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Nice Primordia cameo!

You know, I never even knew that was there until about a week ago. Ben is one crafty guy.

It's low-res in 320x200! Although if you can't tell, I suppose Ben did a pretty good job.

Actually, I just realized that this probably does not count as a "completed" game. Moderators, feel free to do your thing.

[Now available for pre-order! Nab it for 20% off until Novemeber 21st!]

[embed=640,360] <iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mtE4o1WdOyw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> [/embed]

Now available for pre-order! Nab it for 20% off until Novemeber 21st!

So earlier this year we ported Gemini Rue to iOS, and it was reasonably successful. It was, however, a colossal undertaking. Eight months of fulltime work for Janet (who actually went to school for programming and is much smarter than I am). Since we just had a baby, we decided our next port would be The Shivah – the very first game we ever made. It's short, and reasonably straightforward. So we figured it would be a quick and easy port.

Sadly – NO! The Shivah was made seven years ago. This was before games on iOS phones was a thing. Before even iOS phones! The game was made with very tiny sprites – sprites that were impossible to see on a phone.

So what to do?

WE REMAKE THE WHOLE DARN THING.

Original:


New!


Original:


New!


Original:


New!


The entire game has been remastered with brand new graphics (by Mr. Ben304), new music (by Peter Gresser) and new character portraits (by Ilyich). It even has achievements now, since that is what all the cool games have these days. It will be available on November 21st for Windows, Steam and iOS!

The game will cost $4.99 on windows and $1.99 on iOS. If you pre-order the PC version now, you can nab it for 20% off. PC versions will, as always, come with Steam keys.

For more details, check out the Wadjet Eye website.

Thanks!

-Dave

So yesterday we had a giveaway that went horribly horribly wrong. I cannot express how much everyone's support and well-wishes during that time meant to me. So instead, I'll just leave this here:



(Image by Ben304)

Bit of a disclaimer: I've known Oded personally for years. I had dinner with him and his family two months ago!

As for the debacle between Adventure Mob and Replay... the whole thing was horrible and disgusting. At conventions and conferences, there was no one more visible, vocal and enthusiastic about the LSL project than Oded Sharon. He and the Adventure Mob guys worked their tails off trying to get the game hooked up with a publisher, and when they hopped onto Kickstarter they worked doubly-hard to get the word out. Then when they were successful, Replay dropped them. I honestly had no words.

Sadly, I don't know! As with the DirectDraw issue, the results vary from computer to computer and I don't really have the time or resources to troubleshoot them all (my method of dealing with it now is to avoid the problem in the first place!) But like I said, it's not a deal breaker. It didn't stop Resonance from being one of our best-sellers in 2012, but I think it got a lot of leeway because of how old-school it looked. For a game as high-res as you want to go, people might not be as forgiving.

Resonance was 320x240 scaled up to 640x480. Primordia was 320x200 scaled up to 640x400. There weren't many major complaints, but they have been vocal. The most annoying issue that it's hard to know how a monitor will react to it - sometimes it will stretch the image to fit the widescreen format. It's not a deal breaker by any means, but it definitely does look... odd in this day and age.

It's a shame that AGS doesn't support high-resolution widescreen resolutions yet. Is that in the works with the new update?

Also known as: how NOT to do a free giveaway.

Hi everyone! Wow what a crazy couple of days. It all seems to have died down now, and everything has been sorted. So all to the good.

The blog link that David Ostman just posted pretty much sums up what I think about the subject. Whether the mass-nabbing of the keys was stealing or not, it doesn't matter. I still had to take steps to fix it. Thanks everyone for all the comments and support. It means a lot!

Hey, congrats to Ben on getting a full-time AGS job! And congrats to Dave and Janet on getting a full-time employee!

I have decided to take this as a sign that the next WEG game after Blackwell Epiphany will be an unprecedentedly ambitious and awesome affair. Not that BE won't be as well. It's just that, much as I like the Blackwell games, I'm really looking forward to seeing what else you can do.

Thanks Snarky! There are a few other projects lined up after Epiphany (which WEG is publishing/assisting with and Ben is doing the art for), but I have given a LOT of thought to our next internal game. I've always wanted to do something more ambitious and now we can.

Yep! Just hired Mr. Ben304 full time! So not only are these games sustaining my living, they are now sustaining Ben's.

Which is... kind of terrifying, now that I think of it!

As a whole, most prefer EXEs to ZIPS. You'd be surprised how many people don't know what ZIPS even are!

Yes you understand me correctly. Persons who likes AGS, make games, or everyone who wants to sponsor a game. The games on Wadjet Eye Games, could for short have more commercial, and even be buyed in a store like Amazon, in a DVD box. I don't mean steam is bad, rather, it is easier to see the titles and find them if you could buy them from a game store.

I still believe its pretty expensive to create a DVD version with could be buyed in a store. I just believe, that the creators behind the games could get more attention, contacts and money in this way, than only on just steam. The DVD version must of cause be more expensive, than the steam version.

Sadly, the exacty opposite is true. Physical copies of my games sell HORRIBLY. The manufacturing and shipping costs are so high that I barely break even on them. I actually lost a bit of money on the Resonance boxes, which is why I went back to selling the very basic DVD snapcases for Primordia. They are expensive to make, time consuming to produce, and REALLY expensive to ship. Not only that, they are hard to sell. Fewer and fewer people really care about having a boxed copy of a game these days. I'm sometimes tempted not to bother making them at all, but I like having them.

Been doing nothing but recording, editing, and importing VO for the last two weeks. Here are some samples!

Rosa and Joey

Rosa and Durkin

Blast! Dutifully corrected!

I've been basically earning my living by developing, selling, and publishing AGS games for the last seven years! Under the banner of Wadjet Eye Games (link HERE in case you're interested in learning more). I'm supporting myself, my wife, and our newborn baby. So... yeah, it's definitely possible to make your living making these games. Although I'm not sure I understand you fully. Do you mean that AGSers would pay a company a monthly subscription fee and receive high quality games every month? Sounds logical, except that high quality AGS games take a LOOOONG time to make, even when working on them full time. So it would be a long time before those monthly fees resulted in anything tangible. I've been working on Blackwell Epiphany full time since December 2012, and I'm still not done (albeit, our recent baby definitely delayed things a tad).

As for Steam, I sold my games direct (e.g., not on Steam) for several years before Steam finally wised up and accepted them. I survived just fine, although selling on Steam is INFINITELY preferable. It's got the highest market share of any platform out there. People just like buying their games through the service. It's just the way it is.

That's a pop shield. I've ordered a reflexion filter as well!

First Rosa recording session yesterday! My new recording room is a tad echoey, so until it's fully soundproofed, we gerryrigged a temporary solution:



Towels can solve anything!

Wasn't AGS originally called Adventure Creator back in 1999 or so? It's like we've come full circle!