It’s been a while since we heard from Oded Sharon and his reggae point-and-click adventure Bolt Riley. I’ll be honest here and started to wonder what was up with the development, but the latest update for the short campaign for the first chapter broke the silence. It didn’t give us a whole lot of information, but at least we know it’s still being worked on. Which is all that I can really ask for. As long as I eventually see a game released I’ll be happy.
Adventure Mob has been hard at work trying to get Bolt Riley into a playable state for backers at tiers that get access to alpha and beta builds. According to the update this will have the game in a near final form, minus any voice work. And lots of bugs to squash. The plan is still to have the final game released on April 20, 2016. Which I’d really love to see because of the symbolism of the date. For those that don’t get the reference, look up “420” on Google.
I want to include as many polished things as I can in the game like improved visuals, closeups, give the game a proper cinematic feel (especially difficult since it’s a 2d cartoon game), create better cutscenes, lipsyncing and some more authentic dialog.
The other major news was in regards to the status of the Ouya funds and development. With the company having been bought out by Razer the Free the Games fund money is pretty much in limbo. And while it was important with other campaigns that were relying on this money it’s especially essential for the continuing development of Bolt Riley. The asking price was essentially half of what was needed to finish the first episode. I’m not sure what will happen if Oded and Adventure Mob can’t get the money, but I’m sure they’ll try to find a way to get the game out.
