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Little Big Adventure 1 & 2 get open sourced under the GPL

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Little Big Adventure 1 and 2 are two classic titles originally developed by Adeline Software International and now they've both had their engine source code officially released. They're now available under the GPL license that you can see on GitHub (#1, #2).

Publisher [2.21] announced back on October 8 that a new Little Big Adventure game is on the way, with no other information. Since then they've posted a few other bits, including the decision to use Unreal Engine for the next-generation game. Today though, October 27, they announced a surprise with the source release mentioning "Our objective is to preserve those pieces of technical mastery and true groundbreaking vision. We also want to give back to the LBA community who kept cheering on the games during all those years.".

Each game has two code repositories, one where only they and ex-Adeline developers will contribute and one dedicated to the community for pull requests. They further note that "this code was never meant to be seen by anyone outside the Adeline Software team. The source we are releasing is mainly untouched (only the developers names were removed) including bad french, variable names in “frenglish” and some comments that are just too funny not to share".

The engine source code may be open source but like a lot of projects that do this, the rest of the assets are not so you still need a copy of each game. You can find them on:

LBA 1: GOG, Steam

LBA 2: GOG, Steam

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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8 comments

Luke_Nukem Oct 27, 2021
No way, this is awesome! I hope many more games manage to do this. It's an excellent way to preserve gaming history.
tpau Oct 27, 2021
Often game sources are lost and have to be reverse engineered.
I think more Studios should publish their sources.
Although raw assets would also help to preserve and improve the original game.
Jollt Oct 27, 2021
Barony is like that, I love it
WorMzy Oct 27, 2021
Wow, what a blast from the past!
pb 10 years Oct 27, 2021
Nice move. The first game already has a ScummVM engine, but maybe with the code now open, it will be easier to maintain/improve it (currently it mentions minor glitches). However there is no engine for LBA2. Fingers crossed.
Ketil Oct 28, 2021
I loved LBA2 as a child. Progressing in the game was always an achievement and I got very passionate about it when it happened. We named a real rabbit Twinsen because of my passion for the game. I also enacted a scene from the game at school one time and my mother sewed me a tunic. I don't think I gave the audience enough context prior to the enactment so it was probably just some kids enacting a weird scene on a stage. I believe I was 7 or 8 at the time.
Spoiler, click me
The scene at the moon where Twinsen joined up with Baldino and learn about island CX

Sadly, I didn't get the chance to play LBA1 until much later. I don't remember if I was a teenager or an adult, but it was so much later that I didn't get the same nostalgic feeling for it. I still think the first game is great. Probably better story-wise, but I like the game engine, and the look and feel of lba2 better.

A new LBA game would be a buy for sure. Would be interesting to see if they manage to do it in a good way.


Last edited by Ketil on 28 October 2021 at 1:18 am UTC
jordicoma Oct 28, 2021
It's a great neews, but we need to upgrade to be portable. It has too assembly and dos/windows specifics.
I never played the games, but I think it's one of the great of its time.
Valck Oct 30, 2021
I remember LBA as a game I absolutely wanted to love, but one of those where I hit a wall relatively early on and couldn't figure out the solution no matter what I tried, and that was that.
Funny to think of it, when now you just DuckDuck for a walkthrough and are on your merry way in minutes.

And I definitely remember hints at some very dark undertones in the story, but sadly I never got to uncover more than a few early steps. And now... I somehow feel I've seen and heard enough dark mysteries and conspiracies in RL for a lifetime already that I don't want to go back to add a few old fictional ones on top of that...
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