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.

We've been working for a while on the next ScummVM release, and it is time for a call for public testing.

Support for a number of new engines and games for the existing ones was added, and we need your special attention to the following titles:

• Orion Burger.
• Total Eclipse and Total Eclipse 2.
• Thimbleweed Park.
• The Space Bar.
• Moonbase Commander. (with multiplayer support)
• Backyard Basketball.
• Unrest.
• Rise of the Dragon.
• Castle Master.
• Wait for it! Issue 3. Song for a Hare. (Ну, погоди! Выпуск 3. Песня для зайца)
• Mask Show. (Маски-шоу)
• Marvellous Mice Adventures: Meeting Sea Rat. (Три маленькие белые мышки. Визит Морской крысы)
• The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik. (Похождения бравого солдата Швейка)
• Marvellous Mice Adventures: Sea Rat's Birthday. (Три маленькие белые мышки. День рождения морской крысы)

Besides these newly supported games, almost half of the current 108 engines have notable changes. Thus, testing more games is always a good thing.

All testing must be done with stable builds, not development ones. Please report bugs or oddities on our issue tracker.

A detailed list of all exciting new features and fixes is available in our NEWS file.

We are looking forward to your reports about successful and unsuccessful playthroughs and bugs reported!

Castle Master, the haunting conclusion to the Freescape engine saga, is now ready for public testing!

Prepare yourself for a perilous adventure as you lower the drawbridge to enter the Castle Master’s domain. Released in 1990 by Incentive Software, Castle Master became popular for its technical innovation and challenging gameplay. The game inspired countless 3D adventure titles, and the Freescape engine itself marked a technological milestone, enabling groundbreaking object interaction and spatial puzzles.

Notably, Castle Master was one of the first games to let you choose to play as either a prince or a princess, offering a different experience depending on your choice.

Your mission: rescue your twin, imprisoned within the eerie depths of Castle Eternity by the evil Magister. This sprawling, foreboding castle is filled with traps, monsters, and puzzles blocking your path. Gather items, unlock doors, and solve complex riddles as you navigate the labyrinthine halls and confront the dark forces within.

This modern reimplementation showcases enhanced graphics using OpenGL, with initial support for the DOS and ZX Spectrum releases. If you’re eager to embark on this dark journey, a playable demo is available to test your tenacity.

To participate in the testing, ensure you have a daily development build. We encourage all players to submit feedback and bug reports through our issue tracker.

Will you brave the creepy corridors of Castle Eternity and free your sibling, or will you fall victim to the Magister’s curse and join his army of enslaved spirits? The adventure awaits!

After seven months of intense work, we are ready to announce support for a few games based on qdEngine, developed by K-D Labs.

The work is based on the original sources published now under GPL, although the work started a bit earlier than that. The engine supports 14 games, five of which we are announcing support for. Most of these games were released in Russian; however, there were Lithuanian, Czech, and Polish releases. The support is announced for:

• Wait for it! Issue 3. Song for a Hare, (Russian: Ну, погоди! Выпуск 3. Песня для зайца, Lithuanian: Na, palauk! Zuikio dainos, Czech: Jen počkej a Píseň pro zajíce)
• Mask Show (Russian: Маски-шоу)
• Marvellous Mice Adventures: Meeting Sea Rat (Russian: Три маленькие белые мышки. Визит Морской крысы, Czech: Příběhy myší rodinky I, Polish: Były Sobie Myszki Trzy: Na Spotkanie Cioci Myszy)
• The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik (Russian: Похождения бравого солдата Швейка)
• Marvellous Mice Adventures: Sea Rat's Birthday, (Russian: Три маленькие белые мышки. День рождения морской крысы, Polish: Były Sobie Myszki Trzy: Urodzinowe Śledztwo)

Other games do work; however, we haven’t playtested them. You may find more information on our Wiki. Also, we are looking for the Lithuanian version of Little Longnose and Polish releases of Little Mice games and Wait for it! game. If you happen to have a copy, please contact sev.

We continue the active development so that support for other games will follow shortly. The primary constraint is playtesting.

To run these games, you need the latest daily build of ScummVM. If you encounter any hiccups during your quests, please file them on our issue tracker.

We are excited to announce that Rise of the Dragon is now ready for public testing. This is the first of a small number of games built using the DGDS (Dynamix Game Development System) engine.

The Dynamix name may be familiar – bought by Sierra in 1990, the Dynamix brand continued and became well known for action and puzzle games like The Incredible Machine, A10 Tank Killer, and Red Baron. They also made a few adventures using the custom DGDS engine.

Rise of the Dragon is set in Los Angeles in a dark version of the future, circa 2053. You play as Blade Hunter, a private investigator and retired police officer. After a designer drug kills the mayor's rebellious daughter, Chandra, Hunter is hired to find the people responsible for releasing the drug on the streets. What Blade ultimately finds is much more than he expected. Rise of the Dragon combines classic point-and-click adventure style with platforming arcade sequences, giving a unique gameplay combination.

You’ll need the latest daily build of ScummVM and files from the DOS version of the game, which you can buy at GOG (check our wiki for the required data files). Please file any issues you notice on our bug tracker.