Double Fine Studios, the production team behind Psychonauts, Stacking, Brutal Legend, and several other creative and hilarious games is in the news again thanks to the announcement that they will be returning to Double Fine founder Tim Schafer's roots- the point and click adventure game.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":691626,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"gbunfiltered,","session":"A"}']The most interesting aspect of the San Francisco based studio's new project is not that they're trying revive the adventure genre for the modern day, but that they are also forgoing the traditional route that many studios take to receive funding for their game. Instead of relying on a publisher, Double Fine is inviting their fans to kickstart the funding of their new project with the goal of reaching $400,000 by mid March. Beyond that, they're also documenting the entire thing with the help of 2 Player Productions, the company behind Reformat The Planet, and, more recently a documentary on Notch and Minecraft.
Regarding the documentary process, Shafer has said "You know how they say you don't want to know how sausage gets made? Well we're going to show you how the sausage gets made. We're going to take our sausage and shove it right in your face." Furthermore, Schafer promises that fans will be able to contribute to the direction that the project takes by submitting input on the concept art and music that is shared throughout the documentary process.
Tim Schafer has contributed his fair share of point and click adventure games such as The Secret of Monkey Island 1 & 2, and Full Throttle, but the last time he worked on an adventure game was over a decade ago with Grim Fandango in 1998. Personally, I think this new enterprise has the potential to be one of the best adventure games ever made.
For those of you interested in learning more about the Kickstart project, Double Fine has an article describing more of the details, and a very funny video with Tim Schafer explaining everything right here.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure
Update: Double Fine has more than met their goal of $400,000 in only a few hours, woot!