Telltale's second Bone episode

Mar 16, 2006 09:09 GMT  ·  By

Just like the competitors in the Bone saga's big contest, the team at Telltale has been moving rapidly to get Bone: The Great Cow Race game ready for release this April.

The Great Cow Race is the continuation of a new breed of episodic interactive entertainment that Telltale began last fall. The company released Bone: Out from Boneville as the first episode in this series to wide acclaim in September. Hailed by reviewers and educators alike as engaging for all ages, the Bone books on which these games are based have become the anchor for a line of graphic novels from Scholastic's new Graphix imprint. In an un-paralleled feat in the games industry, Telltale is distributing this follow-up to its first title in the series within a six month period, in order to match Scholastic's book publishing schedule.

In a review of the first Bone episode, PC Gameworld writes "The best things about Out From Boneville are the excellent comic-style graphics and general tone. The characters are smoothly animated and the well-synched voiceovers allow their personalities to truly shine through." GamesRadar adds: "Stay home from a movie and play this instead."

Telltale CEO Dan Connors says: "The episodic model has been working very well for us. As promised, we're releasing this installment very quickly after the first, and we're very excited about the number of advances that we're adding to The Great Cow Race. Out from Boneville established the framework for the series and helped us get robust technology and systems in place. We identified a number of things we wanted to improve upon - such as the length of the experience, the nature of the mini-games and nuances in a number of areas - and the team is doing an outstanding job exceeding our expectations. Customers will also really enjoy the cast of characters in The Great Cow Race, which becomes even more quirky and colorful this time around, as well as a deeper story as the plot thickens!"

In reference to the publishing schedule for the games, Mr. Connors states: "We're finalizing a plan for another game series, which will get new episodes out even faster!"

Customers will be able to download and purchase The Great Cow Race directly from Telltale's website when it becomes available in April, or they can order the packaged version with value-added extras in a sleek DVD slipcase. All Bone games include a free trial mode, so anyone can download and play for 30 minutes free of charge. Customers will not need to purchase or install the previous episode, Out from Boneville, in order to play The Great Cow Race.