referring to Softporn Adventure, the primitive text adventure that the Larry series is based on. No, really:

Perhaps because people didn't want to be caught buying it, the original Leisure Suit Larry was widely pirated—so much so that Lowe says "at one point we sold more hint books than copies of the game. The popularity of bootleg copies made them perfect vehicles for computer viruses, so infected Larry bootlegs spread far and wide, and even made it into the European banking system.

As the Financial Times reported in 1988, several banks in Switzerland, Germany and England lost swathes of data to viruses after hapless employees tried to play infected bootlegs on company computers. This was so common that Activision, who distributed Leisure Suit Larry, sent out a statement affirming that the game itself didn't contain a virus, and that the best way to avoid infected copies was to go out and actually buy the damn game ya thieving bilge rats (I'm paraphrasing a bit there.)

Read MEL's full piece here. Thanks to AV News for spotting it.

Full article: https://melmagazine.com/an-oral-history-of-leisure-suit-larry-ef41bc374802

An Oral History of ‘Leisure Suit Larry’

If you happened to flip through a PC gaming magazine in the late 1980s or early 1990s, you would’ve probably seen an ad for a game called Leisure Suit Larry, or one of its many sequels. It was a graphic adventure game first released in 1987 with the primary goal of helping its protagonist get laid. Since most games then leaned heavily into cartoon violence, Larry’s sexual innuendo stood out. To young boys at the time, it had the mystique of a shrink-wrapped Playboy in a convenience store.

The game was an initial flop, largely because major retail stores like RadioShack were hesitant to sell an “adult” game. But because of word-of-mouth, sales eventually picked up, and it became a bestseller, resulting in a series of popular sequels. It also inspired blatant ripoffs, even as recently as 2004 with a game called Fuck Quest II. In fact, it became one of the most pirated games of all time, and due to a virus hidden in a few blackmarket copies, caused widespread problems in European banking terminals.

Considering its premise, the game itself was surprisingly tame. (See for yourself: It’s available to play for free over at the Internet Archive.) But this didn’t hurt sales. It gradually became one of the best-selling erotic adventure games of all time, and it remains one of the few dating simulations to ever crack into the mainstream in the U.S.

For those unfamiliar, dating sims are, broadly, games where the player guides a character on a romantic quest. The actual gameplay varies — some are simple choose-your-own-adventure games; others are conversation-based, in which a player has to navigate complex dialogue trees and successfully flirt; yet others are essentially puzzle games with soft and hardcore pornographic elements. The genre is male dominated, but not always (Boyfriend Maker), and mostly unpopular outside of Japan (save for the Larry series and sections of Stardew Valley).

There are also a number of sub-genres, including sex games, where the player attempts to get someone to climax. These were usually Flash-based, peaked in the 2000s, crudely animated and sometimes involved furries. Other spin-offs include Hatoful Boyfriend, a dating sim starring pigeons, and Angela Washko’s brilliant anti-dating sim The Game: The Game, a scathing satire in which players try to fend off aggressive pickup artists in a bar. It helps to think of the whole dating sim genre, and its various subgenres and spin-offs, as basically Harlequin romance novels for nerdy men.

For all of this, blame Larry.

Spoiler

The Origins of ‘Softporn’ Gaming
Larry’s inclusion in Sierra’s catalogue — a publishing company known for mostly family-friendly fantasy and sci-fi adventure fare — was odd. But it wasn’t the first such game. Back in 1979, Sierra published a text-only adventure game called Softporn Adventure. It was created by a self-taught programmer named Chuck Benton, who at the time worked for a company that developed flight simulators. It was a primitive text-based adventure game, and likely the very first dating sim. It was navigated using only text commands, which are figured out mostly through guesswork. For example, the game opens with the following paragraph:

To move forward to the next scene, the player must enter >ORDER WHISKEY. (The final command of the game is (spoiler alert?) >SCREW GIRL.) Despite its relative difficulty, it sold about 25,000 copies, according to Sierra founder Ken Williams. This is an impressive figure, considering there were only about 100,000 Apple II owners at the time. Its success could probably be attributed to its enticing cover art.

In his review in the 112-page (!!!) December/January issue of Antic (a magazine devoted solely to Atari products), Davey Saba wrote, “Since I am not interested in dragons or wizards (forgive me), Softporn is the way I spent my first adventure game dollars. It has been an unusual and entertaining experience.” An early Time magazine computer column, “Software for the Masses” featured a short blurb on the game in 1981 (right after mentioning a firm that was developing a program for a farmer to rate the productivity of cows): “I get a lot of phone calls from women asking when a female’s version of the game will be available,” Benton was quoted as saying in it. Unfortunately, that version never materialized.

Though the game was a success, Sierra later made a deal with Disney to create games based on their IP, and Softporn was quietly dropped for its somewhat-objectionable content.

