The Blackwell Series
Encyclopedia
Blackwell is an independent adventure
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...

 video game series consisting of four games: The Blackwell Legacy, Blackwell Unbound, Blackwell Convergence and Blackwell Deception. The first game was released on 23 December 2006, the second on 4 September 2007, the third on 22 July 2009, and the fourth was released on 12 October 2011. The games were designed by Dave Gilbert
Dave Gilbert (game designer)
Dave Gilbert is a designer of independent adventure games using Adventure Game Studio. He started out with home-made, freeware games, but went professional in 2006, founding Wadjet Eye Games and releasing The Shivah and The Blackwell Legacy commercially.-Game design career:Gilbert's first adventure...

, creator of The Shivah
The Shivah
The Shivah is a computer game designed and developed by Dave Gilbert with the assistance of others . The game was originally developed for the Monthly Adventure Game Studio 5th anniversary competition in June 2006, which it won...

and Two of a Kind. All games were later released on a compilation called Blackwell Bundle.

The Blackwell Legacy

The protagonist of the game is Rosangela Blackwell, who is a young writer living a solitary life in New York City. The death of her only relative, her aunt, inspires her to seek the truth behind her haunted past.

The game runs under the Adventure Game Studio
Adventure Game Studio
Adventure Game Studio is a free software development tool that is primarily used to create graphical adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers, and combines an Integrated development environment for setting up most aspects of the game with a scripting language to process...

 platform. It was nominated for 4 AGS Awards for games released in 2006 and won the award for Best Character Art. Character art was drawn by Ian 'Big Brother' Schlapfer of Herculean Effort Productions
Herculean Effort Productions
Herculean Effort Productions is an adventure game development duo in the USA, founded by brothers Ian and Greg Schlaepfer. Of the two, Ian Schlaepfer is primarily responsible for the graphics and storyline and Greg for music and AGS scripting...

.

Known for its excellent story and voiceovers, the game starred Sande Chen as Rosangela Blackwell and Abe Goldfarb as Joey Mallone.

Blackwell Unbound

A prequel to Legacy, Unbound follows the investigations of Joey Mallone again, this time with Rosa's aunt Lauren, back in the 70s. Two apparently unconnected cases of hauntings are investigated and solved by the protagonists.

As with Legacy, Unbound uses the Adventure Game Studio
Adventure Game Studio
Adventure Game Studio is a free software development tool that is primarily used to create graphical adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers, and combines an Integrated development environment for setting up most aspects of the game with a scripting language to process...

 engine. Unbound was originally supposed to be a flashback sequence in the next game, The Blackwell Convergence, but it grew so large that it became a game in its own right. The game was nominated for Best Story and won Best Music in the AGS Awards for games released in 2007.

The story features a real person as a character: writer Joseph Mitchell of the New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

.

The Blackwell Convergence

The third game starts six months after Rosangela meeting Joey. A new film opens to rave reviews, despite its bloody history. A beautiful uptown office remains unoccupied, despite its prime location. A downtown artist berates himself for selling out, while a Wall Street investor congratulates himself on a job well done. Just normal life in the big city? Or is something more sinister binding these events together? To top this all off, an old acquaintance to the Blackwell line comes back, refusing to make things easy for Rosa or Joey.

This game was originally to be released sometime around June 2008, but was delayed for a variety of reasons. However, the game was released on July 22, 2009 to mostly positive reviews.

Two real people are included in the cast of characters: writer Joseph Mitchell returns, as well as New York eccentric Joe Gould
Joe Gould (Bohemian)
Joseph Ferdinand Gould was an American eccentric, also known as Professor Seagull. Often homeless, he pretended to be the author of the longest book ever written, an Oral History of the Contemporary World...

.

The Blackwell Deception

The fourth game was released October 12th 2011 and focuses on fraudulent psychics.

Genesis

The project originally began as Bestowers of Eternity. This game was released as free software in 2003 via the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 under that title, and gained much popularity. Subsequently it was decided for the project to be extended and redone into a proper commercial product – and thus The Blackwell Legacy was born.

Gilbert has previously stated for the concept of The Shivah
The Shivah
The Shivah is a computer game designed and developed by Dave Gilbert with the assistance of others . The game was originally developed for the Monthly Adventure Game Studio 5th anniversary competition in June 2006, which it won...

that he wanted to do an investigation, but have the hero be someone other than a detective. On a separate occasion, he mentioned that he watched a movie about a medium contacting her spirit guide, and started thinking about what the poor spirit must go through to help this woman. From the union of these two ideas, Joey and Rosa's relationship was born.

External links

Official
Reviews
  • Review of Blackwell Legacy at Adventure Gamers
    Adventure Gamers
    Adventure Gamers is a computer game website created in 1998 dedicated to the genre of adventure games. It publishes reviews and previews of adventure games, as well as opinion articles and interviews with game designers....

  • Review of Blackwell Unbound at Adventure Gamers
    Adventure Gamers
    Adventure Gamers is a computer game website created in 1998 dedicated to the genre of adventure games. It publishes reviews and previews of adventure games, as well as opinion articles and interviews with game designers....

  • Review of The Blackwell Convergence at Adventure Gamers
    Adventure Gamers
    Adventure Gamers is a computer game website created in 1998 dedicated to the genre of adventure games. It publishes reviews and previews of adventure games, as well as opinion articles and interviews with game designers....

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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