just-add-water posts

A real time strategy spin-off of the Oddworld game franchise that was started and then abandoned is getting a revival. Eurogamer reports that developer Just Add Water is working with Oddworld Inhabitants on the game, titled Oddworld: Hand of Odd.

The game was first announced by Oddworld Inhabitants way back in 1998 but the game was canceled after a year of development. Just Add Water plans to use the original design document for Oddworld: Hand of Odd but will make its version in a more casual design direction. The game is still a ways off and won't be released until sometime in 2012.

Just Add Water, the UK-based development team in charge of adapting Oddworld Stranger's Wrath to the PC platform late in 2010, is getting ready to do some more work in the long time action-adventure game franchise. In a post on Just Add Water's official web site it announces that it is currently hiring for various positions in the company.

The site states that the people who will be hired will be "working on various Oddworld Inhabitants based projects with 4 to be released THIS year, and more coming over the next few years." It's likely that at least one, if not more of the new games will be for the PC platform.

[Via VG247.com]

Last December saw the release of the Oddboxx as all four games in the Oddworld action series, including the last two that were never released for the PC, finally were made available via download on Steam. Now the EGM Facebook page has posted up an except from an upcoming interview in its print magazine that reveals a full fledged graphical remake of the first Oddworld game, Abe's Oddysee, is in the works.

Details are scant at this phase but Oddworld Inhabitants' founder Lorne Lanning stated, "It's basically Abe's Oddysee being redone in a 3D physics engine as a 2D side-scrolling platformer." Developer Just Add Water, who converted Oddworld Stranger's Wrath to the PC, is handling the project which is being called Abe HD. There's no word yet on when it will be released nor on what platforms, although since Lanning has said in the past he's a big fan of Steam we would assume it will show up for the PC at some point.

[Via VG247.com]

This week, PC gamers finally got a chance to play the final two games in Lorne Lanning and Oddworld Inhabitants' Oddworld action-adventure game series. Both the PC ports of Munch's Oddysee and Stranger's Wrath (first released on the original Xbox) joined the previously released Abe's Oddysee and Abe's Exoddus in a new collection called, appropriately enough, The Oddboxx.

While the PC ports of the two new games have had some tech issues after their release on Steam last Monday (the development teams are working to fix them ASAP) the fact that these two games have been brought to the PC after all this time is an achievement in itself. Big Download got Stewart Gilray of Just Add Water (who handled the Stranger's Wrath port) to give us some more info on how The Oddboxx got made.

Rumors of a revival of the Oddworld game franchise have been going on for years but this week it looks like those rumors have been confirmed. Relatively unknown game developer Just Add Water announced on its web site that it is working with the game's original developer Oddworld Inhabitants to create "multiple projects, across multiple platforms' featuring the Oddworld characters. Specific details have yet to be revealed but we are promised that more info will be forthcoming "over the coming weeks and months."

Meanwhile PC gamers are still awaiting the promised release of the Oddbox which would re-release all four previously released Oddworld games for the PC (including the last two which have never been released for the PC before).