A Hardy Developer's Journal

After many years of development and troubles with finding a publisher, Autumn Moon Entertainment finally released its first game, A Vampyre Story. AME is the company of Bill Tiller, who is probably best-known for the fantastic backgrounds he created for Curse of Monkey Island. With Tiller at the helm, great quality visuals are pretty much a guarantee, but how does this adventure stack up in other aspects? (more…)

Finally, there has come the moment that I was waiting for a very long time – I can start a production diary for my own adventure game! Not because I have just put together a loose concept or created the first artwork, no. It is the right moment to begin writing about the game because I have now finished a working version of one of three acts of the full project – to be tweaked and released soon (next month) as a WIP demo. So, while much much work still needs to be done, even on the demo, from this moment on there will be always  some solid virtual entity to refer to. In other words, Frantic Franko now lives! (more…)

They say there is only one true pirate adventure game/game series, the rest just tries to take a piece of its glory for themselves. They are a little bit more forgiving, though, when the game in question is intentionally a love letter to the classic adventure games of yore. Yet there also exists a certain title that is a piratey love letter in both this and a quite different meaning of the expression.

Yes, it’s all true! Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! – the game in question – was made using the freeware AGS engine specifically for the girlfriend of its creator Alasdair Beckett (but don’t worry, YOU can play it too)! Well, actually Alasdair doesn’t really try to hide who is the game’s primary addressee any more than the fact that it was heavily inspired by the Monkey Island series. How could he do that anyway, when the game even borrows the icon coin interface known from Curse of Monkey Island. A very heartfelt tribute to Monkey Island then? (more…)