Trapped Chapter 2 – The Dark is expected to be released December 30. The Dark is the second installment in the Trapped trilogy created by Rodrigo Roesler.

The author was kind enough to answer a few questions for FreeGamesNews readers (thanks Rodrigo!)

FreeGamesNews: Hi Rodrigo. Would you please introduce yourself to our readers and tell us more about your background?

Rodrigo: Well, I’m a front-end web developer since 2002, when I first started to work with HTML. From the beginning I started to focus on programming, that was my whole background and soon enough I specialized in javaScript and actionScript. I have that strange thing that makes me enjoy making things more than using them, such as games. I also have some cats and usually lie to people that I can play the piano.

FreeGamesNews: When did you start developing Flash games?

Rodrigo: Back in 2002, when I started to work with Flash and learn ActionScript, the first thing I thought of was an adventure game, but it didn’t work out because of my lack of experience. In these five years I made perhaps a dozen different games, most of them unfinished, just for the fun of it. I always enjoyed creating or adapting puzzle/board games. That’s probably because, apart from adventures and a few puzzles, my favorite games always involve boards, dice, cards, friends and beer, and a far distance from any computer available.

(more…)

After almost a year, the long awaited final chapter of the Trapped trilogy, The Labyrinth, is live! According to Rodrigo Roesler and Bruno Maestrini, “in this chapter you will hopefully understand how the story ends and what the hell David is doing in that weird house.”

The engine used in this game was remade from scratch and there was a complete remodeling of the visuals!

If you want to learn more about Rodrigo Roesler and Trapped trilogy, you can read the interview he gave us last year.

Have fun!

Update: The Labyrinth is now hosted on FGN’s server, kudos to Rodrigo and Bruno!

Matt Sandorf – Journey to Endless Entertainment is a brand new Room Escape / Adventure advergame created by Rodrigo Roesler and Bruno Maestrini (Trapped series: The Dark, The White Rabbit) for Sony Europe.

“In the 90’, some insanely rich Japanese businessman secretly started to build a space station. Not even NASA had ever heard about it.

It was supposed to be a kind of super resort *slash* mega science lab. He wanted it to be the most modern thing ever. The news got out a few months ago, after over a decade of hard work.

The station was sent to space with all sorts of scientists, specialists and artists.

And me! When I heard about the Beatles reunion on board, well… I HAD to come! My name is Matt Sandorf and nobody saw me get on the ship. I’m pretty sure I’m safe here.

Hey, there is someone here! Oh crap…

Take him to the store room!”

You are trapped in the store room now, and I’m sure it won’t take long before you get out of it. The problem is you are in space station, remember?

This game uses the same engine as the Trapped series, so if you liked Rodrigo Roesler’s other games, you won’t be disappointed with this new one!

Have fun!

Thanks to all of you who voted for their favorite developers for 2007! The vote is now over, and the undisputed winner with more that one-third of the votes is… Bernd Mattiebe!

As I’m writing this, Bernd’s most famous site, Woggerworld, has been hacked and has been temporarily taken down :-( This is a bad news for the whole Wogger community and we should give him all the support we can and hope his site will be up and running again soon!

Paskapet finished second in the competition and Mateusz Skutnik and Rodrigo Roesler are third ex-aequo!

Congrats to all our winners and to all the nominees!

Final Results:

1 – Bernd Mattiebe	37.9%
2 – Paskapet	19.6%
3 ex-aequo – Mateusz Skutnik / Rodrigo Roesler	9.3%
5 – Bart Bonte	7.1%
6 – Stephen Harris	3.7%
7 ex-aequo – Federico Rutenberg / Yoshio Ishii	2.9%
9 –Joel Esler	2.7%
10 – Shawn Tanner	1.9%
11 – John Cooney	1.4%
12 – WeCreateStuff	1.1%

A big thank you to everyone that cast a vote in the 2007 Best Developers of the Year.

We are pleased to announce that nearly 5000 votes have been cast since you started voting for your favorite developers.

