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Thought you could be interested:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/ItTakesTwoToTangle
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/AlGurbishInNickItAndRun
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/AdventureTheInsideJob
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/FateOfMonkeyIsland
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/NightOfTheHermit
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/MI2LeChucksRevenge
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Ignac
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TheTreasureOfDrunkIsland
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/MonkeyIslandTheDevilsTriangle

I wonder if anyone on the forums is in touch with the relatives of Ghost (Björn Ludwig) who passed away in December 2019? If yes, I would like to ask whether any materials from his unfinished games (such as Collateral Jelly and Once Upon a Crime II: Gumshoe Odd Ventures) survived on his PC and could be made public?

Also, perhaps someone would happen to have the screenies from Once Upon a Crime II that Ghost posted on the AGS forums back in 2008 (the links are all dead now)?

Thank you in advance!!!

I've recently discovered that there's a new adventure game project in the works called Whateverland by Caligari Games, it has a really bizarre feel and atmosphere, and I especially dig that it's going to have a multipath walkthrough. I really hope they succeed with the Kickstarter campaign!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/caligari/whateverland-a-grotesque-burton-style-adventure


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLOMyvY0idg

[not]

I've recently been reading some stuff on the so-called apophenia, i. e. the tendency to see patterns in unrelated data, and about people who become absorbed in it and gradually lose touch with reality. In particular, I've read "Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco and "A Beautiful Mind", the 1998 biography of the schizophrenic mathematician John Nash. In the former, the protagonist gradually becomes convinced that everything around him is part of a mystical conspiracy, and the latter says that Nash had "a growing sense of revelation regarding a secret world that others around him were not privy to", found some hidden messages from aliens on the covers of magazines, and felt boredom instead of relief during his remissions.

It occurred to me that this is very similar to a lot of adventure game premises, with an everyman protagonist uncovering some sort of underworld, doing some investigations, solving puzzles, etc. (for instance, it's the case in Broken Sword, with the Templar conspiracy, and Dark Seed, where the main character finds clues telling him about a parallel dark universe) So I thought that apophenia/paranoia/schizophrenia could make a perfect plot for an "anti-adventure game", where the point is not to indulge in puzzle-solving and hidden meanings, and instead cling to "normal" life (with one ending where the character regains his sanity, and another where he starts seeing hallucinations, etc., and eventually goes completely off his rocker). In a sense, this could be similar to the 2008 game "Akrasia", which is a metaphor for drug addiction, where in order to win, you have to not collect the pills.

What do you think?

[really]

Hi everyone, I've recently seen a great movie called Under the Silver Lake, which is like a postmodern Pynchon-style deconstruction of the 1990s geek culture with some noir elements (it is about a guy who's investigating a conspiracy and looking for hidden clues in pop music, video game magazines, and cereal box images). The feel of the movie really reminded me of oldschool 1990s adventures, especially DOTT and Sam & Max Hit the Road, and also the AGS game Al Gurbish in Nick It and Run. I absolutely recommend it for game project inspiration, and in my opinion, this movie is really asking for a retro SCUMM-style adaptation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwgUesU1pz4

Got a game idea but feel you don't have time or dedication to work on it? Share it here, perhaps it would be useful for others!

My suggestion: a game about Mandela effect, probably based on multiverse/Everett's many worlds! I. e. where you could travel through different versions of the world with differently-looking places, different trademarks, etc., and there could be puzzles based on those differences. Maybe kinda similar to DOTT, only instead of three time periods (past, present, and future) you could have three or more Everett's worlds.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/christopherhudspeth/crazy-examples-of-the-mandela-effect-that-will-make-you-ques?utm_term=.dm6GjdM2Y#.bdGk6aO4b

It's several months old, but I guess it would still make sense to sign it.

https://www.change.org/p/disney-please-sell-the-rights-to-monkey-island-back-to-its-creator-ron-gilbert

Hi, I'm now working on the concept of a Lucas (Sam & Max, DOTT)-style game, inspired by John Keel's books, about the protagonist who investigates various supernatural phenomena in his home town that appear and then disappear into nowhere, without a trace. So far I have thought about the following ideas:

1) A monster (a bigfoot, a Spring-heeled Jack or something like that) behind a local diner, inspired by Mulholland Drive
2) A garden with gnomes and strange roses (blue, striped, polka-dotted, etc.) that glow in the dark, in the city park
3) A haunted arcade game, inspired by Polybius urban legend

I wanted to ask you whether you have heard urban legends/can think of some other surreal stuff; what I'm looking for is something in the vein of Twilight Zone or Stine's Goosebumps. The storyline is such that the exact type of strange phenomena is not crucial, they serve more to create the general atmosphere of "weirdness alongside the ordinary".

