The International House of Mojo

Update! As pointed out by Jason, edition was not part of Scott’s original post. So, never mind. Nothing to see here. Other than what probably will be some sweet sweet Scott C art.

The Original Fake News:

Scott C – you know and love him from Psychonauts, Psychonauts 2, and… for god’s sake, you know him – has pre-announced that a Psychonauts 20th anniversary release is on its way. Unless I’ve missed something, this is actually new news, as I’m not seeing anything on Double Fine’s website or Bluesky.

Anyway, from Scott’s post:

I’m having some issues embedding the post, so go directly to his Instagram to see a video of the man’s penciling.

Razputin.net editor and CEO is already musing about the possibilities of (and I quote) “a remaster of the entire game in the *Psychonauts 2* engine,” which would, indeed, be awesome. (And probably unlikely.)

The anniversary edition is coming April 19th. More to come, I’m sure.

The Domino bricks keep falling after the “missing” Sea Monkey dialogue saga, and here’s one many of us have missed.

Over on Mastodon, Lars Sundström mentions that The Secret of Monkey Island wasn’t just going to be translated into Swedish – the work was fully done. And should you think that’s just hearsay – cue Spiffy close-up – this time, there’s actual proof.

(Your browser should translate the article for you, should you not know the dulcet tones of the Swedish language.)

There’s a bunch of interesting information in there. Guybrush Threepwood, for example, would be known as Kajbjörn Trahnved (no DPaint guy.brush brush reference in sight). The Secret of Monkey Island? Hemligheten om Apornas ö. If you haven’t already – or just feel like reminiscing about what could’ve been – go check it out.

During one of his (seemingly frequent) ScummVM-related dives into The Secret of Monkey Island, Erik Torbjorn made an interesting discovery: A set of dialogue lines were, because of a bug, never triggered when Guybrush enters the Sea Monkey’s hull. After some ScummVM hacking, he was able to insert the lines again to see what it would look like.

We did a quick dig into the Special Edition and, as tends to be the case, the lines were recorded but, again, never used. This is all a roundabout way to say: We took the screenshots from Erik Torbjorn, ripped the audio, and created this video.

That we in 2025 are still finding new stuff in The Secret of Monkey Island truly is sad fascinating. Good job, Erik Torbjorn!

A Few Updates (Apr 8th): First, Torbjorn posted the video of his actual playthrough, so check it out for the real deal.

He has also gotten some feedback from people who claim to have seen the lines within the game, probably right after Spiffy’s closeup.

And, Ron weighed in, saying there never was a coding error, but rather just a few cut lines.

This is, indeed, getting sweaty.

As expected, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will hit the PS5 next month, specifically on April 17th.

The game garnered a bunch of positive Xbox and PC reviews, most notably from Mojo, so check out the latest Indy caper this April if you already haven’t.

Until he let the domain expire, Wilmunder.com was the longstanding web presence of SCUMM Lord Aric Wilmunder. Today, the URL will finally work for you again…as somebody’s World of Warcraft site. That’s like a guy coming along and exhuming your loved one’s grave just so they could fill the hole with pog slammers instead.

Around ten years ago, Aric had started using his site to make the most constructive contribution to humanity since penicillin: uploading his irreplaceable treasure trove of LucasArts design documents. Fortunately, the stuff he did get around to posting seems to be preserved by snapshots, but he had so much more to offer that was meant to be on the way, like the Forge pitch documents (Footnote: Yes, there were apparently two separate ones.), a proposed Star Trek SCUMM game, and even a Maniac Mansion II that was not Day of the Tentacle, which he held up at one point for Daniel Albu during their last interview:

Aric, come back to us. Continue your noble work. Light a candle, rather than curse our darkness. ‘Cause I really wanna know how pissed the Meteor is.

Last evening, Huz benched himself in front of his television to enjoy a University Challenge that included a LucasArts round (Footnote: I think that’s what it’s called; I don’t get this British craziness.). And, of course, he recorded it for us.

“Mid,” I believe, is what the kids would call those attempts.

As posted on the forums, it looks like Ackley and Ahern – aka The Curse of Monkey Island leads – are cooking up a new adventure game. To quote Ackley’s Xwitter post:

Sounds like quite the thrill ride for Curse fans, though it’s probably some ways down the road. Still, imagine a world where it publishes alongside A Vampyre Story 2.

Much has been written and said about the sadly abandoned Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix from the mid-90s. In all that recorded history, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of Dave Grossman’s involvement.

