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I don't think it's related, and I wish them good luck, they'll need a lot of it. Activision isn't gonna give away that IP below a million. And if we, a forum dedicated to indie adventure games, hear about their latest idea 6 days after its announcement, they really need to improve their "getting the word out there" skills.

Yeap, April's Fool, but it's a rather strange choice of game for an april's fool. It's more probable that the dudes in charge of April's Fools at Blizzard were inspired by the TSL news last month, but I wonder if that could be a sign that Activision-Blizzard plan to do something with their old titles.

And I just finished the game!
It was great, I loved the ending and I can't wait to see the future antics these guys will run into.

Btw, what was that shepherd really doing with that kid?

That's certainly not what I had in mind when I read "abuse of power", I was thinking more about stealing, falsifying or planting evidences, closing the eyes on some criminal activities, opportunistic theft, taking bribes... that kind of stuff. You'd also have to fool the internal affairs the whole time if you wanted to reach the end of the game.

Also, don't try to cram all your ideas in the same game. With the ideas posted here, you'd be able to create several police themed games, each using different ideas and mechanics.

When you're on the Box download page, don't click on the download button in the middle of the page, click on the one in the top right corner and your download will start.

I think I'll give this game a second try today. I just hope the accidental walking deads have been solved.

Spoiler

#12: Balloon Fight
#16: Stargate
#17: Star Castle
#18: Golden Tee
#21: Discs of Tron
#29: Boulder Dash
#37: Bomberman
#40: Bejeweled
#46: Spy Hunter (I shouted that one out loud when I found it)
#47: Joust

[close]

If it can help, most of them are rebus, not cameo or anything, you don't need a lot of video games knowledge to find them.

Edit: I got 35.

Those are all pretty great suggestions. I second the idea of having to deal with real life problems and the psychological effect of being a cop. I also second the idea of abusing power, I remember having a discussion with a friend where we talked about a possible Police Quest/The Shield game where the game could either be solved by following the rules, either by bending or breaking them, to arrest the criminals or simply for your own profit.

5. Paperwork 

As long it doesn't end up being a puzzle. I always prefered PQ1-2 and Blue Force over PQ3-4 for the simple reason that as the series progressed, they kept adding more and more police procedure to follow, to the point where it became absurd. The first games were just stuff like "Call backup", "Draw gun", "Tell rights", "Show badge" or remembering to put gloves on when you collect evidences, the kind of stuff you see in police movies and TV series. The games made you feel like a cop without being anal about following the police procedures.

The series lost me when I had to write the very exact time on speed tickets, assign every evidences I found to the right case, assign everyone I brought in jail to the right crime, or use the notebook icon on every hotspots at the crime scene because later I'd be asked to fill paperworks.

There's also:
Cirque De Zale
Infamous Adventures' King's Quest 3 remake (but you probably played that one)
Loftus and the Sky Cap
Once Upon A Crime
Quest For Yrolg
Principle of Evil 1 & 2
Spooks
The Winter Rose

Only 2 games offended me and both had the author forcefully shoving down my throat his/her opinions. It's one thing do it subtly, over the course of the game, it's another to just interrupt the story with a completly unrelated 5 minutes long cutscene just to be trolled by the author.

I don't think the fear of offending someone should stop anyone from making a game. There will always be people who'll like your game and people who won't, with or without offending content, so you may as well put whatever you want in your game, just make sure that, like hofmeier suggested, your game's implementation is as flawless as possible.

MrColossal: That's how it is in puzzle games, but it's rarely like that in adventure games. I wouldn't mind them if they were well implemented, like say, if dead ends arrived in the same area you screwed up, not 10 hours of gameplay, 5 Myst puzzles, 2 minigames or a maze later, and if the game killed you when it became obvious you screwed up and the death message not only gave you a hint but also had a button that brought you back in the area where you screwed up so you don't have to worry about saving on different slots.

I think Quest for Yrolg featured some, but the game was so short that it wasn't an issue.

Dualnames: The animations and sarcastic death messages are part of what made Space Quest games so great. It's just too bad they didn't think of a Try Again button until the last game.

The example with the apple is not accurate. What if you decide to burn the only bridge above the river. It will cause dead end, and will teach some young minds that it's not right.