Thank you in advance!

A few days ago I stumbled upon a very interesting platformer game called "Schrodinger's cat: Raiders of the Lost Quark"; its intro trailer gives a very LucasArts-ish vibe, reminding of stuff like DOTT or Psychonauts.

[embed=425,349]<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3PMNYWFAEGw?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]

This made me think that the themes of quantum physics and cosmology, which are rapidly becoming popular in all sorts of media (books, movies, etc., like R. A. Wilson's "Schrodinger's Cat" trilogy), are still mostly ignored in adventure genre. I believe all this weirdness about Schrodinger's cats, multiple realities, all sorts of quirky particles and their interactions, etc. would make excellent basis for a wacky DOTT-style adventure game (maybe something like particles growing to marcoscopic size and becoming sentient like Green and Purple Tentacle).



Other physical concepts, like those from cosmology, could be employed as well. The lore of King's Quest is already using the idea of "pocket universes", and it could also be possible to include things like holographic principle and AdS/CFT. This could make an interesting plot not only for a sci-fi game, but also for games like King's Quest and Torin's Passage, with the main characters discovering that they're just bits of information on a two-dimensional surface, and this explains all the strange things/magic of their world.

What do you think?

Yesterday I saw a review of a new magazine called Arcane Secrets, which seems to be a kid-friendly version of Lovecraft (bizarre, isn't it). The reviewer compared the issue to Day of the Tentacle, and it actually reminded me of my longtime idea of making a DOTT/Lovecraft crossover game.



I'm curious whether anyone on the forums checked this stuff out, and what do you think about it.

Being a fan of old 1990s adventure titles and a fan of William S. Burroughs, I've recently noted some similarities between the two. You can check out this thread for details:

http://realitystudio.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1=2346

I'm considering starting an AGS-based project, which will explore the themes of "Naked Lunch", "Cities of the Red Night", etc., etc. There will probably be three or four parallel storylines in it, each of them the length of about one Curse of Monkey Island act, with different graphic styles and protagonists, which will eventually overlap. Each of them will mimic the style of a particular classic adventure game (like CMI, DOTT or Full Throttle) without using any copyrighted names/titles. I have to admit one of my main inspirations for this was "Adventure: The Inside Job" by Akril15 - it will be a bit similar, only with Burroughs instead of Fforde's Thursday Next.

Just wanted to know what do you think about the idea. If you're interested, you can join the Reality Studio forum and share your own ideas

I'm working on my first AGS game, which would be a surrealistic/mystery game in the style of Lemony Snicket or David Lynch, but with the trademark comedy touch of 1990s Lucas adventures. The plot would involve a certain Macguffin, so i wanted a little advice from you guys... What are the most unusual/uncommon Macguffin items you could think of? Something along the lines of the E-ticket from Monkey Island, or the Sugar Bowl from Lemony Snicket's books, or the Winslow from Phil Foglio's comics.

I wrote a post on this about a week ago, now i start a new thread. According to the Gamesradar, the book "Naked Lunch" could be made into a text adventure... But now i'm saying, what's about a classic point & click game? Of course, the highly incomprehensible plot of the book would need a lot of changes, similar to how it was done in the Cronenberg movie. The plot of the game could follow Inspector Lee's surrealistic adventures on his missions for the "Islam Inc." as he travels to Mexico and the Interzone.

i believe that with Penny Arcade Adventures' very dark humor, the adventure gaming has crossed the line of cynism needed to adaptate "Naked Lunch".  i wouldn't even mind a couple of Penny Arcade-type action sequences, perhaps with Hauser and O'Brien... And as a cherry on top, i discovered some Naked Lunch fanart that looks highly adventure game-ish:

[Update]

On the secret backers' forums, Double Fine has revealed some of their further plans after the release of the DF adventure (and it has already leaked on the net). It seems like they'll be joining forces with PCB to bring the long-awaited release of Toonstruck 2. As some of you probably know, TS2 is mostly finished, except for programming - but it was said that Tim's team will personally add some scenes, puzzles and characters to the game.

"Along with the movies like Cool World and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Toonstruck was heavily inspired by the LucasArts classics. We've always had great respect for Tim's creations, so we are really proud to be working together with him and to give Toonstruck a flavor of Day of the Tentacle and Psychonauts", said Mr. Arem.

There are almost no new details on the game, except for the fact that it will include "a vast array of both new and already known characters, including Van Gogh, an evil cowboy, Warp & Woof, the WACME creators, and a gum-chewing fish - yep, THAT fish". The approximate release date is fall 2013.





Yoo-hoo, guys!

Update: It's just been taken down from backers' forums - I think it's because of the leaks.