MBN year's review 2009

[Kobold]

LBA Team Status
Little Words Studio makes progress

As our member Axx reported in April, Little Worlds Studio, the development team consisting of most of the original LBA team members, are shaping up to get back into the mainstream of the gaming industry. The game we got notified of this year (despite being released back in December '08) is Colour Cross for the PC, Nintendo DS and iPhone. A free demo of the PC version is available here, and the DS version is also available very cheaply on online shops like Amazon. It's a nice little picross-variant puzzle game.

On this occassion, I'd also like to remind everybody that Soul Bubbles on the DS, which LBA's creator Fréd Raynal contributed to, is still an amazing game that everybody who owns a NIntendo DS should definitely check out.

Fred's teaser site
Aside from giving us a handful overview of his past games on his website, Frédérick Raynal also posted a little teaser image of a slate on his website. While he confirmed that it is not LBA 3, we're still curious to see what he has in store for us. He his working on his new game at Ubisoft, and it is coming out in 2010. On a related note, he also assured us that LBA 3 is still a project he takes to his heart and our continued enthusiasm about it is precious to him.

Fan Project Releases
The Relentless Movie Project
After having been planned for ages, an early preview version of the Relentless Movie project had its release this year. The movie stars our popular forum members darkflame and atresica and is available online on Dailymotion. If you haven't seen it already, make sure you don't miss it.


Lupin Island Destiny demo
The first mod project demo to see the light of day, the Lupin Island Destiny demo, is a fully playable demo version of the planned full LBA modification. The demo features entirely new areas to explore and has new items to collect. You need the original LBA 1 or Relentless game to play it. See it in action here.


LBANet
LBANet is a fully working LBA Online game in which you can chat with other people while exploring the entire world of LBA 1 together. You also explore the game while riding the horse of flying on the Dino-Fly! The game has seen massive progress since June this year and is currently up to version 0.755. Get the current version here.


Little Script Adventure
Little Script Adventure combines Jasiek's LBA1 Remake world designs and Horadrim's Twinsen model with david38's coding efforts to create a working, customizable LBA fan project engine that everybody can contribute to. You can already play demos, in which you can explore the pharmacy area of the original game. Download it or play the web version with the unity web player.

Tools
david38's perspective map viewer made it possible to display LBA 1 maps in semi-3D. Other than being nice to look it, the technology of the perspective view of the scenes has been fully implemented into LBANet, where you can see it in action.

On the modding side of the community, Zink's LBArchitect has still been steady progress throughout the year, making it more and more possible to create our very own full modification of the original LBA 1. LBArchitect no longer just allows you completely create new scenes and areas to visit, but also allows the programming of moving and talking actors. Get it here.

LBA Community
The LBA community has had its ups and downs, but 2009 still shined with a lot of great Fan Creations shown off in our Fan Creations forums. Be sure not to miss some of the great work done there. If you are trying to get LBA 1 or LBA 2 running on your computer, or need help in completing the game, we're also there to help you in the First Aid forum (read our Troubleshooting Guide there first).

Community News:

• The LBA games get a mention on Zero Punctuation.
• The LBA Prequel team admits that there has been no major progress for quite a while, but shows off some 3D scenes they had put together.
• The Encyclopedia Twinsunica, the LBA wiki, is getting a full rewrite at the moment. You can help.
• Vote for LBA to be sold on Good Old Games!
• The MBN community has had some curious predictions for 2010 since the forum was created back in 2000.
• We plan to have an MBN Mega Meet in 2010.

Conclusion
In case you didn't know it, we've had more news worth talking about this year than ever before. Little Big Adventure is now a full 15 years old but that's not holding us back in the least. While the previous years were full of plans, of project concepts that might be released but in the end got stalled, 2009 was the year of many great, fully-functional demo and game releases that continue to get better by the day. Both LBANet and Little Script Adventure have had updates within the last week. We're as active as we could possibly be, and the LBA team is as well. With that being said, 2010 couldn't come any sooner, so happy new year to all you LBA fans out there!

[morshem]

You forgot the very important event of me coming back after almost two years of absence. And of ChaosFish becoming the new top poster. Although I guess these two events are pretty much related

[Kobold]

Two years ago I maybe would have had time for that, but this year had too many LBA-related events to make that count. For better or worse.

[Polaris]

So, what about Axx's end now ?

[Kitarii]

Top review as always!