The International House of Mojo asked me to do an interview about Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island for them and here is a link to it right here.

http://www.mixnmojo.com/features/read.php?article=autumnmooninterview

The game is apparently going to be released in February in the United Kingdom.

http://www.mamba-games.co.uk/ghost-pirates-vooju-island-p-51.html

The good folks at Mixin Mojo have patiently waited for me to get this interview done and I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks guys. So head on over and check it out.

Also I have noticed some similarities between our game and the Tell Tale's Monkey Island game- we both have leviathans and we both have mermaids, and it is a coincidence. I had no idea that TT was even making an MI game until December 2008 and at which point we had already been working on Ghost Pirates for about a year. So neither one of us copied the other. We both just wanted to add something new into the pirate game mix and we just thought up the same things at the same time. It happens all the time. I am sure the makers of the TV show Weeds and Breaking Bad have the same issues sometimes (And like TOMI and GPOVI, they are both good shows).

So our mermaids are called Muriel and Queen Aguaphina, and our leviathan is called Levy. See the posted images of the concept art. Muriel is a spoof on Disney’s The Little Mermaid, and Levy was inspired by ancient maps that had illustrations of all sorts of weird and ferocious looking sea monsters illustrated in the margins.

Also I called it Vooju Island because Voodoo is a real religion and I wanted the freedom to make up rules about my own voodoo-like religion. Plus I didn’t want to offend anyone in the voodoo religion and then feel stabbing pains all over my body form having my voodoo doll pricked by pins, or have my name painted in chicken blood on a miniature coffin and have a zombie come try and kill me- you all saw that episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker right (download it on iTunes)? Well I have my salt, red brick dust, sewing kit and white candles ready just in case. Bring it on, zombies!

I was looking at my new iPhone today, a birthday present from my family, and I saw an email about Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island coming out in Germany today. I am so happy it finally made the shelves. If someone over in Germany could take a picture of it on the shelves I would appreciate it. I want to congratulate my awesome team for all the hard work they put into it.

I also heard there was a new trailer, but that some people didn't like the FMV animation. To meet our deadline I decided that we should focus on the programming and in game animation, and if we had to make cuts we would do it in the FMVs (full motion videos). The FMVs only make up 15 minutes of a ten hour game. I was talking with Ron Gilbert one day and he said “cut scenes are the least important part of an adventure game," and that I should "keep them to a minimum and focus on the game. Players are just going to skip them anyway.” Coming from a background in traditional character animation I was a bit bummed to hear that, but I reluctantly agreed that what he said made sense, so that is what we did. Not to say all the in game animations are perfect but we definitely put more time and effort on those.

Also we learned a lot from making our first game, A Vampyre Story. We improved the in game dialog, voice acting, the puzzles, the programming and scripting. Although not perfect, Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island is, in my opinion, a much more ambitious and improved product over our first one. I hope you agree.

Have a merry Talk Like Ye Pirate Day

Arrrgh! Have a merry Talk Like Ye Pirate Day lads and lasses!

First Ghost Pirates Trailer!!!

Sorry for the long absence between posts. Been busy finishing up Ghost Pirates, mostly cut scens and bug fixes. Spekaing of, here is a link to our game's first trailer. Let me know what you think. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvqPrYgjexo&fmt=22

SOMI, TOMI and GPOVI

Ha! My plan worked!!!

What plan might you be asking? The plan to get Lucas Arts to make more adventure games, especially Monkey Island.

 

B*U**LL SH**IT! You might say.

 

Well it’s true! Really! You see, like many reading this, I was not all that thrilled when Sam and Max Freelance Police got canceled. It kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Why cancel a perfectly good game that was 70% complete and looking good to boot? I tried to get that game bought by a persons who I later discovered was.. how should I put it…"A bit naïve.” Sorry about that everyone. No good deed goes unpunished. ( I think that saying should go on my grave.)

 

Then Jim Ward later said that Lucas Arts wouldn’t do another adventure game till the 2015 or something similar, and the really irked me as it may irked you too. So at that point I was on a mission to prove that adventure games weren’t dead and that if Lucas Arts didn’t make another Monkey Island game then I would!…less the Monkey Island IP of course.

So I thought about this. Lucas won’t pay anyone to make a monkey island game, and they won’t sell the IP rights neither. What to do, what to do?