The Incredibly Abbreviated Pitch
Sierra’s collaboration with Disney proved short-lived. The company soon realized that it’d probably make more money — and have more creative freedom — if it made its own games and split from the conglomerate. Sierra then began searching for their own IP. In the mid-1980s, Williams (who iscurrently sailing the high seas with his wife, renowned game designer Roberta Williams, and didn’t respond to requests for comment for this piece) remembered their first big hit, Softporn, and thought it might be worth remaking with graphics and sound. He asked Al Lowe, one of his designers, if he’d be interested in taking on the project.

Lowe took the game home to play through it again, to see if he thought the project was worth his time. As he explains: “A week later, I came back for a meeting and said, ‘This game is so out of touch, it should be wearing a leisure suit.’ A bunch of people in the room chuckled at that. I said, ‘I think the only way I could do it is make fun of it.’”

“To show you what condition the industry was in then, Ken said, ‘Go ahead and do it.’ That was the pitch meeting. ‘You think you can do something funny? Alright, go ahead.’”

How to Break Into the Game Industry in 1982
Lowe’s path into the gaming industry was unplanned, and mostly accidental, a pretty common narrative at the time. While working as a music teacher in Seattle, Lowe’s love of gadgets led him to purchasing a computer. He then taught himself how to program. “Then when the Apple II came out, I thought, Oh, I need one of those,” he says. “So I convinced my wife that we should spend a month of our combined salaries. Imagine. That’s what it cost.”

Eventually, he decided to try to create his own games, which were deeply influenced by the Sierra adventure games he played with his son, like Mystery House, King’s Quest: Quest for the Crown and Mission Asteroid. Lowe took his games to two computer shows, Computer Using Educators (CUE) and Applefest. They were a hit. A few publishers reached out, seeing if he’d want to make games for them. One of them was Sierra. He signed on as a freelance game designer.

“Then after about a year or so, Ken recruited me to be a designer full time,” Lowe explains. “So I took a leave of absence from my school gig, and never went back.”

Larry Comes to Life
Making a game in the 1980s was difficult. Although the games were smaller, the tools to create them were nonexistent, limited or overly complicated. “[Larry] used an engine that Sierra created because there were no gaming engines, it used background images that were drawn with a graphics editor, because Photoshop hadn’t been invented yet. We’re talking Paleolithic period here,” Lowe says. “Sierra had a staff of people who worked on tools that created a background editor for background screens, an animation editor for animations, a music editor so we could put music in the games, a sound effects editor, a font editor — there were no font editors, we had to create our own fonts. It was just insane, when you think about that time.”

As he started brainstorming the game, Lowe figured he needed to humanize Softporn.

“There was no protagonist. There was no character development or any kind of conversation. It was an odd game. So the first thing I did was add a protagonist, and I thought, What could I do with this guy, what would be funny?”

He created Larry Laffer, a horny, leisure-suit-wearing putz. The character was partially based on guys he’d seen hustling women when he was a musician playing gigs at clubs in the 1970s. It was also loosely based on one of his coworkers. “We had one guy at the company who was on the sales team, and he’d love to tell all of us who had been stuck working in front of our computers about all the different women he had laid on his sales trips,” Lowe says. “I was like, ‘We don’t care, nobody cares.’”

At the beginning of the game, Lowe added a quiz that players had to correctly work through in order to access the main story. It asked age-specific questions, like who recorded “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” and who Lee Harvey Oswaldkilled. “That was partly because Ken and I — well everybody back then — was into Trivial Pursuit,” Lowe says. “We thought it’d be fun to throw a trivia game at the beginning, and to show that we were at least trying to keep kids out, though I don’t think we succeeded in any way.”


It was easy to circumvent. “I wasn’t about to take a trivia test every time I tested the game, so I put a hot key in [alt-x] to bypass it. When we shipped it, we were like, ‘Eh let’s just leave it in, who cares?’”

While Lowe did almost all the work for the game himself, he still needed an artist to handle the animations and background screens. Of the four or so animators working at Sierra at the time, they chose recent high school grad Mark Crowe. Since he was already working full-time on Sierra’s other groundbreaking game, Space Quest, they arranged an incentive: The quicker he finished the game, the higher a percentage of royalties he’d get. Crowe worked on Larry on nights and weekends to try to make the deadline.

Despite the intense workload, there was also a tremendous amount of freedom in its creation. Lowe and Crowe added whatever they wanted to the game, with very little oversight. This included dark jokes, like Larry getting a radioactive STD if he didn’t use a condom. “Today, you’d have a team meeting, and you’d have to talk with the director, and have to go through the show runner, then the producers would have to figure out a budget for it,” Lowe says. “It’s such a huge industry now.”

Crowe managed to get the art done in about four weeks. “He got the big royalty rate,” Lowe says, “which really was disappointing [at first], because when the game finally shipped, it was the worst product in the history of the company.”

