There's not just AAA blockbuster titles. There's also smaller dev. teams and game less mainstream out there.
(that doesn't mean they're less "good", they just kinda come under the radar when released)
Since I love and want to support such games, here's some news about A Vampyre Story 2!
First, a refresher for newcomers:
A Vampyre Story was a 2008 adventure point & click game made by Autumn Moon Entertainment.
Autumn Moon is a studio founded and directed by Bill Tiller, and if you're an adventure fan you probably heard of the man. If not, well he's a former LucasArts employee, was the character designer in Curse of Monkey Island and worked on Indiana Jones & The Infernal Machine.
Like many others (Dave Grossman, Tim Schaffer, Ron Gilbert..) he left LucasArts to make his own indie studio and has continued making adventure game when people didn't like those anymore (note: in the 2000s)
A Vampyre Story was a very funny "old school" point & click. Only done with modern means instead of just DOS. The characters were wonderfully done in cartoony 3D, the backgrounds were amazingly done paintings.
With lots of objects collecting, puzzles solving, characters interacting and many more.
It's only problem was that it ended in a cliffhanger and was sort of short (like 2 Telltales episodes-long more or less).
The story followed Mona De Lafitt, a french singing (not-really-vampire but yes kinda anyway) gal trying to escape from the count Shrowdy von Kieffer who kept her hidden from the world in his castle, in Draxsylvania. Through her journey, Froderick the bat helped her reach the village nearby, and then...
It was quite fun, even if too short. The two characters' interraction was pretty close to Sam & Max (Froderick even helped interact with some objects like Max).
Then, early this year, they released Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island.
Another classic point & click with modern means.
It was based on abandoned concepts that Bill & his team were preparing for a Monkey Island 4 (or 5) back then at LucasArts.
The players controls 3 different Ghost Pirates characters, as in Day of the Tentacle, and have to solve tons of puzzles through an epic journey (which would have been Guybrush, LeChuck and Elaine if it had been a Monkey Island).
A Vampyre Story 2 is expected to be released late this year/early 2011 (no precise date for the moment).
There will be more twists and new magic-powers to use (a returning gimmick from AVS1).
The game is looking great so far!
Sharper, cleaner and more detailed than the first one. There seems to be a new important character in a zombie gal called "Helena Zombie". (picture above)
And now, here's some screens:
Mona is back!
New characters! They all look great! They seem to blend a bit better in the backgrounds this time.
And here's Froderick with his new sidekick. I guess they'll have to help a trapped Mona.
And that's all!
Sure, adventure games seem to be coming back lately, with the LucasArts remakes and Telltales success...
But they've never really been away. It's indie studios like Autumn Moon, Revolution Software (Broken Sword series) & Péndulo Studios (Runaway series) that kept the flame alive during the whole 2000s while nobody wanted to make these games anymore.