Without further ado, here are the 12 finalists you picked as the Best Developers of 2007 in their category, ranked by total votes received!

Paskapet (Russia) – Best Developer 2007 (Room Escape games)

Paskapet is a very prolific Flash game developer from Russia, who has released six Room Escape games in the last eight months! After the release of Escape Library, Paskapet made five games in the “Colored Rooms” series, Escape Pink Room, Magenta Room, Green Room, Orange Room and Turquoise Room.

Rodrigo Roesler (Brazil)

Rodrigo Roesler is a Web designer and a Flash game developer from Brazil. He released Trapped – The White Rabbit last September, the first installment of a very promising trilogy of Point’n’Click adventure and Escape games. The second installment, The Dark, is now live!

Shawn Tanner (U.S.A.)

Shawn Tanner is the author of several popular flash games and the Webmaster of Afro-Ninja Productions. Shawn released three Room Escape games this year in his very popular Escape series: Escape the Car, Escape the Closet and Escape the Phone Booth.

Bernd Mattiebe (Germany) – Best Developer 2007 (Adventure games)

Bernd Mattiebe is a German artist and designer. He is also the man who gave life last year to Wogger, a cute red alien. Since then, he has created over 100 chapters for the Wogger Mini series that more and more people enjoy playing every week.

Federico Rutenberg (Argentina)

Federico Rutenberg released the first chapter of Esklavos last April. Esklavos is a Point’n’Click Adventure series involving two young aliens. Since then, he has created 9 more chapters and Esklavos is quickly becoming popular series.

Mateusz Skutnik (Poland)

Mateusz Skutnik defines himself as a Flash games architect and a graphic novel artist. His best known adventure/escape series so far is Submachine (with two new chapters this year, Submachine 4 and FLF). He also started two new adventure series this year, Covert Front and Daymare Town. The author is now developing “Submachine 5: the Root” that should be released in January.

Bart Bonte (Belgium) – Best Developer 2007 (Puzzle games)

Bart Bonte is a Flash developer from Belgium who has already developed successful games. More well known for his Room Escape games (the Bonte Room series, A bark in the Dark, Loose the Moose), Bart released several puzzle games in 2007, such as Fields of Logic, Chicken Grow and more recently, Factory Balls.

Yoshio Ishii (Japan)

From japan, Yoshio Ishii has been designing Flash games for several years now. He is well known for his Neko Series, a series of games involving cats. In 2007, he decided to focus on creating puzzle games, and released some very creative games such as Plupon, the amazing Hoshi Saga series, and more recently, Slidon.

Stephen Harris (New Zealand)

Stephen Harris is the author of the Bloons series and many other successful games. The original Bloons game was released last March and became an instant hit. Since then, Stephen has created Bloons World, a site dedicated to Bloons fans, two “Bloons” Tower Defense games, and a few other puzzle/skill games!

John Cooney (U.S.A.) – Best Developer 2007 (Action/Skill games)

John Cooney is very well known in the Flash gaming community for his Ball Revamped and Four Second series. He released many new games this year, such as Scribble 2, Luminara, Ball Revamped 5 or Ocean Explorer to name a few. Now working full time at ArmorGames, you can expect more creative games from this guy!

WeCreateStuff (Israel)

WeCreateStuff defines itself as a group of (young) nerds with way too much free time. They released Portal: The Flash Version last October, a awesome Flash 2D version of the first person action/puzzle game developed by Valve.

Joel Esler (Australia)

Joel Esler is a Flash game developer from Australia. Last September, he uploaded at Kongregate his first game, a physics-based platformer named Manifold. Even though Manifold was only a demo, it was an instant hit. After a few weeks, Joel released Fold, a full version of his previous game with much more challenging levels!

Trapped Chapter 2 – The Dark is live! According to Rodrigo Roesler, the creator of the Trapped series, this second chapter “is easier than the previous one.