The Gold in That There Leisure Suit
When it first came out, Larry sold only 4,000 copies. It was a total flop. This was partially because of a general squeamishness regarding its potential offensiveness. The sales team at Sierra never presented it to RadioShack, which was about a third of their market. And other places were reluctant to sell it because of the game’s supposed adult themes.

Crowe went back to work finishing Space Quest, and Lowe joined the Police Quest team. “We kind of thought, Well, we screwed that up,” Lowe says. “We should’ve stuck with fantasy and swords and candles and crap.”

But over the next couple of months, Larry began to sell better. It had the same mystique as Softporn, but it was easier to play, more visually interesting and had a sense of humor. About a year later, it cracked the Top 10 on the sales chart. The sales were driven by word-of-mouth and widespread pirating, which boosted awareness of the game. “So many people pirated [Larry],” Lowe says. “At one point we sold more hint books than copies of the game.”

“I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met at shows or some other place, and when they find out that I wrote Larry, they say, ‘I’ve played that game!’” Lowe adds, laughing. “My next response is always, ‘Did you pay for it?’ Mostly they say, ‘I paid for some of the later ones.’”

The piracy became so widespread that bootleg copies of Larry became a reliable way to spread computer viruses. In late 1988, the New Accountant and the Financial Times reported that multiple banks and trading houses in Europe were hit with a virus that destroyed all the data on their terminals, after bored traders tried loading up illicit copies of the game. Sierra eventually had to respond to complaints that, no, official copies of the game were not going to destroy your computer and/or potentially bring down the global banking system.

A year or so after its release, Larry had sold well enough that Sierra decided to make a series of sequels, becoming one of the most popular adventure games of the 1990s. “I’m pretty proud of the work that we did,” Lowe says. “I’d love to say all that stuff came to me in a flash and was part of the design and everything, but it was all very organic. “You make a thousand little decisions along the way, and when you’re done, it has to reflect the person that you are. I think that’s what happened.”

 

[jfrisby]

Some random Steam sales (besides the entire Wadjet catalog, and Quest for Infamy, etc)

Legend of Hand - $3.49 -- https://store.steampowered.com/app/595560/Legend_of_Hand/
Tales - $2.42 -- https://store.steampowered.com/app/416250/Tales_PC/
Starship Titanic - $1.49 -- https://store.steampowered.com/app/467290/Starship_Titanic/?snr=1_7_7_230_150_11
Moment of Silence - $3.50 -- https://store.steampowered.com/app/339840/The_Moment_of_Silence/

 

[Boleskine]

AdventureX 2018 Kickstarter

 

[Dreed]

First pictures from the Blacksad adventure game:

Spoiler

 

[V_K]

That's one tiny headed protag. I guess you can go too far when moving away from animu aesthetics.

 

[Azalin]

First pictures from the Blacksad adventure game:

Spoiler

Interesting didn't know they were making a Blacksad game,is it going to be an original story or is it going to be an adaptation of one of the comics?
I think the two goons in the screenshots appear in one of the comics

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Boleskine]

Myst III and IV are now on GOG.

https://af.gog.com/game/myst_3_exile?as=1649904300

https://af.gog.com/game/myst_4?as=1649904300

 

[jfrisby]

Petition for Daedalic to finish The Devil's Men
https://www.change.org/p/daedalic-entertainment-revive-the-devil-s-men

 

[CryptRat]

The Clockwork Labyrinth got released today.

 

[LESS T_T]

The creators of ASA : A space Adventure released Kitrinos, a small game which looks fun :

Also to Steam:



---

And a new horror game from the Taiwanese developer of Detention:



https://gematsu.com/2018/07/detention-studio-announces-first-person-horror-game-devotion

Red Candle Games, the Taiwan-based studio behind Detention, has announced Devotion, an atmospheric first-person horror game set in 1980s Taiwan. Platforms and release date were not announced.

Here is an overview of the game, via Red Candle Games:

About

Devotion is a first-person atmospheric horror game set in 1980s Taiwan.

“Be careful what you pray for…”

The story centers around a seemingly ordinary family of three that lived in an old apartment complex. Explore the nostalgic house in the 80s where religion plays a significant role in their daily life. When one day the same house that once filled with joy and love had turned into a hell-like nightmare, and by venturing in the haunted and confined space, each puzzle leads you closer to the mysteries nested deep inside.

History

Devotion is Red Candle Games’ second title since the release of Detention. While team members each has their own creative perspectives, they all share the same emotions and feelings towards the land they called home. By utilizing the medium of gaming, they hope to tell a story that happens around the place we are all familiar with – home.

Key Features

• First person 3D psychological horror game.
• Puzzle-solving adventurer with immersive playing experience.
• Realistic artstyle reconstructing the 1980s Taiwanese lifestyle.
• Atmospheric sound design inspired by Taiwanese folk culture (Taoist mantra / ritual music).

 

[Crooked Bee]

Kitrinos looks really nice. I'm gonna have to check it out, especially since it's from the devs behind ASA.