In a universe where bagels meet bars, the BAGEL engine has been perfectly toasted, and the ScummVM team is now ready to serve a slice of The Space Bar nostalgia. No, it’s not the key on your keyboard. Rather, it’s a detective story set on a distant planet. Important data has been stolen, and the perpetrator is a shape-shifter laying low in a spaceport dive bar until he can flee off-planet. You play a hard-boiled detective who has the skill to psychically visit bar patrons’ memories to gather clues and narrow down suspects.

This is thanks to the kind people at ZOOM Platform, who provided us with the original game sources to work with. Help us test the game by grabbing a daily build. Read through our testing guidelines. The game features a lot of options to chat around with bar patrons’ and do various actions in the different flashbacks. So we really need people to spend time experimenting and make sure everything works correctly. And please take some screenshots along the way.

If you don’t own The Space Bar, you can try one of the free demos or purchase it digitally from the ZOOM Platform. Testing is also available on Steam via a beta branch, check the Steam announcement for more details.

Now, good luck, and fingers crossed you can find the perp. Otherwise, your bureau chief will have you getting up close and personal with toilet duties for the rest of your career. Oh, and PS: The viewpoints of different aliens differ. For the Bartender, who has segmented eyes, even the original developers felt it was difficult and left in a cheat key of ScrollLock to switch back to a single viewpoint. Feel free to use it if, at any point, the flashback becomes too much for you :)

Please welcome this year's participants!

On Wednesday 1st May Google announced the list of participants accepted for this year's Google Summer of Code and we are very happy to report that 4 contributors have been accepted to work on various parts of the ScummVM project this summer.

Now we have had a chance to dot the i's and cross the t's we are really pleased to welcome them all to the project and ask everyone to show them a very warm welcome as they get settled.

In no particular order, a heartfelt welcome to...

Project: Implementation of a Game Files Integrity Checking System for ScummVM

Chike Lee - Chico / InariInDream

ScummVM requires game data files to operate. Frequently, especially when copying from the old media, the files can be damaged. Thus, a system that could let the end-users compute checksums and compare them with known good references is desirable.

Chike will be looking to extend existing work in this area and complete the end to end implementation during the summer.

Project: Enhance Macromedia Director Support

Krish Ganatra - Krish / Krish28

Macromedia Director is a popular multimedia authoring tool from the 90s, and many iconic adventure titles have been released using it. Improving its support in ScummVM will preserve gaming history and provide players with access to beloved classics.

Krish will be undertaking a range of targeted enhancements to Macromedia Director support in ScummVM to extend compatibility and support.

Project: Porting qdEngine to ScummVM

Kunal Tiwari - kunxl.gg

K-D Labs created qdEngine and it has been used in several point-and-click adventure games, primarily in Russian, and also translated into Lithuanian, Czech and English. The most known games are Pilot Brothers 3 and Pilot Brothers 3D.

Kunal will be working to bring this engine's code into ScummVM with a goal to add full support for the engine during the summer.

Project: Add Keymapper to multiple Engines

Nabeel Shabbir - kashmiri_markhor / NabeelShabbir

ScummVM includes a global fully configurable keymapper, but this requires engines to be adapted to use it. The goal of this project is to fully integrate ScummVM keymapper into a large number of our supported engines.

Nabeel will be working on this throughout the summer, starting with the larger engines and more advanced keymapper requirements.

We are now in the community bonding period that runs up until the 27th of May when coding on the projects formally begins.

Please give them all a very warm welcome, and visit our Discord server if you want to discuss these projects, each project has a dedicated channel.

You can also expect regular updates from the participants on their respective blogs that will be linked from the planet.

The team is very excited about these projects - and we hope you are as well.

We also wanted to take the time to thank everyone who applied to ScummVM for this year's Google Summer of Code programme. Unfortunately, not every application was successful, but we are so grateful for the interest shown and would love you all to still consider helping with ScummVM in some capacity in the future.

1987: In the small town of Thimbleweed Park, two officers-a-reno are investigating a murder. The body, still in the process-a-reno of being pixelated, lies in the river. The agents meet a video game developer, a mysterious clown who never takes off his make-up, and many other strange characters.

You can purchase the game in your favorite place: Steam, GOG, Epic Game Store, Xbox, Switch, iOS, PS4, Android.

You're invited to try out this adventure with ScummVM. First, download the daily build and enjoy!

If you encounter any bugs or oddities, please report them on our bugtracker.

Total Eclipse, a real-time, curse-breaking, 3D adventure (with a dash of Indiana Jones flair), is ready for public testing!

Originally unleashed by Incentive Software Ltd. in 1988, Total Eclipse added yet another groundbreaking title to their repertoire of revolutionary games.

Step into the shoes of a heroic archeologist on October 26, 1930, as a total solar eclipse akin to the one happening today over North America looms over Cairo. Knowing of the Ardognus prophecy, created by the powerful high priest Hahmid III, you must find and destroy the hidden shrine devoted to Ra before the eclipse occurs.

Embark on this exciting journey packed with a trusty gun for blasting through doors or dispatching undead mummies; a compass to guide you through a treacherous pyramid; a wristwatch to track the precious time left; and a water bottle to fight dehydration (you’re only human after all).

Can you solve this ancient mystery within 120 minutes and avert catastrophe, or will Rah's wrath obliterate the moon?

Our modern reimplementation of the Freescape engine features graphics using hardware mode (OpenGL) at arbitrary resolution. The initial Total Eclipse support includes DOS (EGA/CGA modes), ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC. More releases are coming at a later date. Additionally, there are three playable demos if you want to test the game. Please contact us if you have some other release or demo.

To play any of these supported releases, you will need a daily development build. As always, please submit your bug reports to our issue tracker.

Oh MMy — a new ScummVM release!

Please welcome the first ScummVM release of the year: ScummVM 2.8.1.

ScummVM 2.8.1 is a maintenance release mainly focused on fixing bugs that were uncovered since our last stable release.

This update includes upgrades for the following engines: AGI, AGS, GRIM, SWORD2, MM (which is now enabled — yes, we really skipped it in 2.8.0 by accident), mTropolis, NANCY, SCUMM, TWINE, Ultima, and V-Cruise.

The Android, Atari and macOS ports received multiple bug fixes, mostly for improving overall stability and preventing some crashes we’ve seen under certain circumstances.

The detailed list of improvements is available here.

As always, you can find the latest release on our Downloads page.

Go grab it while it's hot — enjoy!