Hey, gamers! Wanna feel old? What if I told you that the classic LucasArts title Grim Fandango just turned 25? Time is indeed march?ing on unabated. However, to offer some small comfort, you can now get the game's soundtrack on LP.

As spotted by TechRadar, the good people at iam8bit have launched a vintage black vinyl that features the remastered orchestral soundtrack to Grim Fandango. Not only that, but it comes with a "diecut cover" that has the many faces of one Manny Ca??lavera.

While the soundtrack was released a few years ago for the game's 20th anniversary, this re??presents a chance to own it on a neat-looking vinyl set. It's currently priced at $42.99.

Perhaps one of Schafer's finest works (commence disagreements)

Released October 30, 1998, Grim Fandango is something of a relic of a bygone (and almost certainly missed) era of PC gaming. The story concerns the aforementioned Manny, a travel agent working for the Department of Death, selling luxury packages to souls as they make their way to the?? af??terlife.

In typical 90s LucasArts fashion, the point-and-click narrative of the game was notorious for its convoluted, sometimes illogical puzzles. It was a simper time though, ??and any frustrations were quickly offset by the story's sharp writing, courtesy of Tim Schafer.

It's not too late to play Grim Fandango for those who missed out. A remastered version was released in 2015, which maintains its original look but adds some modern tweaks. To sweeten the deal a bit, you can get the game for a massive 75% off through Steam or GOG until November 6.

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Sitting down with an industry legend

Tim Schafer is a busy man as of late. As if the stress of developing Psychonauts 2 weren't enough, he's also managed to find time to sell his studio. At E3, Schafer took the stage at the Xbox press conference to anno??unce that Microsoft had acquired Double Fine. It's a tremendous get for Microsoft who's looking for accomplished developers to add variety to Xbox Game Pass.

Big things are on the horizon for Schafer and Double Fine. We had a chance to sit down with Schafer at PAX West to chat about all sorts of stuff -- the future and the past, successes and regrets, big games and smal?l games. And, of course, we get into the M?icrosoft acquisition and what that means for Double Fine.

[The following intervie?w tr??anscript has been lightly edited for clarity and flow.]

Destructoid: How has work been since the Microsoft acquisition? I imagine things are less stressful on your end -- not needing to constantly worry about the business and financial side of a lot o?f things now. That's the parent company's job.

Tim Schafer: Soon. The deal was agreed upon but there's this due dilig?ence period. It's like we're in escrow. It's gonna be finalized later this month and then we'll find out what it's really like. Right now, there's ??still a lot of business stuff to do to wrap it up. To officially stitch the companies together.

Destructoid: Once that does go through, what's the stuff you're looking forward to -- I gu??ess the old parts of your job that you just want to let go?

Schafer: Biz dev. I have great biz dev people doing stuff for me but still, I have to get?? involved with the eternal question of "Where's the next chunk of money coming from?" "How are we going to change what we're doing creatively to go after that money?" "What are publishers signing these days?" "Do we have to do stuff like free-to-play?" All those kinds of things are gone. Microsoft wanted us to join them so that we'd add our own type of games to their platform and to Game Pass. That's all we have to worry about doing. Just worry about "What's the best Double Fine game we can make?" That's all we have to think about.

Destructoid: As a privately-owned company for t??he better part of two decades, what was important for an acquisition to make sense?

Schafer: I asked two questions. First, what would happen to our culture. Would we change our email to be @microsoft? These little things that are really important to me. Would you put up a logo in the lobby? And they don't want to do any of that. They said "No, keep everything the way it is. You're Double Fine, you stay Double Fine." It's what Microsoft talks about as being their unplugged studios -- Ninja Theory, inExile, and Obsidian. They're still doing their own thing. That makes sense to me. When [head of Xbox Game Studios] Matt Booty told me about that, I could see why it'd make sense for a platform-holder like Microsoft to want a diverse group of creative studios creating content just for their platform. I could see why they wouldn't want to buy us and turn us into a Halo outsourcer. It doesn't make any sense.

The second thing was like "Are we protected?" I wanted to make sure that w?e don't just disappear overnight. That's always a worry, but I feel like I take them for their word that they want to do this and that they're very serious about it. They seem to have a nice long-term strategy that I believe in about how to adapt to this new world of subscription models and all that.

Destructoid: You mentioned that they don't want to change the studio culture, and you don't want to change the studio culture. That's all presumed to kind of be from the development side. Do you guys still plan to publish indies or is the Double Fine Presents program being sunsetted with Samurai Gunn 2?

Schafer: Well, that's a great question because how Double Fine Presents will evolve is kind of an unknown. It doesn't make sense to do exactly the kind of publishing stuff if we can't do it-- like if the platforms are limited. From a bu??siness sense,?? I don't know if it structurally makes sense to have a publisher within [another publisher]. It's a complicated issue. 

