Finally, a game we can
predict will ‘suck’ without receiving
nasty emails from the developer.

A Vampyre
Story – which
was exclusively announced in an excellent in-depth preview in the
JA sponsored The
Inventory #16 –
is being developed by a talented team of ex-Lucas Arts employees
now known as Autumn Moon Entertainment. Everyone – except
for the music composer and sound engineer – is from Lucas Arts.

It seems ‘cartoony’ games
may be making a comeback what with The Westerner about to announce a North American publisher, Runaway
2 in production,
a soon-to-be announced (by JA next week!) Polish adventure and now
A Vampyre Story (we also know of at least 3 other ‘cartoony’ games
that have yet to be announced publicly).

The team has just recently finished up a playable ‘proof of concept-which
is a short mini game that shows the style and functionality of the
final game. It is a tool to help potential publisher visualize what
the final
product will be like. Autumn Moon is currently shopping their game
around and hopes to announce a publisher soon.

A Vampyre
Story is a traditional point-and-click game that
currently is in 2D, but for the final product the animation
will be in 3D.
The reason for this is the animations will
look smoother and more consistent. The developers plan to use a 2D
cel-shader on
the animation to help the characters blend in with the 2D, hand painted
backgrounds.

The game play and interface
will be very much like The
Curse of Monkey
Island. The humor will be in the same vein as movies
like Young Frankenstein and
Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein and previous adventure games
such as The
Quivering and
Hollywood Monsters.

The main character is
Mona who – according to The Inventory – is
an up-and-coming opera star who catches the attention of a nefarious
vampire – Baron Shrowdy Von Kiefer. He was so taken with Mona
he kidnapped her, turned her into a vampire and spirited her away
to his island castle in Draxsylvania, a small eerie mountain country
deep in the wilds of Eastern Europe. Froderick was one of the many
bats that inhabited the castle belfry.

Over the many years
of Mona.s captivity, Froderick became her closest friend and
companion.
He likes to joke around a lot and h is humor
was the only thing that kept Mona.s spirits up during that dark time.
He likes to hang out with her, literally ,because he simply has nothing
better to do. Hanging out with a leggy ingénue sounds better
than another night of guano fights in the belfry.

Mona is a bit naive about what has happened to her so she has little
command over her unusual abilities. As the player progresses through
the game, Mona will learn how to turn into a bat, hypnotize people,
turn into a gaseous form, and of course, bite people on the neck
and drain them o f blood, but not too much blood. After all, Mona
is a stage performer and she needs to watch her figure. Other powers
may be added as well, like the ability to summon wolves, bats and
rats,
and to control the weather.

The interface will employ
a hint system and Mona’s journal.
The journal will list Mona’s progress and what puzzles she
is currently attempting to solve. This will allow players who haven’t
played in a while (though I can’t imagine anyone taking an
extended break from this game!) to easily pick-up where they left
off. The inventory will feature an icon of Froderick the Bat and
can be used to help solve puzzles. The graphic engine used will be
Virtools Engine Technology that was used for Syberia.

We’ll have a lot
more features and exclusives on A Vampyre Story as the game progresses,
but keep in mind that more than a few
publishers are adverse to publish any game with cartoon graphics
(thanks in a large part to twitch gamers who have the industry convinced
that all games must feature cutting-edge 3D graphics). To those publishers
who are hedging on their commitment, I would ask them to consider
the pedigree of the Autumn Moon Entertainment team:

Monkey Island 2
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Maniac Mansion 2: Day of the Tentacle
Sam N Max Hit The Road
Full Throttle
The Dig
Rebel Assault
Outlaws
Curse of Monkey Island
Grim Fandango
Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine
Escape from Monkey Island

If this group has problems finding a publisher, then the adventure
genre truly has no future.