AGDInteractive - Sierra Adventure Game Remakes Forum

Hello fellow adventure gamers,

We'd like to announce some exciting news!

Firstly, we have recently redesigned the Himalaya Studios site, so be sure to check out the new homepage at http://www.HimalayaStudios.com.

Additionally, we have a new adventure game project in development. We've got a new adventure games store with some GREAT titles! We have Al Emmo merchandise for your to peruse. We've got news about what's been going and where we're headed our new adventurer's log (which we'll continually update for your reading pleasure). We also have a presence at major social networking sites, which you can find out more about by visiting the new site!

Also, a link to the latest Himalaya newsletter is here.

So head on over to Himalaya Studios and drop us a line in the forum.

We're excited to be working on another adventure game for all of you to enjoy!

Anonymous Game Developer #1

Exciting!

New Himalaya game!! SWEEEEEET!

Well, I didn't know you went and visited Josh near Albany. I live in Syracuse, a couple hours down the road from there.

Sounds cool - I look forward to your next game project!

Bt

Let me be the first to say..... what is the release date ?

Only kidding, I would be interested in knowing how long you have been working on the project though?

Interesting. I hope it's completed successfully and receives good response! I'm intrigued.

These are really good news. I've heard only good stories about the new games in store, specially the ones from the Blackwell saga, from my inner circle of adventure games friends. The new site is also Miles better and I really enjoyed the photos from the animals in South America.

So the new game will have elements in common with the King's Quest and Quest for Glory titles? Aweverything!

Great news!!

All your work so far has been wonderful! Although I'm sure your game will be great no matter what, I want to suggest that you consider a game set in the present day. Also, why not include references to CURRENT pop culture when designing characters, storylines, etc. (a la South Park). Don't worry about it being US-centric... nearly everyone is familiar with, and most have been at least somewhat influenced by, American pop culture. Of course, having some semi-controversial elements might bring more attention to the game; remember, sex sells! It doesn't have to be gimmicky. The point is... we'd love to see the game make news, get noticed (if only a tiny bit) beyond the traditional adventure game audience.

Another thing... we love the personal touches to your new site. The journals and personal photos really make the customers/gamers feel a closer connection to the designers. (I think this was a brilliant marketing strategy employed by Sierra through InterAction magazine, etc. over the years... we all felt like we knew the Sierra designers.) One thing about the new Himalaya site, though... although it is very easy to navigate and it has a clean look, the website design looks terribly dated, indistinctive and doesn't at all convey an image of "CREATIVE professional". The disparity between this Himalaya website and the fresh, razzle dazzle slickness of the new AGDInteractive website is beyond glaring. One might have thought the "wow" design should have been given to the commercial site. Also, a new Himalaya logo couldn't hurt.

Please keep us updated!! Teasers and development news are appreciated.

Milan Easton wrote:Hello fellow adventure gamers,

We'd like to announce some exciting news!

Firstly, we have recently redesigned the Himalaya Studios site, so be sure to check out the new homepage at http://www.himalayastudios.com.

Additionally, we have a new adventure game project in development. We've got a new adventure games store with some GREAT titles! We have Al Emmo merchandise for your to peruse. We've got news about what's been going and where we're headed our new adventurer's log (which we'll continually update for your reading pleasure). We also have a presence at major social networking sites, which you can find out more about by visiting the new site!

So head on over to Himalaya Studios and drop us a line in the forum.

We're excited to be working on another adventure game for all of you to enjoy!

Anonymous Game Developer #1

I was actually interested in The Blackwell Convergence. Are these designers you've known for a long time? Story looks fun and the graphical direction looks very "sins of the father"ish which I am a fan of. A nitpick if I may on that section of the site.

Do want to buy all three Blackwell games at a discounted price? Check out the Blackwell Bundle and save $5!

Missing a subject after "Do".

Thanks for the comments and feedback, guys and girls!

Blackthorne519: Yeah, we only passed through New York very briefly, which is kind of a bummer, because we'd intended to stay there longer. In fact, that's the entire reason we drove so far east in the first place. We ran out of time, though, as I had to get back to LA so that I could fly back to Melbourne. We decided on the spur of the moment to pay Josh Mandel a last minute visit, since we were going right past Albany. Let me say that Josh is a blast. He is most definitely THE man!

Rugged: The story and plot for the new game has been floating around since January 2008. Prior to that, Daniel Stacey and I co-wrote a near-complete science-fiction screenplay, set in space on a mining colony (think of the film "Aliens", mixed with the game "Another World", mixed with the TV show "Prison Break"). However, I wasn't really feeling it, so we shoved it into the growing pile of unfinished screenplays and started *again* from scratch with a fantasy adventure game. Rather than help co-write this time, I just let Daniel go solo on the new game and offered occasional direction and suggestions to help refine things after he showed me subsequent screenplay revisions. The fantasy genre is territory we're more familiar with, particularly given our Sierra remakes here at AGDI. We're hoping that this familiarity will resonate better with the larger portion of the adventure fanbase who know us for the King's Quest and Quest for Glory remakes.

