Ah, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. The game was Cyan Worlds's foray into online play, allowing people to solve the puzzles of the core game with others through subscription to Uru Live. Uru Live folded in early 2004. In August of that year, Cyan Worlds and the fan community introduced Untěl Uru, a web of Uru Live-like servers run by the fan community.
Now Cyan has announced that they will be running D'mala, an official Untěl Uru shard (read: server). There's no new content yet, and no definite promise of one, but Rand Miller did state that this was made possible through "limited funding from a third party". Based on other information, that third party is most likely GameTap.
(Source: Adventure Gamers)
Runtime Revolution Ltd. has announced a new product: Revolution Media. According to Runtime Revolution, Revolution Media is a "feature rich tool for creating interactive media and software utilities." Near as I can tell, it's positioned as a multimedia creation tool with a cross-platform interpreter. What makes it of interest is that it will include a toolkit for creating Myst-like adventure games. Whether this is more than a HyperCard-like application remains to be seen.
Adventure Gamers has published a preview of Bone: The Great Cow Race, the second in an ongoing series of adventure games based on Jeff Smith's comic.
It's still "short." By that I mean it's not an epic, Myst- or Grim Fandango-length game. But it's a lot closer to the 4–6 hours Telltale's been touting since the beginning, not to mention a much richer, more fulfilling experience. Where the first game, though charming, felt a bit skimpy and rushed, this one feels very much like Book 2 of Jeff Smith's comic series brought to life.
The game is currently scheduled to be released some time in the second quarter of 2006.