three-cards-to-midnight posts

This is the playable demo for Three Cards to Midnight, an adventure game developed by Big Finish Games, which includes Chris Jones, lead designer on the classic Tex Murphy adventure games. The story follows a woman named Jess Silloway, who has subconscious memories awakened by a stranger with tarot cards, beginning an adventure into her past. The trailer can be seen after the jump.

Download Three Cards to Midnight Demo (81 MB)
Download HD Three Cards to Midnight Trailer (21 MB)
Check out all Three Cards to Midnight downloads

If you have been thinking today would be the day for the release of the long awaited adventure game Three Cards to Midnight, well, you would be right . . . if developer Big Finish Games would have kept to its previous plans. As it now stands, there will in fact be a slight delay in getting this downloadable PC game to folks.

It's not much of a delay, though. The Big Finish Games web site states that the title will now be released on Thursday, May 7 no later than 7 pm ET and can be downloaded directly from the Big Finish Games web site The final price has also been set at $20. Let's hope the long wait for the return of the folks behind the Tex Murphy adventure titles is worth it.

While there's not much going on in retail stores for new PC games this week (the Crysis: Maximum Edition collection is the big release there) there are a few downloadable only games that are of note for the first full week of May.

Fallout 3: Broken Steel: The third and final (so far) downloadable mini-expansion for Bethesda Softworks' best selling RPG is due out on May 5. This episode is different in that it extends the game's original ending and raise the game's level cap from 20 to 30. Look for new quests, weapons and monsters in this expansion which you can download via the Games For Windows Live client for 800 Microsoft points (about $10).

Some of you may remember 3 Cards to Midnight, an upcoming downloadable adventure game from Big Finish Games, made up primarily of Chris Jones and Aaron Connors, the main creators behind the classic Tex Murphy adventure games for the late and lamented Access Software. The game was originally due for release last fall but got pushed back due to a desire to revamp the game's original design.

Now Big Finish Games has announced that 3 Cards to Midnight is finally done and will be released via digital download on May 5. The game itself will have between seven and eight hours of gameplay and will feature the story of a woman, a deck of tarot cards and a loss of memory. Pricing for the game has yet to be announced. Big Finish Games is apparently aiming to release a second project, 3 Cards to Dead Time, by the end of this year.

Last September we were excited to learn about Three Cards to Midnight, an upcoming adventure game from Chris Jones and Aaron Connors, the main creators behind the classic Tex Murphy adventure game titles. The game, from their development company Big Finish Games, was supposed to have been released by the end of 2008 with a demo out beforehand.

Well that obviously didn't happen as planned and the game's official web site doesn't offer a new update to the game's progress. However a new message from Conners on the Unofficial Tex Murphy Web Site's message board finally gives an update on the game's progress. Conners states that in demoing the game to publishers and online sites, " ...there were some concerns about the scale and difficulty of the gameplay."

So Connors and Jones decided to go back and make some changes and that meant taking more time to finish the title. Conners states, "So...trying to be as realistic as possible, I think we'll have a finished game sometime in February."The update didn't say anything about the demo's release date which was supposed to have been sent out before the full game is released.

At the height of the full motion video adventure game era of the 1990s was Access Software who released a number of games in the Tex Murphy sci-fi mystery series including Under A Killing Moon, The Pandora Directive and Tex Murphy: Overseer. However Microsoft then bought out Access Software which effectively killed off the company's adventure game plans. Microsoft then sold off the company to Take Two Interactive in 2004 who renamed it Indie Built but then shut it down just two years later.

Now the main creative forces behind the Tex Murphy games, Chris Jones and Aaron Connors, have gotten back together to form Big Finish Games, a new development studio that is releasing (natch) a new adventure game called Three Cards to Midnight. The company has released a teaser trailer to the game and they have plans to release a demo in early October with the game itself set for release in November.

While there won't be any full motion video like in the Tex Murphy games, Three Cards to Midnight will have full voice acting and a storyline that seems to involve a woman trying to find out why she can't remember what has happened to her in her recent past. A tarot card is the apparent key to unlocking her memory. It sounds like the game is supposed to be relatively short; the web site says it will have over 6 hours of gameplay but with multiple endings. The game will be a digital download release but there's no word yet on a specifc price.

Download the HD Three Cards to Midnight Teaser Trailer (11 MB)