Type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Casual games |
Founded | 2002 |
Headquarters | Montevideo, Uruguay |
Key people | Gabriel Gambetta, Director and CTO |
Website | www |
Mystery Studio was a casual game development studio based in Montevideo, Uruguay. Mystery Studio is mostly known for their hit game, Betty's Beer Bar, which brought the theme and general mechanic of Tapper to the casual gamers, transforming it completely along the way, and creating a whole new genre of casual games, multitasking/serving games, whose more recent hit members include Diner Dash and Mystic Inn. [1] The company closed its doors in 2011.
Mystery Studio was founded by Gabriel Gambetta and Esteban Guelvenzu in 2002. The name was initially "Mr.Io Studio", which sounded like "misterio", the Spanish word for "mystery". [2] Over the year it has developed several 1st and 3rd party games such as Betty's Beer Bar and CSI:NY : The Game.
Mystery Studio also notably partnered with publisher Playfirst in 2006, developing a dynamic match-three puzzle game, Pirate Poppers, that Playfirst distributed. Pirate Poppers was well-received, breaking the top 10 downloads and top 10 sales lists of major downloadable game channels. [3]
Mystery Studio's director and CTO is Gabriel Gambetta. He is a noted Linux proponent, developing his games exclusively under Fedora Linux [4] and cross-compiling them for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, the two platforms that his games are actually on sale for. The studio shut down after he moved from Uruguay to Zürich and accepted a job at Google. [5]
Europa Universalis II is a grand strategy game developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Strategy First, based on world history spanning a timeline between 1419 through 1820. It was released on December 11, 2001.
Jane Jensen is an American video game designer and author. She is mostly known as the creator of the Gabriel Knight series of adventure games, and also co-founded Oberon Media and Pinkerton Road video game development companies. Jensen also writes under the name Eli Easton.
Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels is an interactive fiction computer game designed by Bob Bates and published by Infocom in 1987. Like most titles Infocom produced, the use of ZIL made it possible to release the game simultaneously for many popular computer platforms, including the Apple II, IBM PC and Commodore 64. Sherlock is based on the legendary fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is Infocom's thirty-first game and is the first of two Infocom games developed by Challenge, Inc. using Infocom's development tools.
Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective is a full-motion video game released in 1991. It is based on a tabletop game-gamebook hybrid of the same name first published in 1981, and features the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle.
The stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have been very popular as adaptations for the stage, and later film, and still later television. The four volumes of the Universal Sherlock Holmes (1995) compiled by Ronald B. De Waal lists over 25,000 Holmes-related productions and products. They include the original writings, "together with the translations of these tales into sixty-three languages, plus Braille and shorthand, the writings about the Writings or higher criticism, writings about Sherlockians and their societies, memorials and memorabilia, games, puzzles and quizzes, phonograph records, audio and video tapes, compact discs, laser discs, ballets, films, musicals, operettas, oratorios, plays, radio and television programs, parodies and pastiches, children's books, cartoons, comics, and a multitude of other items — from advertisements to wine — that have accumulated throughout the world on the two most famous characters in literature."
Sherlock Holmes has long been a popular character for pastiche, Holmes-related work by authors and creators other than Arthur Conan Doyle. Their works can be grouped into four broad categories:
The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes is an adventure game developed by Mythos Software and published by Electronic Arts for MS-DOS in 1992 and 3DO in 1994. A sequel was developed and published by the same respective companies in 1996 titled The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Rose Tattoo.
Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Mummy is an adventure game for Microsoft Windows, developed by Frogwares and released in 2002. The player controls Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, as he investigates the mysteriously abandoned mansion of British archeologist Lord Montcalfe. It is the first in the Sherlock Holmes series of adventure games developed by Frogwares and Viva Media, and was ported to the Nintendo DS in 2009.