Well, Daniel Albu has invited Dave for another round of Tech Talk, and it turns out that Dave was indeed briefly affiliated with – if not outright helming - Iron Phoenix during a transitional moment when an attempt was made to utilize FMV for the character animation, a gambit which you may remember Mike Levine speaking to Daniel about in a past interview. Anyway, the Iron Phoenix talk begins at 33:36, but why not enjoy the whole thing? There’s even a bit of Cavedog talk toward the end.

Source: Tech Talk

The A Vampyre Story: A Bat’s Tale team has been using the game’s Steam page to keep the faithful abreast of their progress on the long (Footnote: Move aside, Psychonauts 2. A new record is being set.)-awaited sequel. In their latest post, they offer a glimpse into the process of bringing Bill’s 2D illustrations into a 3D world, opening the door to such fancy effects as parallax scrolling and dynamic lighting/shadows.

Be sure to read the full update, which includes more animated GIF action.

You have undoubtedly heard of the catastrophic California wildfires and the toll they have taken on LA in particular. A whole host of disaster relief funds have been set up, and, not surprisingly, Double Fine has joined in on supporting them with a Double Fine Action Auction:

Signed Stacking dolls? Brütal Legend LP test pressing? “Psychonauts 2 Launch Party Assorted Tchotchkes?” Those are just a few of the items you can bid on. So, run over to the auction, support a good cause, and get some cool stuff while you’re at it.

Ron Gilbert has officially unveiled his new game today, called Death by Scrolling, a title decidedly not commentary on internet surfing habits. You may recognise it if you've seen the screenshots and gameplay videos he's been posting on Mastodon and (previously) Twitter. More details on its journey to realisation are in his blog post.

No platforms or details exist yet, although a different blog post (on text sizes) suggests it's "basically an action game" where "players shouldn’t get too deep into stat management for a character that is going to last a few minutes."

Death by Scrolling emerged after his "RPGTBD," an open world RPG made by three people which didn't have the resources to be fully realised, was put on ice last year.

More details as they come.

As recently mentioned, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is basically all about Monkey Island, something StarWars.com has decided to double down on in a brand-spanking new story:

Well then! Go read the whole story.

Source: StarWars.com

Polish adventure game enthusiast “vicek83”, maintainer of The World of Adventure Games YouTube channel, has rung in the new year by inviting various adventure game developers to talk a little about the projects they’re working on in 2025.

Bill Tiller is on hand, representing A Vampyre Story: A Bat’s Tale, and conveniently his bit comes right at the start of the hour-long video:

Source: The World of Adventure Games

The Secret of Monkey Island turns thirty-five (35) this year, which means some… many, actually… of us should take a long look in the mirror and contemplate how we’ve spent the last three-and-a-half decades.

But screw that – instead, we decided to post a short article with some of the weird secrets and easter eggs found in the first Monkey Island game.

It has been interesting learning over the past few years that the small trivia we thought was common knowledge apparently isn’t. Which, again, is why we should take a minute or two and ask ourselves if we’ve lived our best lives.

That’s for another day, though! Now go read!

I will admit that here in the year of our lord, 2025, I would not have expected web games to still be a “thing.” Yet, a “thing” they are, and recently, two Monkey Island games have popped up – the first of them right here at Mojo. Introducing Monkey Island Frantic, a screenshot guessing game that’s, well, frantic.

It’s a simple concept: Small pieces of a screenshot fly across the screen, and you have to guess which location it is from. And, of course, you can share your score over on the forums.

Meanwhile, over at The Legend of Monkey Island, you can find a Heardle clone called Guess That Tune.

Once again, you can brag about your results on our forums because that’s just the kind of person you are.

And, of course, our old games are waiting for ya: Mojole and a port of sorts of the Return to Monkey Island trivia game.

There, your weekend is set.

While Hothead wasn’t technically one of The Mojo Companies, it was the home Ron Gilbert found for DeathSpank when he shopped it around in the 2008 arena, and he was with them for the duration of its development (not unlike how he squatted at the Double Fine offices for The Cave), so their reported demise merits a mention.

Hothead picked up DeathSpank, which was released in 2010, after dabbling in the episodic realm with the Penny Arcade games. DeathSpank itself consisted of two parts – at least, Ron’s proper opus did. For whatever reason, Hothead produced a third game without Ron’s involvement a year later, called The Baconing. The Vancouver-based studio later focused on free-to-play mobile games and sports titles. After a run of more than fifteen years, it now joins the growing list of game studios that have fallen in these rather brutal times for the games industry, but we'll always remember the good times.

Source: Game Developer