They're alive! (Or at least, undead.) Zombies are on the prowl today, as Telltale has released the debut episode of its new series, The Walking Dead, along with a brand new trailer.

Telling an all-new story in the world of Robert Kirkman's acclaimed comic book series of the same name, the new five-part series follows the survivors of a zombie apocalypse. In the first episode, A New Day, players must guide a former college professor named Lee Everett, who was recently convicted of murder, and a little girl named Clementine out of Atlanta to Lee's hometown of Macon.



The Walking Dead is not a traditional adventure, offering few puzzles while including occasional Quick Time Events to avoid danger. However, nor is the emphasis on "action", or on zombie-killing horror. Rather, the narrative focus is on the characters themselves, depicting "how people caught in an apocalypse deal with facing their own death every day, and the horrible choices they have to make to survive." And choices have a tangible effect here, impacting the way the story plays out.

The first episode is available now for PC and Mac directly from Telltale and other download portals only as part of a full-season purchase. The game has also been released as a standalone episode today on the PlayStation Network, and will be launched soon on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace.

For more details about The Walking Dead, check out our preview of the game.

If you've dared to wonder what the twisted minds behind Hector: Badge of Carnage have been up to lately, it turns out they've been coming up with lots of bold new ideas at Straandlooper Animation, at least three of which they plan to turn into adventure (or adventure-like) games.

Thunder in Donford is described by designer Dean Burke as "in some ways the spiritual successor to Hector, and in other ways entirely unique, throwing in alternative gameplay to shake things up." The game promises to be "packed with preposterous point-&-click style irreverence. A boisterous, non-stop cross-country ricochet across Britain, slapped together with the meticulous delusions of a paranoid conspiracy theorist lorry driver, Trev Duvay. Part time trucker, full time loner on an unforgettable crazy road trip that will probably scar your fragile mind for life."

Named after the famous paradoxical thought experiment, Schrödinger’s Cat stars a "dark, dimension-jumping feline superhero who’s both dead and alive, unwittingly charged with disentangling the secrets of time, space, the atomic, the astronomical and the infinite. Up against anything from an unruly band of disagreeable leptons to the sinister creeping tendrils of Dark Matter, Schrödinger’s Cat is sure to blow the lid off all the things you never knew about life, the universe and everything." Breaking from the more traditional genre conventions, this game will include some action-adventure elements in a mix of "part puzzler, part platformer, part punch-up".

Last but certainly not least, The Sirrush Conundrum will be an "epic puzzler" that takes players into the "hidden worlds of espionage and the dark underside of global business’ relations with governments. Accompany outspoken politico and ‘toff’ dissident James Newton Wellbeloved aka Newt as he runs from a kill order and at the same time has to unravel and foil a labyrinthine and outrageous international plot that leads him into the far reaches of alternative archaeology and – for a lifelong skeptic – a mind blowing immersion in so-called ‘psychic’ techniques."

All three games are still in the story and concept development phase, but Straandlooper has received a Slate Development Loan from Northern Ireland Screen to match their own funding, and they are currently in the process of seeking additional finances to begin full production on the new projects for PC, Mac, and iOS platforms. Even if they were to receive support for all three right away, it's doubtful that they would be developed simultaneously given the small size of the team, but if all goes well, we'll be seeing plenty from Straandlooper in the years to come.

If you've ever wanted to play in a treehouse, Botanicula will give you that chance today (albeit in a way you probably never imagined), as the highly-ancticipated new game from Amanita Design is now available for download.

The creator of Samorost and Machinarium has developed an all-new world to explore this time around, but it's no less surreal and imaginative than its predecessors. In Botanicula, five little tree critters set out on a quest to save the last surviving seed when their tree home is invaded by a gang of marauding parasites.



Botanicula is available for download now for PC, Mac, and Linux from the developer's website and GOG.com. (For a limited time, the game is being offered as part of a pay-what-you-want Humble Bundle, which includes free downloads of Samorost 2 and Machinarium, plus soundtracks for each. Those who pay more than the contribution average also receive the puzzler Windosill as well as the outstanding feature film Kooky.)

For complete details about the game, be sure to check out our Botanicula review.

Today's a very good day for quirky independent puzzlers, as MacGuffin's Curse has just been launched for PC, Mac, and iOS.

The new game from Brawsome, the Aussie developer behind Jolly Rover, isn't a traditional adventure game, instead presenting a series of environmental crate-pushing puzzles with a comical story focus in between. Lucas MacGuffin becomes cursed when he steals a magical artifact from the museum, and is now doomed to become a werewolf in moonlight. That may be the least of his worries, however, as the theft puts the city in security lockdown, and a nefarious nemesis has plans to acquire the amulet for himself. Only by strategically using both his human and lycanthropic forms can Lucas escape the traps and foil his foe.



MacGuffin's Curse is available for download now on PC and Mac exclusively on Steam, and at the App Store for both iPhone and iPad. For more information about the game, check out first-look preview and head over to the official website.

The fans have spoken (at least, those who put their money where their mouths were), and the first game from Jane Jensen's Pinkerton Road Studio will be Moebius.

As part of the ongoing "Community Supported Gaming" fundraising campaign at Kickstarter, Jensen gave early supporters the choice of three potential games as her next project. Options included Gray Matter 2 and a 19th century historical mystery/romance with the working title Anglophile Adventure. But Moebius came out the winner, as fans were lured by the promise of another "metaphysical sci-fi thriller in the vein of Dante’s Equation and Gabriel Knight."

Moebius stars antiquities dealer Malachi Rector, a young, handsome man with "a knack for sensing 'the soul' of an object", who travels the world hunting for unique artifacts. When his "upscale Manhattan store is destroyed in a fire, Rector is hired by millionaire Amble Dexter to investigate a series of events and document them in his meticulous way." The first such indicent is the death of a lovely, talented woman in Venice whose death proves to have "great hidden significance. It appears that Amble Dexter and his associates are playing with the fabric of life in a way Rector never imagined possible". Even he is destined to play his part, so it's now up to him to discover the full truth and "decide whether to play his pre-scripted role or try to change the outcome."

As you'd expect from a Jane Jensen adventure, Moebius will be a third-person, point-and-click title. The game will feature a 2D graphic novel visual style and include two difficulty modes, with optional features like hints, hotspot highlighter, and a simplified interface if so desired.

If Pinkerton Road's fundraising campaign is successful, the plan is for Moebius to be released sometime around March 2013. When asked if the game would still be her first project regardless of the Kickstarter results, Jensen confirmed that it would be, though the need to reach out to other investors would obviously set back the projected timeline.