But, at the same time, the puzzles are more elaborated, so they demand bigger chains of thoughts and actions. We kept the non-pixel-hunting politics, and that won’t change, but there are hidden items that need specific actions to be found. So I think (and the tests kind of confirm it) its difficulty level will rely more on the player than the game.”

If you want to learn more about Rodrigo Roesler and Trapped trilogy, you can read the interview he recently gave us.

Have fun!

Update: Trapped – The Dark walkthrough in comment #53 (thanks DNOMN8R!)

Here at FreeGamesNews, we love free browser-based games. The end of the year is coming soon, and it’s time for YOU to cast your vote for the Best Developers of the year in our first annual FreeGamesNews Awards.

Here are the 10 nominees in the category Best Room Escape games Developers of 2007, in alphabetical order:

John Feltham (U.K.)

John Feltham is a Flash developer from UK. His first two games, Sphere Core and Cube Core were released last October, followed by last month’s Prism Core. His Core series is growing in popularity and was well received by many gamers.

Pierre Gauthier (France)

Pierre Gauthier is a French Flash developer who released Muselock, his first Room Escape game, last summer. The author provided both French and English versions of a very nice-looking and creative game, and we are looking forward to his next game.

Gump (Japan)

Gump is a Flash game designer from Japan. He is the creator of Terminal House, Rental House and Guest House. All three games were released this year and each installment is better than the last.

Idac (Japan)

Idac is a Japanese Web design and software development company. They have released numerous excellent Room Escape games over the past two years. With titles like The White Day, The Scrapper, Vision Museum, The Shochu Bar, Strawberry Tomato and Nigepico 1.2, IDAC is a serious contender for the award! Their latest installment, Bon Voyage, was released yesterday…

Mofuya (Japan)

Mofuya is a Japanese Flash developer and the creator of several Room Escape games such as Mobai Room, Swan’s Room and Quaint Room. He released two new Escape games this year, Another Room and Mobai Room 2.

Noaki Nakashima (Japan)

Noaki Nakashima is a Room Escape games developer from Japan, famous for his popular Dona Room series. The author released new Room Escape games this year, Unfair Note and Dona Room 3 – Bath Escape. Unfortunately, most of his games are only available in Japanese.

Neutral (Japan)

Neutral is a Japanese Flash Escape games developer: he has produced two challenging and very polished Room Escape games in 2007, Sphere and RGB. Neutral is now working on his next Room Escape game that should be released in the first half of 2008. Keep an eye on his work and in the meantime, enjoy his latest mini-game, Christmas Escape!

Paskapet (Russia)

Paskapet is a very prolific Flash game developer from Russia, who has released six Room Escape games in the last eight months! After the release of Escape Library, Paskapet made five games in the “Colored Rooms” series, Escape Pink Room, Magenta Room, Green Room, Orange Room and Turquoise Room.

Rodrigo Roesler (Brazil)

Rodrigo Roesler is a Web designer and a Flash game developer from Brazil. He released Trapped – The White Rabbit last September, the first installment of a very promising trilogy of Point’n’Click adventure and Escape games. The second installment, The Dark, is due before the end of December…

Shawn Tanner (U.S.A.)

Shawn Tanner is the author of several popular flash games and the Webmaster of Afro-Ninja Productions. Shawn released three Room Escape games this year in his very popular Escape series: Escape the Car, Escape the Closet and Escape the Phone Booth.

“Trapped is an online adventure game in three parts where a man wakes up in an unknown room the morning after his wife Becca left him. When he opens his eyes, he discovers a body lying by his side. Now he’s gotta find out what happened, who’s the dead man, who killed him, where he is and why he’s there. But sorting that out and leaving the house will prove more complicated than it seemed at a first glance”.

Created by Rodrigo Roesler, Trapped – The White Rabbit is the first episode of what appears to be a very promising trilogy. This first part is really polished, has a user friendly interface and a save option.

There is no doubt that Trapped will appeal to many Room Escape – Point’n’Click games fans!

Have fun!

Update: Trapped – The White Rabbit walkthrough in comment #8 (thanks Jerre!)