When THQ filed for bankruptcy shortly before their implosion in January, Double Fine took an active interest in one small piece of the publisher’s DNA - the distribution rights for Costume Quest and Stacking. But in the auction that followed, the rights were scooped up alongside hundreds of others by relative unknowns Nordic Games.
Double Fine head Tim Schafer isn’t very happy about that - though he doesn’t particularly care about the money.
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Having already had one exclusive Humble Bundle back when they ran the Amnesia Fortnight Bundle, you would have thought Double Fine would have other things to do than offer all their lovely and awesome games in a low price juicy package.
Luckily, they don’t so read on to find out how you can buy Brutal Legend, Stacking, Psychonauts, and Costume Quest for less than $10.
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Double Fine’s Kickstarter funded adventure game has been pootling along since February last year, well now it finally has a name. A name and a website: Broken Age sees you play as two characters split across the universe, one is a girl selected for sacrifice by her village and, the other, a boy left alone on a space station that cares for his every need.
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Dropchord is a rhythmic score-attack game - the sort of visually-fuzzy, mechanically-precise affair you might expect from Rob ‘RetroRemakes’ Fearon or Brian Wilson’s EEG scan results. It comes from Double Fine - specifically the division behind Kinect Part and Double Fine Happy Action Theater - and looks like the sort of lovely a post-Super Hexagon world needs.
It’s also the first good reason to look long and hard at finger-based Minority-Report-made-flesh device Leap Motion as a serious gaming proposition.
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Ron Gilbert came to Double Fine to build The Cave. No more, no less. The idea for a stonily-narrated spelunking expedition into the dark heart of three archetypes had been bouncing around his head for 20 years, and was eventually bounced off the skull of sometime partner in design Tim Schafer in a late night conversation. Now The Cave is done, and Gilbert deems it a fitting time to move on.
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That unplaceable dripping noise that’s been bothering you all morning? Yeah. That’s the sound of your face melting. Unfortunately, PC gaming has been in the throes of one long, Marty Friedman-style shredsome solo since a pair of Brütal Legend promo items were unshackled from their Beelzebubian prison yesterday and allowed to tear through TF2 like dogs at a picnic.Read and Comment
Double Fine's rock opus Brutal Legend has long been absent from the PC. Despite coming out on consoles more than three years ago, we've been left resorting to less pure forms of rock gaming (rock, paper, scissors is pretty much the extent). These dark times are nearing an end however as earlier today - though spotted in the Steam database last week - Double Fine announced Brutal Legend is coming to the PC.
There's no release date as yet, though there is a trailer and news of a playable multiplayer beta.Read and Comment
Sometimes, Twitter is the electric blue conduit that joins the dots between human beings and makes things happen - campaigns, revolutions and running jokes. But on other occasions, it’s a hub of hubbub, misinformation and exciting propositions that end in disappointment.
See, when Notch told Double Fine’s Tim Schafer via Twitter that the pair should “make Psychonauts 2 happen", he really meant it. But that was before he’d seen the price tag.Read and Comment
Tim Schafer’s beloved Brutal Legend has been spotted as a new addition to the Steam database. Brutal Legend was an action strategy game released back in 2009 for the Xbox 360 and PS3 and it was pretty good. And it starred Jack Black as a roadie/rocker/hero named Eddie Riggs.
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You might be thinking that by my third post of the day I'd be tiring of the snow theme but when you spent five hours trapped in queues at Heathrow because of a little frozen water it tends to sit on the mind a little. So with that in mind:
Double Fine's The Cave shares little with snow, while snow tends to melt in sunlight caves remain unchanged in the sun, they are by definition subterranean and out of the sunlight; snow can be made into a snow man because it is an additive substance, a cave is defined by its unsculpturable absent space; the list goes on. However, what they do share in common is that they're both inhabited by a cast of characters, the likes or which gaming has rarely seen: knights, time-travellers, evil twins (yes, both of them are evil), monks, and hill billies. See them at work in the trailer below.Read and Comment
With THQ's assets going up for a piecemeal auction on 22 January, big publishers like Warner Bros and EA have been examining THQ's different studios and franchises to see if there are any they wish to acquire. However, Wednesday also saw interest from a less expected quarter: according to Distressed Debt Investing Double Fine requested a look at THQ's bankruptcy filing.
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Upcoming other-Double-Fine-adventure The Cave is about two things. One of those things is irrefutably compelling - a talking cavern. The other is more ambiguous, seeing adventure genre great Rob Gilbert adapt his traditional PC sensibilities to console-centric platforming control methods.
But be not afeard - Gilbert has told RPS that he is “primarily a PC gamer" and promises that The Cave will do right by us.Read and Comment
While Tim and his team have been getting up to their elbows in the Double Fine Adventure project, other teams at the studio have been delving into their own games. In Ron Gilbert's case - yes, the creator of Monkey Island - that game is The Cave.
Taking control of seven characters, you must explore the depths of the winding, talking cavern (it narrates the game), so each of the protagonists reaches their goal - finding their love, their princess, solving the scientific problem of the century, or whatever it may be. Check it out below:Read and Comment
The Double Fine Humble Bundle - which sees the internet pick four project ideas from the Double Fine team to be prototyped over the next two weeks -has closed, the votes cast and the projects picked. Now the prototyping phase begins. The next 14 days, titled Amnesia Fortnight, are going to be spent rapidly designing, coding, art-ing, and throwing away-ing; then the results will be handed away to anyone who dropped funds in the past week.Read and Comment
The latest Humble Bundle is a little bit special, instead of whacking together great games and letting you buy them for whatever you're willing to spend, this time you are paying for game ideas to be made for you by Double Fine.
Okay, let's break it down a little. Each year, Double Fine runs a two week game jam called Amnesia Fortnight, they halt work on all their other projects to prototype a few new ideas from the team. All of Double Fine's recent output, such as Costume Quest, Iron Brigade, and Stacking, was a result of these jams. What you are paying for is to vote for one of the pitch ideas from the Double Fine team to be selected to prototype over the fortnight. then you'll recieve the game at the end of the two weeks whatever state it's in. You also get your hands on the prototype versions of Costume Quest and Happy Song from the very first Amnesia Fortnight.
Check out a few of the pitches below:
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Take a look at Project Eternity, potential fantasy RPG and Kickstarter concept of the hour. At the time of writing, it has long since reached its minimum target and nears $1.8 million in funding, where stretch goals promise development of a new playable race, class, and companion. At $2 mil there’ll be a player house; at $2.2 mil, Linux support. Stretch goals beyond $2.4 mil are TBA, but momentum is such that developer Obsidian couldn’t be blamed for tentatively writing them up this afternoon.
Yet in the world of groundswell publishing, not all pledges are equal. Amongst the 43,089 backers Project Eternity has amassed to date, less than 100 are responsible for 8% of the development budget. Of that near-$1.8 million total, these 93 backers have together offered $141,000 - in some cases, more than $10,000 each.Read and Comment
Well, isn’t this lovely? “We’re making a switch from console work-for-hire and going to direct to consumer and free-to-play projects," Double Fine’s vice president of business development Justin Bailey has told VentureBeat. “That process has taken place over the last 18 months."Read and Comment
Double Fine's announced that Iron Brigade will be stomping on to Steam next Monday, August 13. Previously known as Trenched, the Mechwarrior meets Ironside tower defence game has been enjoying a warm reception on XBLA since last year, cooing at us PC types and waving a digital handkerchief from afar. Next week, we too shall know its warm embrace. The PC version also includes the game's Rise of the Martian Bear DLC, by way of an apology for its tardiness, I suppose.Read and Comment
