Indian Joe 11 Year Anniversary

Other Blender games come and go. They’re like fads. But one Blender Game sticks out above all the rest. That game is called…

INDIAN JOE

I can’t quite describe Indian Joe without ruining it. I can say however that it’s ridiculous. Like a lot of titles that come out of this community it comes with the hobbyist feel that Blenderheads have grown accustomed to. There’s a certain level of polish we simply don’t expect from one another. Indian Joe is no exception to this. However it is an exception in gameplay. Indian Joe has really solid mechanics, really impressive controls, and really funny humor. The writing is bad! The models aren’t that great looking! The lighting is abysmal! There were no shadow lamps or shaders or really fancy effects back then! But it’s also amazing. It’s a huge amazing game.

I love Indian Joe. I love it I love it I love it.

So to celebrate this treasure of wonderful badness two fellow blenderheads and I are going to play Indian Joe and upload a Let’s Play to YouTube this weekend. We’re going to find some abandon-ware site for forgotten videogames and make sure Indian Joe finally has a place to rest. Presently you can not find it anywhere on the Internet. No screenshots. No write-ups. No downloads. Nothing.

The game is actually older than 10 years (Jan 2003) but it was roughly 2004 when the game went up on blendergames.com and then started to gain some popularity and the mystery of its creator started to be questioned. Where did he go? How did he pull off such a big game by himself? How does the cow game even work?

We’re also going to reminisce about the studio that made the game, CLUH, the references that Indian Joe makes to films and other games, and ask the general public one last time: What ever happened to blenderartists user Andrew Nollan (aka @lizard809)? We’re really hoping it will spark enough of a buzz that we can interview Andrew and get to the bottom of what I personally consider (and many other Blenderheads agree) to be one of the greatest Blender games of all time.

If you want to add any known trivia or knowledge that we can put into the game review please let us know. If you know how to get in touch with lizard809 pleeeease PM me. If this thread shouldn’t be in “finished games” I apologize. Indian Joe was a finished game (just not mine) We’ll have download links up this weekend so you can remember it with us. Any thread that previously mentions it has no working links in it. I want to make sure it is preserved.

==== UPDATE ====


Download and play Indian Joe and the Alternate Dimension
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/57509/Blender%20Games/IndianJoe.exe

Watch the Let’s Play on YouTube

a more in-depth discussion about the game is surfacing. I did learn a lot more about Andrew Nollan in the process of editing (which is why I delayed releasing). I ultimately decided to make that stuff into a second separate production — something more to the tune of a documentary. Andrew Nollan is a rare success story. After producing Indian Joe with his brother, he evidently started working for Nintendo, and joined the team that made Nitronic Rush. Andrew’s brother has gone on to continue development on Distance which is currently in beta.

Sounds awesome, looking forward to lets play and seeing the game :slight_smile:

I have been using bge since the very first version, and sorry, this is the first time I have heard of it… but it would be interesting to see for the first time now!

We did it! There’s much more video to edit than I thought so I’ll have to delay the release a bit. But we did it! And i’ll have it edited and put up as soon as I can. It was just as incredible as I remember it ten years ago. Thanks for your interest!

Side note I think I found Andrew Nollan’s mother but she did not respond to the letter I sent. That was as close as I was able to get to contacting the game’s creator. So we’re going to leave some blank slots to perhaps one day fill in with youtube annotations.

one of the coolest multi-genre blender games ever made and I still remember the competition and other games that it was up against at the time (like peter rylanders Hellstation).
and I always wondered who was actually behind the game so would be great if they would come out of the woodwork…

bookmarks

Is this coming soon?

It is coming! I got a surprise response from the creator’s mom and got some of his backstory about why he suddenly disappeared. he evidently got snatched up by Nintendo! adding in this to the video — this has turned a little bit into a mini documentary :open_mouth:

Anticipation Builds

bjclark, do you still have hellstation? i’d like to see it.

I want to put forth a little more effort and see if i can get andrew nollan on the phone. Wouldn’t that make this whole thing loads better? I think it would. he hasn’t responded to my email yet, but i’ll try until the week is up. if that doesn’t work i’ll release the edit i have right now to youtube and later do a follow up if i ever get in touch with him afterwards. Sound like a good deal?

I can`t wait to see the game!

I was honoured to be one of the players in this “let’s play”, and it was tremendous fun. I think the video turned out to be great and I can’t wait to see the final edit.

Here’s an interesting tidbit… Andrew Nolan’s brother, Jason Nolan, worked on this game:

Take a close look at the nickname of one of the opponents in this trailer…

ok, I just wan’t to see an 11 year old bge game… release the video!

Thanks :wink:

apologies for the late reply bmud but yes - I still have a copy of hellstation (along with just about every uploaded blender game back from the blender 2.25+ days…)

*** moderation ***
Moved from finished games
Reason: there is no game, just discussion

If there is a game to download (even if it is a link to another side to get it from) I can move it back.

It’s been well over a month since the recording, where is the video?! :eyebrowlift2:

Giterdone, already.

We’re done!

Download and play Indian Joe and the Alternate Dimension
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/57509/Blender%20Games/IndianJoe.exe

Watch the Let’s Play on YouTube

I still am interested in speaking to Andrew Nollan, but I’m going to save it for another more documentary-style video. We got all the details necessary for a Let’s Play so I kept it simple.

Have a nice weekend! :wink:

I was cleaning out some old stuff on my hard drive today and found some much older footage of Indian Joe. The sound in the game worked much better, but the footage was total garbage. It made me wonder: how is the sound on your particular system? The Blender logo is supposed to have a rise-and-fall sound like “weeeyooo” which gets used a lot (the stoplight changing colors for example) the first blue button that rings the doorbell should have a nice “pling” the fireballs should have a nice airy waft. I was disappointed in the sound playback on the windows machine we recorded on, but we settled for it as it was the best PC we had available. rocketman (Sam) uses only Linux, and I have only Apple computers now.

If you find that there’s some setting that improves the sound, like say running the exe in compatibility mode, please let me know. Thanks