But, if you go back to why Double Fine Presents existed, a lot of it came about because there's so many games and it's really hard for any individual game now to get a lot of attention for itself. We've been around for a long time, helping people run their Kickstarters and giving advi?ce here and there. People like [vice president of business] Greg [Rice]. We've both been through a lot of deals, seen how they happen, how platform-holders operate, how the press works. All these different things that maybe a first-time indie dev doesn't know about. We thought we could help them with that and also kind of pick our favorite games and give them more exposure. Whether or not we're still hands-on publishing those games ourselves, we can still be fulfilling that mission of just helping indie devs even though we're a part of Microsoft. 

We can also still do things like Day of the Devs which is another part of Double Fine Presents that helps elevate 70 or 80 games, and we let people come meet those developers and play those games, a??nd it's free to the public. It's a great way to approach that same mission, and we can still do that without officially putting our name on it and taking a share of the revenue. We don't have to do that anymore.

Destructoid: Psychonauts seems like a bigger project compared to ??other recent games of Double Fine's -- from a budget and personnel standpoint. Moving forward, do you want to go back to projects that are smaller in sco??pe--

Schafer: Yes!

Destructoid: Really?

Schafer: Yes! [laughing]

Destructoid: So, you want to go back to things that are more along the lines of like Rad or Headlander?

Schafer: Only because I like to do the opposite of what I last did. When we did Broken Age, I really like that game but afterward I was like "I want to make a big world. I want to make a big world to explore again." Now we're making Psychonauts. After Psychonauts, I want to do the opposite. I want to make something really small. I just naturally cycle back and forth between things like Psychonauts and Brutal Legend which are really opposite. Just try different things. When you're doing something creat??ive, I think it's natural to try to do the opposite. Especially when something takes four y?ears to make.

It's nice in some ways to have the scope to tell a big story. But, there are also some sma??ller ideas that have been kicking around in my head that I never thought I could get a publisher to sign. Now I'm thinking about them again because I don't have to go through that same process.

Destructoid: This is probably the end of the road as far as crowdfunding goes for Double Fine. Can you give me a postmortem of sorts? Like, you got to ma?ke some stuff that probably wouldn't have otherwise gotten funded, but it puts you in a position where every single person feels like they're an investor.

Schafer: They literally are an investor in the case of Psychonauts. They made some money. That was important to us. It happened a little bit with Oculus. When Oculus got bought for billions of dollars, some of the original Kickstarter backers were like "Umm, you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for us." There was a little bit of a backlash about that. They gave all those people a free?? Oculus and kind of made up with them. That's an example of what I was afraid of. These people feel like investors and they're going to have expectations as an investor. That's one of the reasons we helped to get Fig off the ground. We wanted to have a platform where people could get back.

We probably won't be doing any crowdfunding anymore because we have this relationship with Microsoft. Looking back on it, it was amazing how that experience of having that Broken Age Kickstarter go so big so fast. It was really something I'll never forget. We had a relationship with our community before, but this felt like the end of It's a Wonderful Life where George Bailey knew people loved him. But then all of a sudden, everyone came to his house and dumped a bunch of money on his head. It's an emotional thing where the town comes and helps hi?m in his time of need. It felt like that and it has changed things with our community ever since. We started to relate to them a lot more and know them a lot more. Wheth??er they see themselves as investors or more like patrons, they believed in something and made it happen. That wouldn't have happened without them.

Crowdfunding has definitely evolved and changed. I Kickstart a lot of board games now. It has been normalized. It's not so much an exciting story, but more l??ike a business model. It's just a way that it's done. And in that way where we always said it wasn't going to be done, which is that it's not a pre-order. You're investing in this thing with risk. Hopefully it'll happen but there's a risk, but you believe in the creator and you want to help them achieve their dreams. That's not really what it is a lot of the time. Those projects still happen once in a while but you have to have a really unique story to make that work. You have to have project that actually couldn't ever happen through ??the normal gatekeeping system of film, television, games -- anything. And we're making it happen through this democratized path. I think it still is a cool thing, but people have to come out with projects that really speak to it and tell that story.

Destructoid: Where do you think the industry is going with subscription services? Game Pass is so good that it feels like Xbox's competitors have to figure out s??omething similar, right?

Schafer: I don't know where it's going and that's one of the reasons we felt good about getting acqu??ired. Is it go?ing to go like Netflix or is it going to go like Spotify? Is it going to be a great opportunity where a lot of people are funding a lot of original content? Or is it going to be this thing like Spotify which is great for the consumer but bands don't make any money? I've never been very good at predicting the future, so it's a good time to be indoors.