No. Eating the apple is fairly accurate. If dead ends only punished players for doing stupid things, yeah, it would be unnacurate. But the thing is, dead ends punish players for any reason the developers see fit. You ate the pie instead of the meat? Dead end! You missed a rubber band lying on the sea bed of sharks infested waters? Dead end! You sold your car for 25 bucks instead of 25 bucks and a jetpack? Dead end! You forgot to save a mouse that appears on your screen for 2 little seconds? Dead end! You took the scuba suit that was in the left locker instead of the one in the right locker? Dead end! You didn't spy a conversation you didn't know existed because it only happens in a very specific room on a very specific time?

The list goes on. TVtropes got an article for dead ends, and Sierra has its own special section. Imagine if a button at the start of Myst made the game unwinnable at the end of the game, that would be ludicrous, yet, that's pretty much what Sierra did in Lighthouse.

I think dead ends survived this long in Sierra games not because developers wanted to teach you anything, but because without them, people would have complained Sierra games were too short.

Interesting post Limping!

However, that kind of horror movies that tries to show you how depraved mankind can be doesn't scare me anymore for the simple reason that I know that somewhere on this planet, not only the stuff shown in the movie is common practice, but people are doing far worse.

I've never understand why the walking deaths, dead ends all Sierra's things are so annoying for the players... For me they make the game more challenging and more interesting.

Or more frustrating and time wasting. Puzzles can be challenging and time consuming on their own without having to memorise every things of interest in now unreachable areas, wasting days trying to solve unsolvable puzzles, saving after every puzzles just in case you did something wrong and replaying the game countless times.

Even Sierra got a clue and removed those in its later games. You want to know why I never got into Tex Murphy games, search no further.

I'm surprised nobody suggested a demake for Escape from Monkey Island.

I would look forward to a fateful remake of the original System Shock however. I never had a chance to play that one, and the very early 3D graphics are just too much of a strain on the eyes nowadays.

It was already remade. System Shock Portable, it's no HL: Black Mesa, the colors still look pretty funky but the game can run in 1024x768 resolution so it's much less blocky and cramped than the original DOS version.

Personally I'd rather see older, great but user unfriendly games remade, like Dualnames is doing with H2G2. That being said, I got myself in one heck of a Sierra mood these days, with the KQ9 discussions and the soon to be released SQ2 remake. After I found the SQ6 demo hidden in a folder, played SQ5, SQ6, SQ1VGA and watched the various trailers for the SQ2 remake, I would be lying if I said I didn't want SQ3 to receive the same treatment one day.

Non adventure remake would be UFO Enemy Unknown/X-COM UFO Defence. Transport Tycoon, Civilization, Colonization... all the cool Microprose sim games got remade, all except X-COM. Keeping the dark and gritty atmosphere and artstyle of the first two games but revamping the battlescape completly. No more bugs, no more limitations on the number of items you bring on missions, 3D explosions, better handling of environment damage (no more floating lamp posts), having more fighting options for the player and aliens (think Jagged Alliance 2), ramp up the AIs, new weapons, new aliens (bring in the Aliens, Predators and Cloverfield monsters)... If someone did that, it would by my new drug.

I would also like an updated and more polished version of Theme Hospital.

"EPIDEMIC ALERT!"

There are a couple of Theme Hospital projects floating around, trying to recreate the game like people did for the good old Microprose sim games, one of them is open source I think.

What I'd want is an addon remake for TH, I was somewhat deceived that after level 5 or 6, only diseases were added to the game and no new rules (inspectors, emergencies, training, research, epidemics...). I'd only be interested in a Theme Hospital remake if they fixed that problem in the latter levels.

Long ago, a friend suggested me My Little Sister Kana. I haven't played it but according to him, it was the best visual novel he ever seen. You might also be interested in Masq.

Much better looking than the first remake. I'm not gonna jump at it and buy it, I played MI2 last year and while I love the MI series, I'm not an hardcore hardcore MI fan, but if I ever feel like replaying MI2 several years from now, I'll certainly give that remake a try.

"Vikings" and "top down" make me think of God Of Thunder but I doubt it's the game you're looking for since Ascovel's suggestion seems more accurate to your description.

Just torrent it out

Torrent is not an option because their real names were all over their game and website, and since they negociated with Vivendi and Activision, it's not far fetched to suppose Activision knows who they are and where they live. If they ignore the C&D and torrented their game at this point, lawyers won't just send letters, they'll knock on their doors. SQ7 had the same problem and so does FOY.

I always wondered why the people at AGDI insisted so much on being anonymous back in the days, I think we know why now.