The development of Crimes & Punishments on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC is advancing quickly. We take this opportunity to unveil a series of 4 new screenshots, testimony of the progress made on the game since its last appearance. This new ambitious project in the series of the Sherlock Holmes investigation games will be unveiled to international press next week at E3, where it will be presented in every detail for the first time.

Today’s screenshots show that Crimes & Punishments definitely marks the biggest step ever made by the Sherlock Holmes games. Giving up our homemade engine in favor of Epic’s Unreal Engine 3, the game will benefit from richer, more immersive and detailed visuals, for both environments and characters.

However, this new engine not only benefits the game’s graphics, and it also allows the development of new investigation mechanics: in total, the game offers 14 gameplay mechanics that we will be pleased to present in more detail through screenshots and videos in the coming months. From the beginning of each of the 8 cases of the game, to the arrest of culprits and the moral choices that will be presented to the players, these new mechanics give the feeling that we ARE Sherlock Holmes, and enable them to fully use the incredible talents and gifts known to all fans, such as his skill to guess many details about someone’s life simply by glancing at them – or to imagine and reconstruct the course of event by carefully observing all the key details of a crime scene.

The Queen of Vampires is back! Dracula: Love Kills, the casual sequel to the gothic adventure game Dracula: Origin, and Most Exciting Game of 2011, is now available for iPad. Waterlily Games Studio is extremely excited to bring this terrifying Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure game to iPad players:

• Creepy but one of the most beautiful gameplay
• Over 40 locations to explore
• Hard and easy mode of difficulty: additional or limited help and hints, quick or slow hint recharge, easy or hard puzzles
• Possibility to influence the gameplay and choose your own game ending!

As well as

• “Lore” books for the characters and legends featured in the game
• 15 in-game achievements
• Re-playable minigames and hidden object scenes
• Vamp-tastic videos
• Bonus Chapter
• Exclusive Wallpapers
• Integrated Strategy Guide

The Queen of Vampires is back and is determined to destroy the world! No one, human or vampire, will stand in her way. Count Dracula is still weak from his last battle with Van Helsing, so an uneasy alliance is formed between the two mortal enemies. Will they overcome their hatred and stop the Queen? Grab the game for free now in iTunes and unlock the full Adventure from within the game!

Magrunner Dark Pulse, the action/reflection game for PC, Xbox LIVE® and PlayStation®Network, today unveils more through the very first video of the game!

In the near future, in 2050, a handful of young and brilliant citizens have been chosen by Gruckezber Corporation to join the Magtech training program for space exploration. Equipped with a special glove using Gruckezberg’s technology, the candidates have to solve their way through a maze of challenge rooms that get more and more challenging, by magnetically charging objects in the level that will attract or repel each other. But when an earthquake disrupts the training program, what seemed to be the chance of a lifetime for the candidates will soon become a descent into folly and cosmic horror! In this video, plunge with Dax, the hero of the game, into a future where Technology confronts the Cthulhu Mythos!

Magrunner: Dark Pulse will be released on PC, Xbox LIVE® and PlayStation®Network.

Announcing the new Sherlock Holmes game, Crimes and Punishments, we confirmed changing the game engine in favor of Unreal. Abandoning the home-made engine and switching to the well-known Unreal Engine 3 from Epic has a significant influence on the game. This change will first allow the game to benefit from bigger environments that are more gorgeous and more varied, but it also allows the development of new investigation mechanics, that the previous engine’s limitations did not permit. These new mechanics will give you the feeling that you truly ARE Sherlock Holmes! Check out the first video of the game, showing some of the environments created in this new engine:

The detailed analyses of the new game environments is available at the Devblog:

This new update is an opening sequence of blog posts all associated with the game engine change.  Olga Ryzhko and Sergey Chervonnyi, Frogwares studio, address the question of the game engine from several perspectives: environments, characters, platforms, animation and interface. Continue the read here.

Frogwares studio is happy to confirm that Korean localization of The Testament of Sherlock Holmes is now available for Steam players. Special thanks goes to Legalmind and ‘Hanfield’ localizing team:

You can choose to play the game in English, German, French and Russian with full audio support; while subtitles are available in Italian, Spanish, Polish and Korean.

Frogwares site is now updated featuring both Large File Adventures and our casual games developed by Waterlily Games studio. Visit Frogwares Games to see the full catalog now. We have included links to Gametap store to purchase the games directly.

