time-gentlemen-please posts

The indie game developers at Zombie Cow are responsible for some impressive PC game releases such as Time Gentlemen Please and more recently the free (and somewhat risque) game Privates. However way back in September 2009 the team announced plans for its follow up to Time Gentlemen Please, Revenge of the Balloon-Headed Mexican.

Unfortunately it looks like the continuing adventues of Dan and Ben will have to wait. This week Zombie Cow announced that Revenge of the Balloon-Headed Mexican has been put on the shelf. While there were several reasons for the decision the main one seems to be that the team felt that they had made the game before with Time Gentlemen Please, saying " ... it felt like we were going over old, worn ground. Again and again." At the moment even Zombie Cow has no idea what its next game will be like. Rock Paper Shogun has some more info on what Revenge of the Balloon-Headed Mexican would have been like.

This year has been a tremendous year for the growth of the indie scene. Many freeware and commercial indie games have seen the light of day, and thanks to the efforts of publishers such as Meridian4 and platforms such as Impulse or Steam, these indie games are getting more and more exposure to a broad audience. We think it's only appropriate that, after last year, we continue the tradition of naming our favorite indie games of the past year. We had to cut the list down to ten, and while this doesn't necessarily represent all of our favorites (that's practically every indie game!), it serves as a good cross-section. If you're looking for some excellent indie games to get yourself started on the treasure trove that was 2009, look no further than these games right here.

From time to time, game journalists get accused of not understanding how games are made by developers. Usually this happened when a critic slams a game title and then the developer defends it. But could journalists get a better critical viewpoint of games if they tried to make one themselves?

That's the opinion of Dan Marshall of indie game developer Zombie Cow. In a new chat at Gamasutra, Marshall states, "I think all games journos should be forced to make a game somehow, see how they get on. It gives you a more rounded perspective." While we think journalists shouldn't be "forced" to do anything they don't want to do (First Amendment and all that) there are certainly lots of relatively easy ways to make a simple game out there for anyone to make. And ultimately that's the best thing about making PC games; total freedom to make any game you want without having to worry about console companies' approval or license fees or even getting approval from an app store. And if game developers have that freedom then game critics and journalists should have the same freedom to write about games.

See that image above? That's the actual title for Zombie Cow Studios' next game. Yep, the folks behind the acclaimed indie games Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please! have announced their next project and this time it's an episodic (sort of) sequel to Time Gentlemen, Please!.

The title Revenge of the Balloon-Headed Mexican is not supposed to be funny, per se. As the folks behind the game state in their introduction to the game, " . . . our antagonist genuinely does have a balloon for a head." So there's that. Each game's episode will be about the length of a TV show (half-hour sitcom or hour-long drama wasn't specified) and Dan and Ben can now go their separate ways in the game. According to Zombie Cow, "So we've got these two separate branches going on within the first episode - which makes it feel very different to the previous games." No release date was announced.

Steam offers many of their games in their library in bundle deals and today they are offering yet another that gives gamers a way to buy two acclaimed indie games from Zombie Cow Studios for one very, very small price.

The games, Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please, are two point-and-click adventure game titles that just happen to be extremely funny. Humor is sorely lacking in most games so it's very welcome here. Along with Nazi dinosaur clones of course. The new Steam bundle gets you both games for just $4.99. So what are you waiting on? Those Nazi dinosaur clones don't play themselves. In case you want a second opinion on Time Gentlemen, Please!, here is our review as well.

The art of the adventure game is a fine one. It's one that companies like Infocom, Cyan Worlds, and LucasArts honed to a fine point before they fell into ruin. It seems that, with the exception of Telltale, mainstream adventure games are gone for good. However, to fill the gap, a new generation of game makers have taken up the mantle of adventure gaming to deliver more clever stories than ever before. Time Gentlemen, Please! is one of these retro-stylized adventure games, and combined with its predecessor Ben There, Dan That!, it shows that Zombie Cow knows how to make funny, endearing games.