Underground Dispatch: September 2003
Welcome back to yet another edition of the Underground Dispatch, gathering all the important news from the amateur adventure scene. It's certainly been a while since our last edition--more than four months--so there's plenty of news to report. If you have any underground news that you'd like to share with us, please e-mail us. Now, let's dive in!
The big story of the summer is the release of a new Space Quest fan-sequel! Space Quest 0: Replicated takes Roger Wilco through all kinds of crazy locations, including Labion and Monolith Burger, in a story that takes place prior to the events of Sierra's games. It uses the same AGI engine and text parser as the first two Space Quest games, and is sure to be a nostalgia trip for Roger Wilco fans. We'll have a full Underground review of this game in September; more information and the free game download are available at the Virtual Broomcloset.
The other big summer release is The Breakdown: A Snack-Sized Adventure Game, which is available for download at the game's official site. This is a delightful little adventure game that looks great, sounds great, and is generally a whole lot of fun. This is definitely one of the best underground adventures of the year so far, so be sure to check it out!
Amberfish Arts, the folks developing Fate of Atlantis II, have made some progress on their project in the recent months. Visit their site for some interesting downloads of engine tests, as well as some very positive reports on graphical progress. Keep an eye on their website for more news coming soon!
A huge new update from the Reality-on-the-Norm scene: the long-awaited game chronicling the mayoral campaign of heroic zombie Michael Gower has finally been released. Dead Man's Political Party is available for download now at the official RON website. There are tons of other updates at the site as well; if you're not familiar with the RON world, now's as good a time as any to jump in!
Part 1 of the very promising The Journey Home, developed by Screen 7 Entertainment, is now available for download. It's got plenty of positive buzz behind it, and shows a lot of promise for future chapters. Check it out at the Screen 7 website.
If you're an aspiring adventure game programmer, there might not be a better time than now to get your feet wet, as three of the most prominent engines used for developing amateur adventures have all released new versions. AGAST Morningstar is a complete revamping of the popular AGAST engine, which has been used to create many commercial adventures. Wintermute is an up-and-coming engine that is being used to develop Project Joe among others. Finally, Adventure Game Studio remains the most popular and accessible engine for those with little programming experience.
Those waiting with bated breath for Larry Vales III...might not be so encouraged by the newest wording on designer Phil Reed's website. Of the game, he says "It's been a long time coming and it'll probably be a long time gone, so don't hold your breath for the finished product." The demo is still downloadable from his website, and we can only hope that someday we'll see what is sure to be a brilliant game.
I think that about wraps it up for now. Many of the sites formerly hosted by Adventure Developers seem to have disappeared due to the server outage that caused us a summer's worth of downtime. If you have any news on the new address of any of these sites, or you have a game that you would like us to mention in the next dispatch, please do e-mail us. Happy adventuring, and we'll see you next month!