Later on we plan to complete Games page adding details about entire Frogwares catalog including the latest Sherlock Holmes Mystery of the Frozen City for Nintendo 3DS.

We have also launched the DevBlog for Magrunner: Dark Pulse devblog.magrunner-thegame.com First updates in the blog are coming shortly! If interested, we are now finishing voice-over to launch the closed beta for the game backers.

For those of you who missed it on April 1, here is a short in-game video of Sherlock Holmes Crimes and Punishments announcing the return of Creepy Watson:

INTRODUCING THE BACKSTAGE OF THE UPCOMING SHERLOCK HOLMES GAME – CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS

Every single member of Frogwares studio is thrilled by the enthusiasm and support that you showed a month ago when we officially announced the new Sherlock Holmes game. We were delighted to announce that the new Frogwares game would get a significant makeover both in terms of technology used and game philosophy: we do not want you to watch the world’s most famous detective anymore; we want you to be the detective. To make you really feel the game we have released Developer Blog, a diary to keep track of game development and all Frogwares things. We are going to provide you with regular commentaries, descriptions of events, and other internal materials related to the game.

The DevBlog will keep you updated on all the milestones of game development. You will meet game characters and the team working on them; we will address some of the questions you may have and will share the artwork, our sketches and concepts, so on and so force. If you have any suggestions on what you want to see here, you are warmly welcome to share!

The DevBlog is run by Olga Ryzhko, Frogwares Business Development Manager, (the author of these words actually) with some occasional entries that would be written by the team. Blog introduction speaks of the main focus of the game, i.e. Investigation and Deduction:
Crimes and Punishments can be described as a detective-mystery game with the main focus set on INVESTIGATION and DEDUCTION. It is purely based on your logic and deductive reasoning as the central game mechanic.

You will have a set of different elements and various mechanics that will help with your investigation ensuring that you detect the truth correctly. You will have hints if stuck, a chemical laboratory to analyze pieces of rope, cigar ashes and others clues, as well as a deduction board to bring all the pieces together.  Your careful examination will draw you through the chains of inferences, which will lead you to a logically certain conclusion.

We introduced this mechanic of the deduction board in Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper back in 2009. We also used it The Testament of Sherlock Holmes in 2012, showing that only a valid deduction gives you the ability to move further during the game, while ensuring the truth of your conclusion.

Crimes and Punishments presents another philosophy. You will solve the case and we will give you the reasons to believe your conclusion from the premise; but the truth of the conclusion is not guaranteed this time!

Visit Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments Developer Blog at devblog.sherlockholmes-thegame.com

Since early 2000, the Sherlock Holmes series of six video games for PC captivated millions of players around the world. In 2012, the famous detective’s latest investigation–The Testament of Sherlock Holmes–abandoned the traditional point & click gameplay and, in a revolution for the series, created a genuine third-person gaming experience befitting consoles and PCs. The game earned praise from players and critics bringing the famous detective to a wider audience.

The new Sherlock Holmes game, Crimes and Punishments will build upon that success with important changes on the graphical side as well as the game experience side.
For the first time ever, Frogwares Studio will abandon its homemade graphics engine. The latest adventures of Sherlock Holmes will be developed on Epic’s Unreal Engine 3, allowing the series to jump far ahead of previous installments in graphical quality. Environments will be more realistic and finely detailed with dynamic lighting and shadows. Choosing this engine also lets the game benefit from many technologies like a powerful animation engine for smooth movement and animation transitions, real-time shaders and a particle system, and advanced post-processing effects.

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Developed on Unreal Engine 3 by 3 AM Games (Frogwares), Magrunner is an action/reflection game for PC, PlayStation Network, and Xbox LIVE based on the use of physics and magnetism. Magrunner sends us to the near future, where technology will confront the Cthulhu Mythos as imagined by the renowned author of fantasy novels H. P. Lovecraft.

Today, we are pleased to reveal more about Magrunner through 6 screenshots and an exclusive piece of art. The game’s story begins in 2050 and takes place in a big sports competition broadcast through the entire world, intended to promote a new technology based on magnetism.

Learn More…

Frogwares and Waterlily Games studios are happy to announce the release date for Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened for iPad. It is now officially confirmed that the game will be released at iTunes on February 04, 2013! The date may vary depending on the territories though.

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