We are excited to announce the classic Dynamix adventure games The Adventures of Willy Beamish and Heart of China are now ready for testing in ScummVM!

As the titular Willy Beamish, you play a 9-year-old troublemaker from Frumpton, USA. All you want to do is play Nintari and hang out with your friends, but your parents keep giving you so many chores... and even when you get them done, larger and more sinister forces are at work in your small town. A kid can't get a break!

In Heart of China, you start as retired WWI pilot Jake "Lucky" Masters. After a run-in with Hong Kong businessman E.A. Lomax, you feel driven by a strong sense of duty (and your massive debts!) to help him track down his kidnapped daughter. Work your way through a branching plot and the opportunity to play as three different characters to solve the puzzles and get Kate home.

Along with the previously announced Rise of the Dragon, these games complete Dynamix's short series of adventure games using the DGDS engine.

To test these games, you’ll need a DOS version of the game (both are available from GOG) and a daily development build. Be sure to check the notes on the wiki for each game, and please report any bugs on our issue tracker.

Dark Seed, a 90's point-and-click horror game from the mind of H.R. Giger, is now ready for public testing!

In the game you play the role of Mike Dawson, who just moved to a beautiful solitary mansion to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. You'll soon realise that the place harbors dark secrets, and you'll have just three days to escape a fate worse than death...

The DOS Floppy and CD versions are supported. The engine also supports a number of localised versions Spanish, French, German, Korean and Chinese.

The floppy version currently lacks sound effects but all other features from the original game should be present.

The engine also has the option of using the "arguably" better floppy music with the CD version if you have both.

To participate in the testing, ensure you have a daily development build. As always, please submit the bug reports to our issue tracker.

Good news: We've been accepted again to the Google Summer of Code program!

So, if you feel adventurous (or RPGous) and would like to spend your summer with the cool team, we look forward to your application.

Fear not—we will provide enough handholding, explanations, and support if you can dedicate time to coding on our project, are an open-minded developer ready to learn, and do not hesitate to ask any questions. We've been doing GSoC for the last 18 years (oh my gosh), so we know the drill.

A list of suggested projects can be found on this page. If you have your own idea, we will gladly evaluate it. For example, this happened in 2023 with the Crab engine. The required information for your application for our project is listed on our Wiki.

To give you a nice boost, we have put together an impressive amount of information on the Google Summer of Code miniportal. So you can learn all the ins and outs of the process. But indeed, you need to start by joining our Discord server and follow the #scummvm-gsoc channel where you can engage with our mentors and the rest of the team.

We are looking forward to your fine application and participation!

God of Thunder, the Zelda-esque game, is now ready for public testing!

Prepare yourself to take on the role of Thor, the god of thunder, as he battles his way through the three part game, facing enemies and challenging environmental puzzles, all to finally face down challenging end bosses, culminating in Loki himself.

The implementation in ScummVM is slightly different from the original, in that whilst it has a high score table like the original, you don't have to go through the steps of creating an account and being limited to only a single savegame. Also, unfortunately, the game uses a special music format that will need to be implemented from scratch by someone with experience. So for now, no music playback will occur, though in-game sound effects play back fine.

To participate in the testing, ensure you have a daily development build. The game itself is freeware, and can be downloaded from the Adept Software website. We encourage all players to submit feedback and bug reports through our issue tracker.And please take some screenshots along the way.

Have you the skill to defeat Loki, or will you be defeated by the cunning enemies, or be stymied figuring out the puzzles. Play, and find out.

Almost one year after the last major release, and just in time for Christmas, ScummVM 2.9.0 - "Close Encounters of the 2.9th Kind" has landed. Amongst its gifts, you will find 15 newly supported games and a new supported platform.

New games

• The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik
• Backyard Basketball
• Castle Master
• Marvellous Mice Adventures: Meeting Sea Rat
• Marvellous Mice Adventures: Sea Rat's Birthday
• Mask Show
• Moonbase Commander
• Orion Burger
• Rise of the Dragon
• The Space Bar
• Thimbleweed Park[^1]
• Total Eclipse
• Total Eclipse 2
• Unrest
• Wait for it! Issue 3. Song for a Hare

New platform

ScummVM now has an official Sailfish OS port. While we are waiting for official builds to appear, adventurous users are welcome to build their own and very personalized copy!

Notable engine enhancements

The AGS engine has been brought up to version 3.6.1.30 from upstream, which adds support for some recently released games, such as Stranger in Utopia, The Phantom Fellows, and It Takes Two to Tangle.

Keymapper support was added to more than 20 engines, allowing customization of the keys, mouse buttons, and joystick buttons used to play the games.

The SCI engine benefits from numerous script fixes for various games and an impressive speech repair feature for Gabriel Knight 1 CD.

The SCUMM engine sees graphics and audio improvements for the Macintosh version of several games.

Notable platform enhancements

The macOS release for recent Intel and Apple Silicon systems has been signed and notarized, so it has been accepted by Apple Gatekeeper.

The Android release now supports Android 15 and has improved gamepad support.

The iOS release adds support for the Apple Pencil, which was one of the most requested features.

The full release notes contain a comprehensive summary of the changes and enhancements.

On our downloads page, you can find the downloads for various platforms. The iOS version is available in the Apple App Store and the Android versions should soon be available in the Google Play Store (once the update has been approved). If you are using Windows, macOS, or either the Ubuntu Snap or Flatpak packages, the autoupdater will assist you in updating to ScummVM 2.9.0.

Our macOS users with a 64-bit Intel Mac and a macOS version between 10.9 and 10.12 will need to download manually the new update from our downloads page using the "Mac OS X 10.9+ Intel 64 Bits (without Sparkle) Disk Image" download. The version downloaded using the auto-update feature now requires macOS 10.13 or above.

Play the games, and enjoy ScummVM with a hot cup of grog[^2]!

[^1]: Thimbleweed Park is only supported on a subset of platforms as it requires OpenGL with Shaders. [^2]: Other beverages available.