MBN year's review 2008

[Kobold]

Fréd Back in the Game Business
Soul Bubbles released


Soul Bubbles is the latest game where LBA's creator, Fréd Raynal, helped with the production. He offered "spiritual and game design guidance" to the game's creators. The game was released on June 13th this year for the Nintendo DS. It's a "sidescroller where you blow bubbles". It was critically acclaimed by IGN, who gave it a 8.4 and said:

Originally Posted by IGN UK

More than anything, Soul Bubbles is just great fun to play with – blowing a bubble around has never been more fun. There is surprising depth to its puzzles, and it’s great to see the DS host such a great and intuitive idea again after months of copycat shelf-filler. More of this please, everyone – it’s been a while since we had something this addictive to play on the plane.

It's also on Fréd's site.
Wii owners in Europe can still download a free demo of the game to their Nintendo DS in the Nintendo Channel. The full game is available for half the original price (so 20€) at amazon.

But there's more. Fréd is already working again, this time at Ubisoft, on a "secret project". Stay tuned in 2009.

Interviews
There have been a couple of interviews with LBA's creators over the past twelve months. LBA 3 is still not in developement, but apparently the rights to the project are "no longer a problem".

• Interview with Didier Chanfray (lead graphical designer of LBA) on the state of Little Worlds Studio
• Interview with Philippe Vachey (composer of LBA music) in French only, also talks about LBA music itself

Fan Games
"Twinsen" finally released

Two years after the initial demo was released, the production of the Twinsen platformer fan-game by .TakaM has stopped. The full version is available for download. Though the game itself remains unfinished, it is still a great game to play for lovers of platformer games. It is the first LBA fan game where a full version was released.

LBA Remake
While the project was halted this year, the LBA Remake by Jasiek made it to the Dutch press! You can read the article and the translation here.

Other Projects:

• LBA2 3D Chat (in progress)
• Little Warcraft Adventure (videos available)
• Cuff & Link (not LBA-related; demo available; discontinued)

LBA Modifications
Inventor's Mods
While the big projects who are creating an entire storyline, such as the LBA Prequel, LBA: The Great Rebellion and LID have not been finished this year, the first LBA modifications which each only contain one scene have been created by Inventor. They are the first mods of the game being finished. There are three projects you can play when you have the original Little Big Adventure installed on your computer (LBA doesn't work for you? Check our troubleshooting guide!). The modification was made possible by the new LBArchitect and LBA Story Coder fusion into a single program to enable creating scenes, and all the other LBA modification tools by our members.

Vindish's Mod
After Inventor's success, member Vindish released his own little modification of LBA 1. It can be downloaded in this thread.

Other LBA Mod news

• LBA Prequel will now run on its own engine, which is currently in progress.
• LBA Prequel posts updates in the developer blog, including screenshots and commentaries.
• LBA: The Great Rebellion releases public material for critisicm of the MBN members
• LID releases public material

Community

• The MBN turns 8.
• More awesome fan art is posted in the Fan Art forum.
• Dino-Fly is voted the most annoying MBN member and is proud of it. Double-J is praised as the almighty God of Annoying.
• The MBN looks for suggestions how LBA could be called if it wasn't called LBA.
• LBA 1/2 live speedrunning races are currently being organized. If you can play in early January, check the thread. The current fastest adventurer on Twinsun for LBA 2 is Dino-Fly with a lightning-fast 1 hour and 56 minutes.
• Vote for LBA & LBA 2 to be released on Good Old Games!

Conclusion
I could go on with the usual blah blah about "the LBA spirit being kept alive" and so on. But the truth is, there's a lot of new spirit surrounding our 11 and 14 year old games. A new game by Fréd released and LBA fan games and modifications finally getting released, 2008 was a very active year for our forums. LBA 3 will be coming, guys! Happy new year.

[Kitarii]

Great review again this year Kobold!

[Jareth]

Awesome job, man!

Ah, that was a good year

[Double-J]

Once again, I'm mentioned! Yays!

[Streg]

good review kobs!

[LuKeXhunter]

Pretty good, but you forgot of mine Project, LBW, have some screenshots on the forum, here's the link http://forum.magicball.net/showthread.php?t=14190, C ya later guys!

PS: Due to some server problems the date of release of the game was moved until I fix it, sorry!

[LBAWinOwns]

Originally Posted by LuKeXhunter

Pretty good, but you forgot of mine Project, LBW, have some screenshots on the forum, here's the link http://forum.magicball.net/showthread.php?t=14190, C ya later guys!

PS: Due to some server problems the date of release of the game was moved until I fix it, sorry!

You haven't really released anything ...

... we might as well have LBAMadness's contributions added

[Lightwing]

Fantastic review!

[Bot13]

Originally Posted by LBAWinOwns

You haven't really released anything ...

... we might as well have LBAMadness's contributions added

That's not funny, he helped us find many software.
IMO he deserves credits, but that's just me.

Great year's review

[Aruchi89]

you ve just made my day!!! thanxs mbn rocks! happy new year for everybody!!!!!

[fanlba]

Really great ! Good job Kobold

[Polaris]

Very nice year review . I wish I'd have soul bubbles

[Zerath^]

Good job mate!

[Necdilzor]

If 2008 was so great, what can we expect for 2009 o_0 ?

[Jareth]

We can expect awesomeness or nothing. It's a lottery ^^. But let's wish the awesomeness

[Kobold]

Thank you guys!

I'm sorry that I couldn't mention all fan projects, I only put those that I noticed myself. The further a project is advanced, the more attention it should get in the year's review. I didn't find it good to mention the start of production because LBA fan games were cancelled so often.

[Darkflame]

Wonderfull summery, good job!


[random observation]
Incidently, looking in the Soul Bubbles manual, Yael Barroz is on the special thanks.
[/random observation]

[Kobold]

I still didn't complete Soul Bubbles. Agartha is beastly.

[ChaosFish]

I still wonder if Yael Barroz is Israeli...

[Homeless]

I like it.

[ChaosFish]

*looks at Homeless's avatar*
Does that spaceship... hump the moon?

[Darkflame]

wtf. *darkflame is deeply disturbed*

Thats just wrong...very wrong.

[Infernox]

Originally Posted by Kobold

Fréd Back in the Game Business
Soul Bubbles released

I see Fred continued with the Quetch look. Although, the hair is at the front of the head and not the back! I might go buy this game sometime this week!

[Kobold]

Well, Fred only was an advisor for the game's creators, I don't think he had much influence on the graphical design. But I also noticed the similar look when comparing the Soul Bubbles guy to Twinsen from .TakaM.

[Darkflame]

Just co-incidence.
I always thought a few character designs from Avatar: The Last Airbender looked a bit quetch-ish too.