Preview Three Cards to Midnight Developer: Aaron Conners/Chris Jones Publisher: TBD Genre: Adventure Release Date: November 2008 Platform: Preview by Randy Sluganski August 21, 2008

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View Teaser Trailer

It’s not too often that a teaser trailer for an adventure title receives a lot of internet buzz, but when the game in question is a new project by Tex Murphy creators Aaron Conners and Chris Jones, then the buzz is understandable.

Aaron Conners telephoned the international headquarters of Just Adventure (i.e., my tiny 2nd floor office in Pittsburgh) to give us an inside scoop on his new project.

Now, before you dig your dusty, brown fedora from out of storage, Three Cards to Midnight is an entirely new concept and intellectual property, in other words – no Tex Murphy!

Three Cards to Midnight (TCM) is a completely new series, with a fresh setting, scenario and characters. The reason behind this decision is that TCM is an entirely different type of game than the Tex series, which is locked into a specific style of gameplay, i.e. detective scenario, interrogating suspects, etc.

But, according to Aaron, the possibility does exist that, “If we can generate enough income off this game, we will definitely go back to doing a sequel to Tex Murphy.”

For now though, the focus is on Three Cards to Midnight. So much so that sequels are already being considered. The game will initially be available via online download only, but a boxed collector’s edition that will contain extra content is being considered and would be sold from specialty sites such as Just Adventure.

The game is self-funded and the small, passionate development team consists of some names that will be instantly familiar to Tex Murphy fans. Besides Aaron and Chris, there is Brian Johnson one of the lead artists on Pandora Directive who designed the tarot cards that are in the trailer; Matt Heider who scored the music for Pandora Directive and Overseer and Doug Vandergrift who created the animations for the game.

There is much that we have been asked to not yet reveal, but we can tell you the following: the game features a female character in her late 20s who awakens in a room and doesn’t remember how she got there. After relating the last thing she remembers, she is told that ‘a lot of things have happened since then.’

It is all very Twilight Zone-ish with a structure similar to The Usual Suspects movie in that the game’s goal is to unlock flashbacks so that by the conclusion all of the missing pieces will have been filled in.

The game unfolds over eight chapters with each chapter expected to take about an hour to complete. Each chapter features between 9-12 cut-scene flashbacks and also an intro and outro cinematic. There will also be multiple endings and levels of difficulty to add to the replayability.

The focus of Three Cards to Midnight will be on the cleverness of the story and the quality of the voice-acting. The gameplay exists to make the story work and not the other way around as is common in many games. This idea originated from the wonderful response to the Tex Murphy Radio Theatre where there was no gameplay or visuals, just the music and acting.

Just Adventure will have a pre-release review of Three Cards to Midnight sometime in October, but in the meantime, if you would like to know more about Three Cards to Midnight, the folks from Alternative Reel will be interviewing Chris Jones and Aaron Conners live on August 25th at 10pm Central.

The show will stream online at the Alternative Reel Blog Talk Radio show and listeners will be able to call in to the show at (914) 803-4079 and ask both Chris and Aaron questions about the game.