Penny Arcade Series Halted
Episode 3 brings to many gamers' minds the long development cycle between Half-Life 2 releases, but there exists another series for which many fans have been waiting for the third installment. Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness was supposed to be a four-part series, and it appears Joystiq is reporting that it will not continue.
Jerry Holkins, of the Penny Arcade Tycho fame, stated that this is largely so that Hothead would not have to divide their efforts, particularly since they are currently working on DeathSpank, which was recently picked up to be published by EA partners to bring the game to PSN and XBLA. He felt that they could have worked on and published both, but that a lesser product would have resulted.
Holkins does note that he has plans to release the remaining games in the form of an episodic story, perhaps recalling the events of the first two games via flashback, or some other method.
Considering there are reports that the sequel of the game sold many fewer copies than the first, it is hard to imagine this also did not have a deciding factor to release a game that may not have had as much polish as the duo from Penny Arcade would expect. Episodic gaming seems to still be a relatively new field of publishing, so it is perhaps no surprise that it would have a difficult time with a relatively new IP, unlike a Sam & Max or Monkey Island franchise (though Telltale games does seem to have discovered a formula that works for their adventure series).
VorpalBunny
Posted to Video Games on 31 March 2010
· Comments (4)
Other stuff like this: ea partners, hothead games, jerry holkins, penny arcade, penny arcade adventures, psn, xbla
*big haughty anime laugh*
Hohohohohoh!
It's already Episodic...
wtf!
Eh, I would have preferred a new Precipice of Darkness episode; Deathspank doesn't look appealing in the least.
They discussed this in their second Series Panel (where they drew the comic strip while taking questions). Jerry seemed disappointed that the further episodes would not be released and noted that he "wrote the hell out of" these first two episodes.