A stalwart party exploring the unknown, seeking the fabled Inner Sanctum. But all is not what it seems in the world of Varn...

The ScummVM Team is pleased to announce full support for the PC version of the first game of the Might and Magic series: Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum. Two modes are supported:

• The original look and feel of the game (sound, which in the original consisted of merely the occasional beep, is not supported)
• A ScummVM-exclusive enhanced mode, which uses the interface of the later Xeen games, including niceties such as better character screens, automapping, and sound effects. It also integrates the impressive "Might and Magic 1 Graphics Overhaul Mod", which provides better in-game map and monster graphics. The xeen.cc file is required from Might and Magic: IV or Might and Magic: World of Xeen.

Both modes allow saving your game anywhere outside of combat via the ScummVM Global Main Menu (unlike the original game that only saved a single roster when checking into an inn). So make sure you save regularly, just in case you encounter problems.

Help us test both game modes by grabbing a daily build and adding mm.dat to the same folder as your game files. Read through our testing guidelines, and please take some screenshots along the way.

Now, go forth, and discover the true secrets of the game that started the long running epic fantasy series!

Schizm: Mysterious Journey, the second supported game of the V-Cruise engine, is ready for public testing!

Created in 2001 by Detalion and published by LK Avalon, this acclaimed 3D-rendered panoramic first-person adventure has you puzzle your way through an alien world as a team of two scientists split up when their ship crash-landed on the planet.

ScummVM currently supports the DVD and digital English releases (with subtitles in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Greek, and Russian). If you’re aware of any other versions, please contact us.

To play any of these supported releases, you will need a daily development build. If you encounter any issues, please submit them to the issue tracker!

On Thursday Google announced the list of participants accepted for this year's Google Summer of Code and we are happy to report that 5 contributors have been accepted to work on various parts of the ScummVM project this summer.

• Ankush Dutt will work on an automated system for packaging freeware games with ScummVM for various platforms. The project includes two main objectives: help create standalone game packages bundled with ScummVM, and implement a new mechanism to let users download and install freeware games directly from the ScummVM launcher. You can follow the progress for this task on Ankush’s GSoC blog.

• Harishankar Kumar will work on improving Director 4 Compatibility. The goal is to reach full support for Total Distortion & The Journeyman Project. You can follow the progress for this task on Harishankar’s GSoC blog.

• Kartik Agarwala (aka hax0kartik) will work on porting the CRAB engine to ScummVM. The CRAB engine was developed by Pyrodactyl Games and was used in several of the games which the studio released, most notably Unrest, a story-driven adventure RPG set in ancient India. You can follow the progress for this task on Kartik’s GSoC blog.

• Abhinav Chennubhotla (aka PhoenixFlame101) will work on a system for verifying game file integrity, validating their checksums against those present in a central database. It will also let users contribute the checksums of game files not on the database. You can follow the progress for this task on Abhinav’s GSoC blog.

• Wyatt Radkiewicz (aka eklipsed) will work on a smaller project to optimize color blending code for the AGS engine thus making games more smooth and run better, especially on lower-end systems. You can follow the progress for this task on Wyatt’s GSoC blog.

Please give them a warm welcome, and visit our Discord server if you want to discuss those projects. After a four week Community Bounding period, the coding period will start on May 29 and you can expect regular updates on these projects on their respective blogs. The team is very excited about the upcoming weeks – and we hope you are as well.

Reah: Face the Unknown, the first supported game of the V-Cruise engine, is ready for public testing!

Created in 1998 by Detalion and published by LK Avalon, this 3D-rendered panoramic first-person adventure has you travel to a strange desert world to unravel its secrets.

ScummVM currently supports the CD, DVD, and digital English releases (with subtitles in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, and Spanish). If you’re aware of any other versions, please contact us.

To play any of these supported releases, you will need a daily development build. If you encounter any issues, please submit them to the issue tracker!

After a few months of beta testing, valuable feedback from our community of play-testers, and relentless bug squashing, our ScummVM Android port is back on the Google Play Store with a fresh stable release! All the latest features of ScummVM 2.7.0 as well as Android-specific improvements are included in ScummVM 2.7.0.5!

A quick summary of the new features for this release:

• Implemented support for Google’s Secure Access Framework (SAF) for safe access of external storage space, such as SD Cards or USB drives.
• Improved input support for joysticks, modern controllers, physical mouse devices and even smart TV remote controls.
• Introduced the ability to switch touch controls between “touchpad emulation”, “direct mouse” and “gamepad emulation” modes, which can be set per context (ScummVM UI menu, 3D engine game, 2D engine game) as well as changed on-the-fly.
• Included a log view option, accessible from the “Global Options”, “Paths” tab, and the ability to specify the debug level of the log output, which can be set from the “Global Options”, “Misc” tab.
• Included all features of ScummVM 2.7.0 with regard to 3D engine support and shaders.
• Improved overall app stability.

Note that the added support for Google’s SAF API is significant, affecting devices running relatively modern Android OS versions. In these recent Android versions, SAF is relevant whenever games are stored on external storage such as an SD card. Since migration to SAF cannot be automated for the end user, you will need to perform a few manual steps to either use your old games or to add new games when using external storage such as an SD card. If your device supports SAF, the steps will appear in a pop-up when launching ScummVM for the first time. See our documentation page for a more detailed description of the process.

We are always interested in your feedback and suggestions. Any issues you encounter should be reported on our bug tracker. You may also reach out to the developer team on the forums or on Discord.

We’re grateful to have such an active and dedicated community and wish that you all enjoy this new ScummVM Android release!