One of the great last high budget hopes for the point & click adventure game genre was quietly cancelled this year. Back in 2014, all the manpower Daedalic had was thrown at Pillars of the Earth – for the interactive concept of which I admit to harbour a lot of disdain – yet after that game was finally finished, they decided to leave The Devil's Men's extremely promising beginnings unfinished, citing a lack of interest on the side of the customers.

Seems to me that their new overlords, the publisher Bastei, set highly unreasonable revenue goals for Daedalic and, given the major disappointment that Pillars of the Earth was for them, decided that if they couldn't be Telltale even with a popular IP, they'd rather bag the entire genre (to which PotE didn't even bore a semblance anyway).

In their own press releases, Bastei now spells Daedalic "Deadalic". They're clearly going to pull an EA.

Time to tell them they're wrong. Time to tell them that The Devil's Men deserves to be finished.

https://www.change.org/p/daedalic-entertainment-revive-the-devil-s-men

Thanks for posting :D

Argh! I love Daedalic's point and clicks, signed.

voted! the point and click must survive no matter what

Ah, another fine misapplication of a useless petitioning site.

I could make a wildly successful petition to throw a football off the surface of Olympus Mons.

But that likely wouldn't happen since it'd be a massive waste of resources.

As they say, wish in one hand, and shove dirt in the other, and see which fills first.

What happened to Daedalic here? Did adventure games become commercially non viable or did they expect greater sales for bigger projects as they grew? I know there games got bundled for pennies very often.

I think they made the same mistake as Telltale: thinking the audience for interactive-movie 'games' was much larger than it actually is. I'd be sad to see the end of Daedalic as I used to enjoy many of their games, but I haven't actually bought anything they've made in years (tried the demo for Silence and it was pathetically, insultingly simplistic, like it was aimed at 8-year-olds). There seems to be virtually no one left making actual puzzle-adventure games any more, at least not on a regular basis.

I have to agree with this. Change.org is maybe useful for raising awareness or PR stunts, but what Daedalic needs is money.

Nevertheless, Wadjet Eye makes great adventure games on a somewhat regular basis. Yes, it may be only Dave Gilbert, using AGS but as a huge fan of classic adventure games I actually loved most of the Wadjet Eye games (if not all) because they gave me that feeling I got from games many years ago. And, please don't get me wrong, I prefer the retro-looking Blackwell series over comic-looking Deponia series story-and-puzzle-and-immersion-wise! Again, my personal opinion :)

Thank for your post

That's true, I forgot about Wadjet Eye. I've never played any of their games because, while they look interesting, I find the pixel graphics incredibly offputting (I don't mind them in older games, but ones made in 2018 are a different matter). I haven't tried the Deponia games either; might give them a go if I ever manage to clear my backlog a bit.

There is hope, but it lies in the indies. Backwoods Entertainment released their first game earlier this year (Unforeseen Incidents), which by the way has a different, non-pixelated art-style. Grundislav Games had Lamplight City in September (the developer had some games published by Wadjet Eye and it shows). Or Faravid Interactive, of The Samaritan Paradox fame, who is working on a new game (Whispers of a Machine). Most of these are one-man or very small teams, but new adventure games are coming constantly and I refuse to accept an early death announcement.

I believe there are other indie developers who publish through Wadjet Eye that Dave hasn't personally developed.

This is also interesting as I liked both games:

"Kathy Rain developer Joel Staaf Hästö has announced his next game, Whispers of a Machine [official site]. It's a collaboration with The Samaritan Paradox developer Petter Ljungqvist. "

You, sir, are speaking very wisely.