Adventure Gamers - Forums

I remember LBA as an action game.

Hmm, it’s not quite clear whether Raynal and Chanfray are part of this indie team or they are just “supporting” and “consulting”. I remember Simon the Sorcerer 4 was advertised as “consulted by Simon Woodroffe”, but the ending result had little to nothing to do with the original games. And even then I wonder if a small indie team which is currently looking for stuff is enough to bring up a project of this scope. Personally I would’ve liked to see it as a modern (in a good way) high-budget production, something like those new Oddworld games, only not dumbed down. But the low-budget “reboot” from an unknown team sounds suspisious.

I also did a quick check of other team members. Benoît Limare has no experience in video games, his only big credit is that of a co-founder of the French start-up for data engeneering. Same with Gwenaëlle Gourevich - no games to date, only another start-up concerning some skin diagnostic tool. Samantha Bailly, described at the official site as an experienced writer and developer, has only one real credit - Might & Magic: Heroes VI where she worked as one of “International Product Manager Assistants”. She did write many books though - maybe even too many. And that’s basically the whole team

Ah well, I still wish them luck LBA was never among my favourite series, and I agree it’s more on the action rather than adventure side, but I enjoyed it as a spiritual successor of sorts to the original Alone in the Dark, one of the most innovative games.

I have to say, this is a surprising revival, the second one was released in 1997 after all. Then again, it’s not that long ago, when Wasteland finally got a sequel in 2014 when the original was released in 1988. And that lead to the 3rd game in 2020. So maybe LBA will have a similar renaissance as the father of Fallout did.

As a side note, I’ll always link Sting’s best of album to LBA2. See, back in the day, I played, let’s say less than a legal version of it. It didn’t have any sounds or music, so I just listened to Sting while playing it. When I finally bought them games from GOG, it was an odd experience to play the 2nd game with its proper soundtrack. It just feels wrong to me.

Seems like the project is alive and kicking. I was skeptical about it at first, there was little to no information about the team and their plans. But they released some updates since, including the first “making of” trailer where they are not actually making anything, but rather introducing their team and project:

Apparently Frédérick Raynal (LBA’s author) and Didier Chanfray (LBA’s artist/animator and the one who bought back the LBA ip from Delphine and released the games on GOG) take an active part in the development. And what they want is not just LBA 3, but a complete reboot of the franchise, with a more “modern” story (no idea what that means) and more games to come — which sounds good, but maybe a bit too optimistic at this point.

It’s as indie as they get (“a core production team of around 12 people”... “the budget will be smaller than what was used to create the original LBA2”...), there’s practically nothing they can share right now, no story/art/gameplay, and they are aiming for 2024 — the 30th anniversary of LBA, which is a lot of time. Then again, Didier says he spent 10 years just trying to kickstart the whole project, so 2 more years is nothing in comparison.