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is a 1993 point-and-click adventure game, developed and published by Sierra On-Line for MS-DOS, Macintosh, and Microsoft Windows, and released on December 17, 1993. The CD-ROM version features the voice talents of Tim Curry, Mark Hamill, Michael Dorn, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., and Leah Remini. The game's story focuses on Gabriel Knight, a struggling novelist and owner of a rare book store in New Orleans, who opts to research a recent spate of murders around the city that have a connection to voodoo. In the process, he is slowly revealed to be a descendant of a German family who are involved in combatting people who uses supernatural forces, and discovers a link between the killing and his family's past.
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is an adventure video game developed by Frogwares and published in 2007 for Microsoft Windows. The game follows an original plotline as Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. John H. Watson investigate a series of strange disappearances related to the Cthulhu Mythos.
Frogwares is a Ukrainian video game development studio headquartered in Kyiv with subsidiary offices in Dublin, Ireland. The studio and its subsidiaries develop adventure games for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch as well as PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, Wii, and mobile.
Legacy Games is a game publisher and distributor of casual titles for PC and mobile devices. It distributes retail box versions of PC games both in Walmart stores and on Amazon. Legacy also sells more than 70 different digital game packs from its website. Each game pack consists of 3, 5, 10, or 15 full games and includes hidden object, match 3, puzzle, indie, adventure, strategy, and platformer titles. Legacy's most popular game series are True Crime, Greatest Hits, Jewel Quest, and Murder Mystery. Legacy works with over 75 developers and publishers, including Artifex Mundi, Microids, Domini Games, Curve Digital, Gamehouse, Big Fish Games, and Team17.
Sherlock Holmes is a series of adventure games developed by Frogwares. The games are based on Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. John H. Watson. While the franchise is based on Doyle's stories, each game has an original plot and storyline.
Mystery Case Files is a video game series originally developed by the internal studios of Big Fish Games. Some installments were developed by Eipix Entertainment between 2015 and 2019 and Elephant Games who developed sequels from 2013 to 2014. Now, the newest installments were developed by GrandMA Studios. The Mystery Case Files series is known for its ‘Hidden Object’ puzzles where, in order to progress through a game, the player plays the role of a Master Detective and must find a certain number of items hidden somewhere on a painted scene.
A hidden object game, also called hidden picture or hidden object puzzle adventure (HOPA), is a puzzle video game genre in which the player must find items from a list that are hidden within a scene. Hidden object games are a popular trend in casual gaming, Time-limited trial versions of these games are usually available for download, although many are free to download on app stores. Popular themes include detective crime stories, adventure, gothic romance and mystery.
Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper is an adventure game for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360, developed by Ukrainian studio Frogwares and distributed by Focus Home Interactive. It is the fifth game in the Sherlock Holmes series of adventure games developed by Frogwares. The game takes place in the London district of Whitechapel in 1888, the historical site of the Jack the Ripper murders.
Playdom was an online social network game developer popular on Facebook, Google+ and Myspace. The company was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area by University of California, Berkeley graduates Ling Xiao and Chris Wang and Swarthmore College graduate Dan Yue. In 2009, the market for games played on social networking sites was valued at $300 million, consisting mostly of online sales of virtual goods.
Boomzap Entertainment is a casual games developer registered in Singapore with a virtual office environment. It was formed in 2005 and has released 50 games to date that are ported on various platforms. Boomzap has developed for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Nintendo DS, Wii, iOS, and Android. Its games are available on games portals such as Big Fish Games, Yahoo!, WildTangent, GameHouse, Google Play, Amazon, iTunes, Steam and others.
Video games in Ukraine began to emerge in the 1990s, with the appearance of the first studios. Subsequently, in the 2000-2010 in Ukraine there were several well-known video game series. Although the video game industry in Ukraine is only developing, video gaming is becoming more and more popular in the country.
Elephant Games is a casual game developing company founded in 2003. Elephant Games currently produces games for PC, MAC, iPad, iPhone, and Android. Most of the company's projects are published by Big Fish Games.