Waxworks Remake... Wha?

[Victor Pflug]

Okay, so I have searched for mention of this elsewhere on the Codex and couldn't find shit - and I just *had* to know if anyone knows about how the fuck this remake came about...?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/788670/Waxworks_Curse_of_the_Ancestors/

Doing a throwback/spiritual sequel to the Horrosoft titles myself I came across this in my search for anything Elvira RPG related and yeah. Just WTF. Obviously it looks pretty bad (sorry fellow game dev I usually pull punches for my brothers and sistas but yeah I gotta be real here it's too close to my heart) but I can't seem to find out who the heck even made it. It's listed as some dev outfit with no website - not Horrosoft or anyone associated with them from what I can tell?

Would love to know if anyone has any more details on what looks like a perhaps well intentioned yet really flawed attempt at revival...

 

[Cyberarmy]

Wow, now I feel old...

Original one had nice ancient Egypt parts which was the sole reason I bought the game. Really had nice time solving its puzzles, it was kinda light on the RPG front especially in later stages.

Just as you I never heard about this remake and it looks horrible on first sight but I'm going to try it out anyway, for science.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Did you really read the steam page?
Copy paste the dev's name in a search engine and here's their official website:

https://went2play.com/

Also:

Went2play LLC is a Georgia Domestic Limited-Liability Company filed On September 11, 2019. The company's filing status is listed as Active/Compliance and its File Number is 19123845.

The Registered Agent on file for this company is Patrik Spacek and is located at 1028 Barrington Oaks Pl, Roswell, GA 30075. The company's principal address is 1028 Barrington Oaks Pl, Roswell, GA 30075.

The company has 1 principal on record. The principal is Patrik Spacek from Roswell GA.

So, aliens are in the video game industry now and I'm not even surprised, they probably took over the AAA companies a long time ago, It'd explain a lot...

 

[Infinitron]

I think that's a different Roswell.

 

[Morblot]

Yeah, the better known one is in New Mexico.

 

[Tacgnol]

The original had some gruesome death scenes.

 

[d1r]

The original also looks thousand times better than this garbage.

 

[JarlFrank]

The developer's website only makes it more confusing:

https://went2play.com/

The other games they made include a SHMUP for PC and Android, a VR rail shooter, and an Indiana Jones fan adventure.

I guess the fan adventure is what they started out with, and then they got hired to develop a Waxworks remake based on that?
I mean it happened before that hobbyists went on to make commercial games, but usually they don't get hired to directly work on an old game's official remake.

 

[Tyranicon]

The developer's website only makes it more confusing:

https://went2play.com/

The other games they made include a SHMUP for PC and Android, a VR rail shooter, and an Indiana Jones fan adventure.

I guess the fan adventure is what they started out with, and then they got hired to develop a Waxworks remake based on that?
I mean it happened before that hobbyists went on to make commercial games, but usually they don't get hired to directly work on an old game's official remake.

I wonder how the licensing agreement went, or if there even is one.

 

[Falksi]

Thank God they've included numerical damage display for when you hit an enemy, because nothing immerses me more in intense horror situations than seeing floating fucking digits appear out of nowhere.

 

[JarlFrank]

I wonder how the licensing agreement went, or if there even is one.

I mean there has to be one, right? It's an established IP and someone, somewhere holds the rights to it.

And it looks like the IPs are still held by their original developer, AdventureSoft.

Their website still exists: http://www.adventuresoft.com/
They have a developer profile on Steam, where the Simon the Sorcerer remakes and originals are featured: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Adventure Soft
The Simon games were co-published with a company called MojoTouch: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=MojoTouch

MojoTouch's official website seems to be this: http://mojo-touch.com/
A mobile app developer, then. The only PC games they got under their belt are those old AdventureSoft titles re-released on Steam.
On their website, one of the items says "Adapting popular adventure games to mobile devices, in cooperation with IP owners around the world". The games featured there are Simon 1, Simon 2, Feeble Files, Flight of the Amazon Queen, and Inherit the Earth.

MojoTouch (Previously “iPhSoft”) is a boutique software house for mobile world, founded in 2008 at Tel-Aviv, Israel by Liron Barzilai. The MojoTouch team is comprised of highly professional software engineers, researchers and product designers. We are proud of our technology and intellectual property. Moreover, we believe that our team is the key to our success.

Founded in 2008 in Tel-Aviv, Israel, by Liron Barzilai, huh? That's a different team from AdventureSoft then.
Looks like AdventureSoft hired these guys to make the Simon the Sorcerer HD editions for Steam and mobile platforms.

So it looks like AdventureSoft still exists and holds all their old IP rights.
That means they also still hold the old HorrorSoft IP rights.
And the fact that they outsourced the HD editions of Simon the Sorcerer to some other company, it's not unlikely that they did the same with Waxworks.

They still sell the Elvira pack, including Elvira 1, Elvira 2, and Waxworks, on their own website:
http://www.adventuresoft.com/acatalog/Other_Adventure_Soft_games.html

 

[Peachcurl]

judging by the steam reviews, they pushed this one through the door quite early...

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Yeah it looks like completely different game.

 

[Tyranicon]

I wonder how the licensing agreement went, or if there even is one.

I mean there has to be one, right?

Not necessarily. I don't believe Steam does anything to validate IP rights during the approval process, it is up to either users or the copyright owners to report the issue.

But thankfully, that's not the case here. The devs talk about their license very briefly in this thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/788670/discussions/0/1744511953042705252/

Mostly it seems like they have the rights to Waxworks for a limited time, but not Elvira.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

What I'm impressed about is that the game got released with just no fanfare whatsoever. This is apparently a year old at this point and we're finding out about it just now? What the heck was the point of actually licensing it then?
If the game didn't explicitly talk about elements from the original I just would have assumed it shared the same name. Horrorsoft titles are for my money the goriest 2D titles from that era and this just looks like a generic survival horror game.

BTW, they probably didn't have the rights to remake Elvira since IIRC Horrorsoft didn't have the rights to rerelease them until late last year.

 

[Rincewind]

Massive decline compared to the original. I love 90-degree motion oldschool dungeon crawlers with a nice abstract user interface and a small first-person game window. Whereas this is like a generic FPS that would give me motion sickness in less then 5 minutes.

 

[Cyberarmy]

The original had some gruesome death scenes.

Dunno why but soundtrack immediately reminded me of Dark Seed. Guess I'm feeling nostalgic nowadays.

 

[JarlFrank]

This is apparently a year old at this point and we're finding out about it just now?

I found it during one of my Steam store deep dives, but didn't even wishlist it because of how terrible it looks in comparison to the original. Completely forgot about its existence even.

 

[unseeingeye]

My God.. the utterly gorgeous graphics of the original are so much a part of what made Waxworks and the other Horror Soft games so remarkable. This is a disgrace, and disheartening.