Infamous Adventures - One Door Closes...
July 27, 2012, 03:46:21 AM by Klytos

To all our amazing fans.

Blackthorne, Broomie and I have made the hard decision to cease production on a couple of our titles. In particular, our Kings Quest III Gold Edition, and our Space Quest II Gold Edition. And to announce that we won't be starting any new remakes. I'd like to outline to you why, but first I want to cover a bit of our back story, to put things into perspective.

One door closes...

Steve (Blackthorne) and I started IA WAY back in 2003 with the plan to make a fan game based on Sierra's awesome Quest for Glory series. Basically we wanted to make it so you could walk through Spielburg and kill people, rob people and generally be a bad guy. As with a lot of ideas when you're new into something, it was way beyond our reach. But together we built a team of talented people (some of whom are still with us, some who have gone onto other things, and some who have just disappeared) and we made two fantastic games. This was a completely different world to the one we're now in. Back then Sierra and all of our beloved franchises were dead. Completely and totally dead. VU owned the rights to all things Sierra and were not in the slightest bit interested in pursuing these titles, making new games, or even selling the games! But from the death of the adventure game came a massive fan community.

A lot of fan groups were started based on these games, in particular Kings Quest and Space Quest, and Tierra (later AGDI) released two excellent fan remakes of KQ1 and KQ2. Other groups such as Hero6, Struggle for Life and Honor, Quest for More Glory, Space Quest 7, and a multitude of others, were keeping the faith. Infamous Adventures was born out of this.

Our Kings Quest III, which we released in 2006, was a first for a couple of reasons. We were the first team outside of AGDI / Tierra to actually release a fully fledged Sierra remake. And we were the first to fully voice the narrator, something other teams now do as standard. We are, to this day, extremely proud of this game. It amazes me it actually works at all considering how little we knew. But it does and it stands as a testament to this thing called Infamous Adventures. Space Quest II we released in 2011 and it was a major step up from our previous effort. We had literally thousands of dialog lines we added to the original game, we fleshed out whole areas and we had some exceptional artwork, voice work, music and scripting in that game. It's a great remake, and maybe I'm biased, but I think it's the closest any fan remake has come to capturing the original Sierra feel.

What people don't know is that in that time we started and stopped production of a number of other remakes, which got to various stages in production (most of them not far at all.) Conquests of Camelot, Police Quest II, The Colonels Bequest, Space Quest III and Kings Quest IV.

The world, though, has changed so much now that we don't really need to keep these franchises alive anymore. All the old series are available once again for sale through various websites such as Good Old Games, and other professional outfits are making games again. And with the advent of technology such as tablets, and online console stores, these franchises are worth something again. Heck, even the Atari 2600 games are getting released on the iPad. The King's Quest rights have been licensed out for new games, the Leisure Suit Larry games are coming back (with Al Lowe and Josh Mandel at the creative center of them.) Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe are back together and making games. Jane Jensen is building a new company. The future is bright for our genre. This might be conceited, but I strongly believe one of the main driving forces behind these old franchises, and adventure games in general, coming back has been teams like IA, AGDI, Phoenix Online, and others. We kept the spirit alive. And that's a great thing.

The other harsher truth is that we have flown under the radar for a long time, in a legal gray area with these fan remakes. Even though they are entirely not-for-profit, and are 100% original works (we didn't use anything from the original games in our remakes) the games themselves are copyrighted. We have only ever treated these games with respect and didn't do anything to degrade the value of the titles. But bottom line, if the owners of the copyrights wanted to, they are within their rights to issue cease and desist notices. With these franchises actually profitable (and the titles for sale again) it's not worth our effort to continue to make these without monetary return. Space Quest II took 5 years to make. It's a labor of love but it's a LONG time too!

...Another Door Opens

But all things must pass and we're moving on to other things. Steve and I have started Infamous Quests and we're dedicated to making all original titles. Nothing is more exciting than making new games with all our own ideas in them. We got the bug in the redesign of the asteroid in Space Quest II and now we're going with it full steam ahead.

So while it's sad to stop working on IA titles, the truth is that I'm very excited to be heading up Infamous Quests with my good friend and doing what we love. But also adding a whole new level to it, with our own ideas and our own creations.

The number one thing we did at Infamous Adventures was build a community. We brought together like-minded people, people who loved the old school adventure games, people who shared a similar depraved sense of humour. People who just enjoyed hanging out. Nothing makes me prouder than the fans we have and how loyal you are. And the many people who have helped us to recreate these dreams.

So you may have noticed things getting a lot quieter here at IA. But we're still around, we're just doing our own thing now. So come and sign up over at Infamous Quests (infamous-quests.com) and enjoy the same awesomeness you always have.

Shawn (Klytos)

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Quest for Infamy - Funded at $63,281
July 07, 2012, 04:38:55 AM by Broomie


At precisely 5:46PM EST it all came to a close. The 30 days had come to an end and Quest for Infamy was succesfully funded at an amazing $63,281. That's 253% of our funded target of $25,000 and we cannot thank you enough. We're so thrilled to be making this game and your commitment, love and support has made this an ultimate reality. Quest for Infamy was the project that bought myself, Steve and Shawn together almost 10 years ago and it's fitting it's now the project that steps us forward into the commercial world. So once again, we're so stoked to be making this game and we couldn't have done it with you all.

Steve is feeling a bit under the weather at the moment but apart from the unfortate time timing he is absolutely humbled at your support as we all are so once again thank you all.

We'll keep you updated with the development of Quest for Infamy as we did with the Kickstarter campaign. An official statement will be released later on today but we just wanted to let you know the team is looking forward to this exciting chapter in our lives and we want to make Quest for Infamy as awesome as a game as we possibly can.

Stay tuned.

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