Well then I remembered a conversation I had with Larry Ahern back in 1998 about the idea of doing episodic adventure games, not one episode at a time, but three to five episodes on one disc. He said Tim Schafer would love to do another adventure game if the development time weren’t so damn long. So Larry and I got to thinking, what if we had Guybrush, Elaine, and Le Chuck all hangining out at the SCUMM bar telling their stories, and each story was it’s own adventure game that was kind of linked. Then we’d have three different Project leaders each with their own little team doing a little episode, then the company would pack them up and sell them as one big game. I thought we could call it, ironically, Tails of Monkey Island or Tales, if the pun was too stupid, which it was apparently.

 

Well that didn’t get farther than just talk that day. But it got me to thinking,- it would be fun to play other characters beside Guybrush, sort of like Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle or Maniac Mansion. So while working on Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine I started coming up with ideas for Mi4 where you played Elaine (possible pregnant ala the movie Fargo), Guybrush, and Guybrush junior, their son. And then I thought it would be cool to make it in real time 3d because the Indy game we were doing at the time was looking pretty good.

 

So just for fun I asked Mai Nguyen to build me a 3d Guybrush from CMI, and asked Reed Knight to build the Barbary Coat barber shop from CMI in 3D,and we threw it into the Indy game. It looked pretty cool. We kept it in as an Easter egg. And I evene demo it for Sean Clark and Mike Stemlle before they started on EMI.

 

But sadly I wasn’t allowed to be involved in EMI, even though I badly wanted to,- too busy on Indy Infernal Machine- which bummed me out considerably. So I realized at that moment I was never going to get to work on a MI game again. : (

 

Unless….I made my own! : )

 

Well at first I had this vampyre game idea I wanted to do, but in the back of my head I kept mulling the three player MI-like game in my head. Who would the three pirates be exactly? What do they have to do? Then I thought it would be cool to play cursed ghosts, like the members of Le Chuck’s crew. So that is when I decided , yes, I’ll make a MI inspired pirate game, but instead of a geeky kid at Disneyland/ Big whoop™ wishing he was a pirate, I’ll make three cursed pirates who start off as ghosts. But that is far as I got, and then I put the idea on the back burner for about six years.

 

Six years later…

 

In the summer of 2007 DTP knocked on my door and said “Got any game ideas?” Yes I did! ...About twenty or so, but I narrowed it down to four. At the last minute, I thought, why not throw in the Monkey Island inspired Ghost Pirate games just for $h***!ts and giggles? Then the AME team spent a week brainstorming the game based on my simple premise, and viola! We came up with the basics of Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island.

 

So I pitched all the game ideas to DTP and they picked the ghost pirate game, which isn't surprising because, like me, they were fans of Monkey Island and were annoyed that Lucas had seemed to abandon the franchise. So why not make a game similar, but do some new fun things with it since we aren’t restricted by any established IP?

 

So I wanted to make this game for two reason, because as a fan of MI I wanted to make my own MI like game, and second I wanted  to show Jim Ward that he shouldn’t abandoned MI license, -that the MI series would still be a viable IP, would still make Lucas Arts money.

 

So you see? It worked! A month after Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island is announced, not just one, but two Monkey Games are announced!

 

Oh alright. I admit it. Maybe I had nothing to do with it. Maybe George Lucas just realized Jim Ward was, maybe possible, just ever so slightly…WRONG!!! But the cool thing is the fans REALLY win here no matter how or why the MI games got made. Fans get Secret of MI with sound, voice and new take at the old graphics, they get an episodic down loadable game with real time environments from Tell Tale, and in January they’ll get a retail CD, full game, with hand painted backgrounds in the CMI style, but with a whole new story line and new characters, and you get to play ghosts and switch between three main characters. So as a huge MI fan I consider this a win, win, win! I hope other Monkey fans do to.

 

 

 

 

 

AME seeking a Publisher for A Vampyre Story 2: A Bat's Tale

Petaluma , CA - May 28, 2009 - Award winning Autumn Moon Entertainment, is looking for a publishing partner for their exciting, dark humored, new point-and-click adventure game, "A Vampyre Story 2: A Bat's Tale (AVS2)". 

 

Autumn Moon has also published it’s first art book entitled Art of A Vampyre Story. The book contains all the painting from A Vampyre Story 1 as well as a sneak peak at A Vampyre Story 2:  A Bat’s Tale. There is even a short A Vampyre Story comic book in the book as well done by character artist Jean Louis Sirois. Fans can purchase it at www.lulu.com

Building off the commercial and critical success of the award-winning, "A Vampyre Story", AVS2 returns the player to the world of Mona de Laffite, French opera starlet-turned-vampire, and her wisecracking bat, Froderick. Play as these two characters in a comic mis-adventure as appealing as Parisian pastry. With a substantial portion of the game already complete, AVS2 follows up the award winning style of "A Vampyre Story". This sequel will continue the trend started in A Vampyre Story 1 of having spectacular settings, ghastly characters and enough Vampyre humor to wake the dead. Be a part of this terrific project. Take a look at some tasty samples at www.avampyrestory2.com. 


