The Riddle of the Sphinx Announcement - Kickstarter is Live!

More news coming soon! The Riddle of the Sphinx

Check out the Kickstarter here.



Woohoo! Stay tuned for more!

Ana

Yes, Good game!

Thanks for the news, Ana.

Fantastic, Awesome, Exciting, one of my all time favorites and in 3D HD...priceless. IMO...skip the Mobile and just concentrate on the PC HD Remake.

Sweet...thanks for the info. One of my favorites too.

Wow !! Never thought this would actually happen, BrownEyedTigre !!
Thanks for the news

I hope they retain the integrity of the puzzles from the original game in the point-and-click version.

I'm done with mobile, but a new point-and-click PC version with more detailed graphics would be interesting.

Loved that game. Would love to play it updated.

Me too. Played it way-back-when, and enjoyed it. (Still have it, but as you have all experienced, it won't run on a new computer.

I just signed up on their website to receive updates to my e-mail, fellow Boomers
Sandy

I've got the original game on a disk in the other room. Unopened.

I still have the original version on disk too. I would love to be able to play on my iMac too! Thanks Ana and the ROTS Team!

Not everyone has experienced this. I know people who play the game on Windows 7 - but this is a topic for a different forum.

I had it running on Win 10 , when I had Win 10

Agreed - ditch the mobile!

The Kickstarter is now live!

Check it out here.

Ana

Exciting for sure and looks marvelous. I know their projected release is in a year I wonder what their plans are for delivery. Are they publishing and selling themselves, Steam maybe?

Here is the message from the developer:



Ana

Pledged!
This is timely ...

Me too !!!!

I pledged too.

DRM ? Easy : none . Deliver method . GOG or publisher direct .

Thank you Sheriff and thank you to the Toblers

just pledged too

I didn't know (or just forgot) that this is the second time they have tried a remake through Kickstarter. The first time, the creator canceled the project even after the pledges reached over $10,000 of a $50,000 goal back in 2014. Don't know if they were down to the wire before cancelling when it was evident they wouldn't make the goal. This time around the goal was very modest (even though I think $50,000 was modest)and has already been reached, I would love to hear the Toblers thoughts on that effort. Maybe it was just a case of not knowing how much there was to running a Kickstarter campaign then. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jef...profile_created

Greyfuss, we had the original announced here. I'm just glad that they kept working on it and happy to help them succeed this time!

Ana

Thanks Sheriff

Of course I hope they succeed this time and I also wish them success for additional games they are planning in the franchise after this remake for merely selfish reasons.

Indeed.
Here are some reasons NOT to make a mobile version:

Reason I.
Nearly all mobile ports of older 1st person games are stripped-down, abridged versions with puzzles removed, hotspots removed, interactivity removed, even entire locations removed from the game. Mobile ports by Microids/Anuman of 1st person games from Cryo, Microids Canada, Kheops, etc. are simply not worth playing. Then Microids/Anuman took these gutted mobile ports and ported them back to PC. Sure they work on Windows 10 now, but they still aren't worth playing compared to the original low resolution versions of the games for Windows 95/98/XP which were complete games.

For example, check the user reviews of Atlantis 2 at Steam, where Steam is selling the gutted mobile-port-ported-back-to-PC version.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/362920/Atlantis_2_Beyond_Atlantis/
(GOG still sells the original complete game, which may take a few tweaks to compatibility mode to work properly -- Play as administrator, Disable visual themes, Disable desktop composition, Disable display scaling on high DPI settings, but at least on my Windows 7 and 8.1 computers it wasn't necessary to choose XP compatibility).

The only exception to the bad-1st-person-mobile-port rule that I've played is Myst, where Cyan made sure the mobile port of Myst was faithful to the original game and didn't leave things out. Perhaps Riven for mobile is the same as Myst but I haven't tested it.

Almost always,
"Optimized for mobile" = garbage stripped-down version

So mobile ports of 1st person games have a bad reputation. Even if you intend to make the updated Riddle of the Sphinx a complete version, like Myst is, you're still working against the fact that most ports of older 1st person adventure games are stripped down and simply awful. You can thank Microids/Anuman for this perception because they made so many of these horrible ports.

Don't confuse Microids/Anuman with Microids Canada, a long-defunct developer (dismantled in 2005) that actually created some of the original 1st person games for Windows 95/98 like Amerzone and Road to India, as well as 3rd person games like Syberia and Still Life. The current Microids/Anuman simply bought the IP and the original developers are long gone.

I bought nearly all of these stinkpot mobile ports (for iPad) of 1st person games as soon as they were available, without realizing they were stripped-down abominations. For example, Amerzone, Atlantis 2, Atlantis 3, Cleopatra, Secrets of Da Vinci, Egypt 2, Egypt 3, Return to Mysterious Island, Echo: Mystery of the Lost Cavern, Nostradamus, Road to India, etc. and without exception they were stripped-down garbage. I doubt I'm the only fan of these games that now knows to avoid these mobile ports of old 1st person adventure games.

Reason II.
There's also the issue of how people play games on mobile. They don't usually sit down and play for hours the way they might with a PC or TV-attached console. They do it in fits and starts, whenever they have a bit of spare time throughout the day. That's not the best way to play a puzzle-heavy adventure game which probably requires a bit of note-taking.

Reason III.
Maybe more a reason to update the pictures on the Kickstart page (if possible)...
The ***picture of the game on an iPhone*** on the Kickstarter page is so dark and small as to be practically impossible to make out. What am I looking at there? A couple of lights? Some blocks on the sides of a tunnel that I can barely see? If that's how the game looks, you may want to implement an in-game gamma or brightness control.

The picture at the top of the page is clearer, but is that a real picture of the scene on an iPhone or is it a mock-up like the "representative" pictures they show of TV's and monitors they want to sell, where they inserted the scene onto a picture of a TV or monitor that is turned off. Unlike the picture further down the page, you can't tell if that's how the game actually displays on an iPhone.

+_+_+_+_+_+

Anyway, I think the inclusion of a mobile port may actually hurt the Kickstarter for the game. This is from someone who used to buy adventure and hidden object games on iTunes, but learned from experience and switched to buying only solitaire/mahjongg/bejewelled types of games that were easy to see and could be picked up and continued at any time. I'm not even talking about the gutted versions here. Even the 3rd person and made-for-mobile 1st person games that aren't stripped down are harder to use on mobile because you forget where you are in the game with short play sessions.

Also if you intend to do a faithful port of the original game without removing the puzzles, say so in the Kickstarter. Words like "Enhanced" don't mean much beyond graphics and lighting.
What about the "game" part of the original game?
The puzzles?
The interactive parts?
That's the part I care about the most.
I don't want an "Anumanized" version.

Well said Jenny

This it what I have to question: I have never heard of a PC Adventure Game called a Windows Desktop App before

Maybe it works like the "96 Mill" game ??

FYI:

Very good news, Ana.

Upped my pledge to help get a DRM Free version developed. Yeah !!