After a few false starts, we've finally managed to secure enough funding to move ahead with development. And since work on the AGDI remakes has wound down, this will give us an open schedule to focus on the one project for the foreseeable future. Not much has been done yet, apart from the finished screenplay/design doc. But some preliminary background art exists. There's a small thumbnail teaser of one such screen in the newsletter (link in the first post).

pbpb33: Thanks for the suggestions. The thing to remember is that we took such risks with Al Emmo (the tongue-in-cheek sexual innuendo, the unlikely hero, the modern pop-culture references etc.) and the formula turned out to be too hit-and-miss. People either loved it or hated it, and there wasn't much of a middle ground. Most adventure games that sell well these days are the small casual titles that go viral on the portals, many which are unheard of in mainstream circles. 99% of these games have female protagonists, simply because the leading demographic that purchases modern adventure games (casual ones, at least) is women. According to our statistics, Al Emmo was actually purchased by more females than males, so if we want a game to be successful, then we kind of have to appeal to the tastes of our potential target audience. At the very least, this means refraining from taking risks that could exclude them or put them off giving the game a chance. So I think it's safe to say that we're done with innuendos and westerns for the time being! We can't really afford to make another adventure game that doesn't do as well as we need it to financially, so we'll be sticking within 'safe' territory this time!

As for the website, it's based on Joomla (which is the BIGGEST headache ever to use, and absolutely filled with bugs - I wouldn't recommend it at all). A commercial site like the AGDI one was donated by Eriq, since what we do here at AGDI is entirely non-profit. But a similar site would cost up to and over $10,000 USD for a commercial company - especially with new design and branding, and we really can't afford to drop that figure. Heck, it was hard enough to scrape together enough funds just to start development on a new game! As with everything, it all comes down to money.

Quest For Glory Fan: Dave Gilbert has been around the AGS community for a long time. I remember him being there even in the early days when we first released the King's Quest I and II remakes. His writing style is very sharp and witty, especially in the Blackwell games. They're definitely worth playing. He also wrote and designed Emerald City Confidential.

Thanks for the missing word report, too. I'll get that fixed.

Finally, I have also added a link to the latest Himalaya Studios newsletter to the top post for anyone who's interested.

Anonymous Game Creator 2 wrote:Rugged: The story and plot for the new game has been floating around since January 2008. Prior to that, Daniel Stacey and I co-wrote a near-complete science-fiction screenplay, set in space on a mining colony (think of the film "Aliens", mixed with the game "Another World", mixed with the TV show "Prison Break"). However, I wasn't really feeling it, so we shoved it into the growing pile of unfinished screenplays and started *again* from scratch with a fantasy adventure game. Rather than help co-write this time, I just let Daniel go solo on the new game and offered occasional direction and suggestions to help refine things after he showed me subsequent screenplay revisions. The fantasy genre is territory we're more familiar with, particularly given our Sierra remakes here at AGDI. We're hoping that this familiarity will resonate better with the larger portion of the adventure fanbase who know us for the King's Quest and Quest for Glory remakes.

The Sci-Fi design sounds like my kinda thing, hopefully you'll have the oppertunity to turn it into a game one day. I'd really like to play it lol!

Awww man. I've been waiting for a good Sci-Fi adventure game since The Dig and Space Quest. There hasn't been one at all I believe. We need more Sci-Fi games! But this fantasy idea sounds just as intriguing.

Yeah, a LOT of work was done on the sci-fi screenplay, but we both had two different 'visions' for it and that was becoming counterproductive to the quality of the story. We also realized that the game would have been more animation intensive than we'd originally planned. We're really hoping for a one-year development phase on the next game, and a great number of complex, high-res animations would have been taxing with the budget and time limit we have.

The sci-fi project hasn't actually been scrapped, though, and if things go according to plan with the fantasy game, we might dust it off and resume it at some point in the future.

As phpbb33 said, the Himalaya logo looks a bit amateurish. I guess an update wouldn't hurt, unless the design is trademarked or copyrighted, because you would need to re-register it again with the new design. I could try to draw some ideas myself and then use a vector-based program like Corel Draw or Photoshop to make one that could be scaled at any size without loss of resolution. Not that the current logo doesn't already do its job.

Indeed. I'm thinking something along the lines of a simple snow-topped mountainscape and sky with the words Himalaya in big letters with a taller mountain rising up and taking the place of the middle "a" in the word Himalaya. With "Studios" in smaller letters beneath it. You could even make a 2-colour simple version (as in black/white and a transparent colour) with just the words and a simply drawn mountain peak for the "a". Actually a logo animation between the two (the photo mountainscape version morphing into the simple version after some dramatic camera movement) might actually be a sweet idea as well.

I'm blabbing...

It's okay. We plan on revamping the Himalaya logo and branding eventually, but we'll most likely do it once we have the new game nearing completion and are ready to get a site launched for it. For now, we just have to allocate our budget to the development of the actual game itself.

Just wanted to say, good luck on the new game. I hope you'll have a smooth, fruitful and wonderful development experience, and that all the forseen and unforseen hick ups -that will undoubtedly be coming your way no matter what- will be overcompensated by positivity.

I'm really excited you have chosen fantasy; almost all of my favorite games are in this one or in the mystery genre. Being less egocentristic, I think it's a good choice regarding your experience, the AGDI fanbase and the p&c adventure gamers in general.

Good luck!