The Storyline:

Mona, the unwilling vampire who is mired deep in denial, is trapped by the vindictive Dr. Riga Mortus in his secret lab in Draxsylvania. Players will guide Froderick the bat, through the macabre town of Gothford Falls, where he will encounter old enemies and make some new friends, including an inept magician- The Great Fauxdini, conceited local Goth artist- Raven Gothguy, and Jack the Gimper among many others. Mona and Froderick will explore many interesting locations, such as Dr. Legume's Home for the Sanity Challenged, an Executioner's Practice Grounds, Mortus Labs, and, the scariest of all, a tavern full of disgruntled sports fans low on beer! Help Froderick free Mona then play as Mona as she scours hundreds of shamelessly padded résumés looking for the perfect day-time guardian to watch over her when she returns to Paris! 

The game will feature over twenty-five 3D characters, forty gorgeous hand-painted locations, fifteen hours of game play, and will include dialogue written by two ex-LucasArts game designers, Larry Ahren and Jesse Clark. Their experience from working on so many LucasArts classics such as Sam and Max: Hit the Road, Monkey Island 2, Full Throttle, and Curse of Monkey Island, will be a welcome addition to the already experienced Autumn Moon team.

About Autumn Moon Entertainment: 
Autumn Moon Entertainment, the best source for all things Vampyrish( www.amegames.com ) is a Northern California-based developer, founded by games industry veteran, Bill Tiller in 2004. In 2008, Autumn Moon released "A Vampyre Story" which won awards including "Best Graphic Design 2008" and "Reader's Choice: Best Gameplay, Best Animation 2008" from adventuregamers.com. Autumn Moon specialized in adventure games with an emphasis on story, art, and quality of experience. The company is completing work on "Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island", due to be released in January, 2010.


If you need A Vampyre Story 2 for your catalog or you just love adventure games contact AME’s Executive Producer Bill Dwyer at info@amegames.com.


To follow Vampire Story 2 on Twitter please visit http://twitter.com/avs2

Not Another Pirate game!

So I was looking as some forums that were discussing Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island, and one thing that popped up that I wanted to address went something like this ”Aw man! not another pirate game?!!” Well I agree there are a lot out there and we did pitch a lot of different game ideas and do have a lot of original ideas for games, - don’t we all really? But the game pitch that seemed to get the most traction was Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island. I love pirates and I haven’t worked on a pirate game since 1997 so for me it’s been 12 years and I have been itching to do another one.

But I also think people really liked the art I did on Curse of Monkey Island and wanted to see some more of it. Lucas hasn’t done a pirate game in a while so I think publishers like DTP/ Anaconda saw that fans were lamenting this fact. So they thought that Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island might be something fans would like. And we all have to admit Pirates are pretty popular right now, so this type of game would be less risky than some of the other unusual ideas we had proposed, and would be easier to market. The Ghost Pirate idea had a lot of positives going for it.

      And in this game you don’t play a clever but awkward want to be pirate nerd, instead you play ghosts. Now I love monsters and I have always wanted play one. Whenever I play a role playing game I’m always selecting to play races other than human, something that is more exotic, - something that will give me a new experience. That was the thought behind playing ghosts in this game- lets’ play from a different perspective. Yes, we should keep what worked in other games, but let’s improve on it where we can but also give the player a new perspective to help spice up a traditional genre. So if one were a ghost, would it be fun or would it be a terrible curse, or maybe both? Would it be a help or be a hindrance.

            Also maybe it’s due to my Cal Arts story training, but I tend to like to make comedy adventures similar to movies like the original Batman, Iron Giant and The Incredibles- stories that have a serious plot but have a lot of comedic situations. Tim Burton, Spielberg and Bard Bird all tend to make movies like this, so they must have been an influence. Monkey Island is great farce and I love other farces like Airplane, Blazing Saddles and anything Monty Python, but I like making stories that are a bit more serious, where the consequences of the characters actions have dramatic effects on their lives.

            So playing as ghost, playing more than one character, and the game having a more serious tone are what I hope will make Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island stand out from other pirate games. Plus I hope it looks good to everyone as well.