Steam the 2013 IGF award winning game "Cart Life" is receiving a remake by Ad-Hoc Studio

[Krvavi Abadas]

a pretty interesting story here, despite all of the acclaim and awards the developer got. he wasn't interested into going full-time, notably damaging his own IGF booth and promoting a different dev's game there.

eventually, a year after he got his award. he delisted the game off Steam, publicly releasing the source code and disappearing off the game dev scene.

Enter Ad-Hoc Studio, the studio also working on the second season of The Wolf Among Us.
one of their major sources of inspiration for storytelling was this very game, and they were greatly saddened to discover it wasn't officially available anymore.

The short version is that our team was profoundly influenced by Cart Life, and we were alarmed to discover that it was no longer available. For a game regularly included in “best of all time” lists to be relegated to the Internet Archive seemed unjust. So we reached out to Richard and offered to help.

We’ve now joined forces on a definitive version of Cart Life to give the game the release it deserved ten years ago, when it won the grand prize at the IGF.

in terms of differences, the game engine has been moved from Adventure Game Studio to Unity. and there is a small amount of new content added, including proper endings for all 3 playable characters.

 

[jiggyfresh]

It was a poignant experience that I still think about from time to time. Nice to hear it will resurface in a definitive state, and that the original developer is involved.

 

[shoptroll]

Awesome news and great to see the game is getting supported again. I remember reading about how Hoffmeier was uncomfortable with the breakout status of the game, so it’s good to see them involved with the updated release.

 

[slide's]

thanks for sharing this—good to know Hofmeier is involved and hopefully will get some decent money for it as I recall him tweeting about some pretty significant financial issues years back (though I’m not sure I otherwise agree with the message from this studio that the game only being available unofficially/for free is “alarming”! especially considering its subject matter)
also worth noting that Richard didn’t entirely withdraw from game development—it looks like it’s also unavailable for purchase right now but he was working for years on an incredible-looking typing game called Type Dreams:

Type Dreams by ˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞

"To save time is to lengthen life."

hofmeier.itch.io

can’t find a good gif rn but in motion it is some of the sickest graphic design I’ve seen in a pixel art game.
he replied to a message on the itch page a couple days ago implying it’ll be back at some point too

edit: actually you can also get the original Cart Life on itch again fwiw:

Cart Life v1.6 by ˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞

WORK HARDER, HARD WORKER!

hofmeier.itch.io

 

[Dolce]

I've always disliked that kind of character sprinting. It also just shows how hard spriting characters really is.

The detail always feel lower than even some of the better NES stuff.