Advance

2006–2007
Adventure game engine

Late 90s was arguably the golden age of point-and-click adventure games: Lost Eden, The Curse of Monkey Island, Broken Sword II, Riven, The Last Express, Grim Fandango, Sanitarium… These games had a profound affect on my childhood and I aspired to make my own one day.

My drawing of Manny Calavera from Grim Fandango, circa 1999

Fast forward to 2006: Inspired by SCUMM and AGS, I built an adventure game engine using Visual Basic 6 and DirectX 8.

The only “game” I made with Advance took place in an open-air sand museum I visited the previous summer. It was basically a demo to showcase various features such as the scripting language, the inventory system and different interactions.

So, I haven’t made my own adventure game yet… But maybe, the real adventure was the game engines I made along the way.