The development of Mystery City has just begun, but the story has been around in my mind since the 80's. I've aways been passionate about adventure games and my first contact with this genre was the game "Aventuras na Selva" by Renato Degiovani. It was developed in early 80s and then published one year later in "Micro Sistemas" magazine, issue #23. After that, the game was rebranded as "Amazônia" and released as a the first brazilian commercial game.  I've played it for hours and hours, trying to escape the jungle and realized how good design and puzzles it had. At the same time was playing the Angra-I demonstration, whose plot was the nuclear power plant of the same name. Another important brazilian game for me was "A lenda da Gávea". Located in Rio de Janeiro, "Pedra da Gávea" is a rock formation that brings with it several urban legends, among them stories of UFOs and aliens in which the game establishes its base. 

In the second half of 80's, several european games were being released for the ZX Spectrum and MSX computer systems. That was the golden era of spanish software, and a lot of those adventures came informally to the Brazilian market. At that time there was a severe market reserve here, imposed by the military government. It was really difficult to import any product, so most games arrived here through piracy. We enjoyed countless hours playing "The Inheritance" (La Herancia) and "Vera Cruz" (Infogrames) and specially the spanish games such as "Don Quijote" (Dinamic Software), "Post Mortem" (Iber Soft), "Cobras Arc" (Dinamic Software), "La Aventura Original" (Aventuras AD). The Spanish language resembles a little ours, so we've learned a bit more of their culture. And I could not forget to mention the Zork Video Game series (Infocom), whose games have been available several years earlier but I've only played on the IBM PC in the end of 80's. Our market reopened around 90's and the piracy has gone most part, when I bought several of these original games to keep in my collection, so much the appreciation I had and still have for them.

I'm trying to resume the development of a game envisioned in that era. I was 11-15 years old and we didn't have tools such as GAC (Graphic Adventure Creator), PAW (Professional Adventure Writer) and even the "Sistema Editor" by Renato Degiovani. Those tools were expensive and not so accessible. With the recent recovery and re-release of DAAD (Diseñador de Aventuras AD), we have one of the best tools of that era back again. Despite being an experienced software engineer today, 8-bit computing will always have a special place in my heart, because that's where it all started for me. So Mystery City will be mainly targeted to that platforms.

The Story and plot are very important elements of a game, since they're responsible for immersion of the player in the world. But puzzles are the best part of adventure games, because they require logic, creativity and the correct use of the language to solve them. that's what I'm trying to accomplish with Mystery City. Hope you like it when it's finally out.

 Stay tuned!

Rogerio Biondi