New fantasy adventure announced - The Inventory 19

[dimidimidimi]

Now the 19th issue of the monthly PDF magazine for adventure games, The Inventory, is available for download from www.theinventory.org and www.justadventure.com . In the new issue you will get to read:


- Information on our birthday party that shapes up to be the biggest online event the adventure genre has ever seen
- Preview of the new fantasy adventure Keepsake
- Preview of Quest for Glory 2 remake
- The Moment of Silence Comic Part 2
- Interview with Himalaya Studios, developers of Al Emmo
- Interview with Tale of Tales, developers of 8
- Review of Wanted
- Review of Aura
- Review tribute to The Last Express
- Bits and Bytes - Article about Digital Cameras
- The Al Lowe Show - jokes from the legendary developer


Feel free to post your comments/suggestions/complaints on the new issue.

[auhsor]

Nice work... which reminds me... I've missed reading the last 8 or so issues, I really should get to reading them...

[GarageGothic]

Another great issue. The previews and inteviews are excellent as always. They are the main reason that I read and re-read The Inventory. The reviews are well written, but they are often so subjective that I only read them to get "another angle" on games that I've already played. Also, I miss the time when dimi wrote all the reviews. I know that you don't have time to do everything by yourself, but for some reason Justin's reviews feel a bit trivial in comparison.

Although its not really my kind of humor, I don't mind the return of the Al Lowe Show - even if it seems a bit redundant when people could read the same jokes at his website. The comic is, in my opinion, feels more like an advertisement - which it is - than a real comic, but although the art and layout is horrible, it's still fun to see original ways of marketing games.
But what's up with the Bits and Bytes articles? Not only are they VERY dry (except the "Hump the Wumpus" incident which made me laugh out loud), but they also seem out of place in an adventure 'zine. I mean, the first one made more or less sense because it (among other things) dealt with some very early adventure-like games. Graphics cards? Eh, ok I guess, since even adventure gamers might need to upgrade their computers. But now we're reading about digital cameras? Isn't this the magazine which won't even write about adventure hybrids? What's next? A section with cooking recipes?

Congrats on the two year anniversary!

[dimidimidimi]

Nice work... which reminds me... I've missed reading the last 8 or so issues, I really should get to reading them...

Better late than never.

@GarageGothic

Thanks for the comments on the new issue . The Al Lowe jokes are not available on Al's site, he sends them out on your email every day, and some people like to keep their emails for other stuff than jokes, so see it as an alternative way to read those jokes. As for the bits and bytes column, although I do admit that the last one was not connected to adventures in any way, we have had a lot of readers who asked us if we could add a hardware section and Oliver proposed to write one. He's got a lot of knowledge around hardware issues, and he's very good at research. As for the hardware columns being dry... well it's hardware he's writing about, it's not that easy to talk about hardware in a funny way.

And regarding the comparison of action/adventure coverage and hardware coverage, a) hardware is not in competition with adventure games b) an adventurer in order to play an adventure game would have to have some basic knowledge of hardware but to play an adventure game he/she doesn't have to play action/adventures Anyway these articles (Al's jokes, Bits and Bytes) are what I like to call 'light' articles, meaning that it is easy to add them (doesn't take so much time to layout) and it doesn't increase the mag's filesize a lot since there are 2 or 3 light size screenshots for both.

If we were to cover an action/adventure title we'd have to use screenshots that would take more than 50K each which could increase the filesize of the magazine quite a lot, thus making it harder for modem users to get. So it's more like something extra for the readers if they feel like reading more

[GarageGothic]

Hi Dimi. Good to see that you checked this thread. I was wondering if I should have posted it on theinventory.org forums instead.

I am aware of Al's joke mailing list, but in fact all the jokes are also available from his site (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberjoke3000/messages). But as I said, I don't mind the column - it's just not my cup of tea.
You have some valid points about the hardware articles, but there's nothing in them that couldn't be found elsewhere on the web. I'm just afraid that The Inventory may lose it's identity if you keep adding too much stuff like this.
Oh BTW, was the "The Purist" column a one-off? Or were you just too busy to write it this month?

[dimidimidimi]

I check all forums where I post and I always read all the comments made on the issues. But if you need a faster reply theinventory.org is the place to write, in that case. And as for The Inventory's identity, I wouldn't be worried. There are no plans for adding anything else that's not directly adventure-related and the articles that are already added are not added in cost of some other adventure-articles, they're just a couple of extra pages that some of our readers might find interesting.

I wanted to write a purist column this month too, but in the end I ran out of time. I might have had some time to write a little piece but it would be in a hurry and the article would probably turn out rubbish, so I just didn't write it at all. I'll try to write one for next month.

[Scummbuddy]

What's next? A section with cooking recipes?

You've obviously never read "Cooking with Spaff" over at Mojo.  (not there anymore; lost to the server crash and never cared to be put back up)

[Erwin_Br]

What's next? A section with cooking recipes?

You've obviously never read "Cooking with Spaff" over at Mojo.Ã,  (not there anymore; lost to the server crash and never cared to be put back up)

Which is a SHAME! They had two Cooking with Spaff articles, actually.

--Erwin