Wintermute is a free game-engine for creating your own point-and-click style adventure games (not the only one mind) which came to my attention via an involved story. What happens when three friends decide to make an adventure game but don’t realise that copyright applies to images screen-grabbed from other games? Limbo of the Lost is what happens.
In turns hilarious, awful, and a touch of the tragic (with an outsourced music composer worried about how the art plagiarism could affect his future prospects), follow the full story as it develops over time here, or skip to the review of the finished product.
Every year we tell our students to avoid using copyright material in their own game demos – and for the most part students do avoid copyright materials, if only so they can post their games online for free download (as part of their portfolio) without worries about infringing rights.
On the plus side, this might provide a lot more attention for Wintermute – while on the negative side it might result in publishers being even less keen to agree to distribute small indie adventure games.
