Private Moon expands horizons

Written by Jack Allin — December 27, 2005 at 10:28

While waiting for Episode 4 of AGON from Hungarian developer Private Moon Studios, people may have begun wondering if we'd seen the last of Professor Hunt and his quest to track down twelve accursed games. Fortunately, while sliding the projected release date back to March or April for The Lost Sword of Toledo, the next "bigger, longer and more detailed" installment, the company has also announced that they'll be releasing a CD-ROM collection of the first three episodes worldwide. Called the Mysterious Codex, the collection will be released by Viva Media in North America, and by Micro Application in French territories in the first quarter of 2006. Although not yet finalized, negotiations are ongoing for a release elsewhere in Europe for the same time period.

In a surprise announcement, the company also revealed that they have begun working on a new FMV historical adventure game called Yoomurjak's Ring. The new game has an indirect link to AGON, as the game's protagonist is Jonathan Hunt, the great grandson of AGON's professor.

Produced with "more than 35 professional actors and on more than 30 locations", the modern day story sees Jonathan, a young American journalist, arrive in Hungary to hear the disturbed story of an old man. "After the old man's unexpected death, he continues his investigation in a case leading back to the distant past. Some strange messages appear from the past, as well as a character from a novel (Yoomurjak), who may have been a real figure, a gangster, who is after the ring with five diamond stars, a mad scientist, who claims to be more than a hundred and fifty years, and a crowd of other strange characters. The adventure comes in a setting of real historical monuments: a medieval castle, citizen houses from the baroque age, a bath from the Turkish era and parks from the last century, and has more than 500 original panoramas, almost an hour and a half of movies, a detailed encyclopedia and complex riddles."

Although there is no word on an English release, Yoomurjak's Ring is scheduled to be released in Hungary in April or May 2006.