Destructoid: Only one Double Fine game came to Switch, and it was the game that released last week (Rad). A descriptor people use for Double F??ine games always seems to be that they're "charming," and in a lot of ways that seems like a perfect match for Switch. How do you feel about not having more of a presence on Switch, and that it's presumably going to stay that way with the Microsoft deal?

Schafer: I love the Switch, and a lot of people at Double Fine are huge Nintendo fans and I think we always have been and will be. Early on in my career, Super Mario 64 was obviously very influential for me. And it always felt weird that I feel like I just cannot sell a game in Japan. Japanese games people would come to visit at LucasArts and they would look at Grim Fandango and they'd be like "Are these characters done?" One of them actually said that. I was like "Yeah, that's the final art," and he was lik??e "Th?ey don't have skin." I always thought that we had very Japanese sensibility in our love of design and love of character. But, I guess our taste and aesthetic are more American than I realized. Some day we'll have a game that Japanese people will like.

Destructoid: Kind of along the lines of the last question, but with VR -- except the Switch is thriving and VR seems t??o ??be flailing. Would you have liked to do more with VR given the creative tools it affords?

Schafer: No.

Destructoid: You're done with it?

Schafer: People always ask if I have regrets, and the only regrets I have in my career are financial. If I had invested more in VR, I would've made a lot more money. We lost a lot of people to VR. A lot of people on our team were really interested in VR and wanted to mess around with it. They went on to do huge things. Both Tilt Brush and Medium are ex-Double Fine people.?? Tyler Hurd obviously ??does a lot of cool things.

Part of me thinks "Wow, if I bundled those people into a subsidiary of Double Fine, I could've sold that for millions." But that's a financial regret. I don't think that was the right thing to do creatively for me because my heart wasn't in it. I could've made more money at that period if I loved VR, but I just never did. Now, I don't regret that at all because I don't think I'd still be interested in even if I was interested in it back then. People are doing cool stuff in VR, but it's? just not for me. I think a lot of the creative people I know that got into VR, they got into it because it opened up a bunch of creative possibilities. It doesn't mean they intrinsically love VR, the?y just love exploring new spaces. When another new space opens up, they'll all move onto that.

Destructoid: Not holding you to anything here, but from a personal standpoint, which of your games would you like to make a sequel for? I’m sure a lot of people would like to hear you say Brutal Legend, but I think it’d be really neat to get another Stacking or Trenched.

Schafer: We tried to make a Stacking 2. Publishers wouldn't go for it. For years, I was really anti-sequel because I always have a new idea that I want to do. They wanted me to make a sequel to Full Throttle but if I did that, I wouldn't have made Grim Fandango. If I did that to Grim Fandango, I wouldn't have made Psychonauts. And on and on. So, I didn't for years. Then the first one we did was either Costume Quest 2 or Kinect Party, which is technically a sequel but kind of more like an expansion to Happy Action Theater. Psychonauts 2 is the first time I'm really?? getting into it. I like it because jumping back into it, it's weird ho?w natural it is to write those characters again. We might do it again someday.

Broken Age was a look back to adventure games, a whole genre I hadn't done in a long time. Then the remasters of Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, and Day of the Tentacle were looking back. Psychonauts 2 is brand new but it's also a sequel, so it's also kind of looking back. Since 2012, I've just been looking back in some ways. I'm really looking forward to doing something completely original and not connect??ed to anything.

The post Tim Schafer talks Microsoft acquisition, why Japan doesn’t like his games, and what’s after Psychonauts 2 appeared first on Destructoid.

'We can still fulfill that mission of just helping indie devs'

Double Fine has had an important side hustle ever since 2014. Prim?arily a development studio, Double Fine started a publishing arm five years ago. The concept is mutually beneficial: Indie developers get their name attached to Double Fine's, a surefire way to cut through the thicket of indies all fighting for attention; Double Fine gets a cut of the revenues as the publisher.

It might not be around much longer, though. Microsoft's acquisition of Double Fine threatens to make the Double Fine Presents label redundant and sort of unnecessary. We talked with Double Fine founder Tim Schafer at PAX West, and he admitted that no one's really sure what will happen to the ?studio's publishing business.

Schafer said "How Double Fine Presents will evolve is kind of an unknown. It doesn't make sense to do exactly the kind of publishing stuff if we can't do it-- like if the platforms are limited. From a b??usiness sense, I don't know if it structurally makes sense to have a publisher within [another publisher]. It's a complicated issue."

However, that doesn't mean Double Fine can't move forward with the spirit of the program. "If you go back to why Double Fine Presents existed, a lot of it came about because there's so many games and it's really hard for any individual game now to get a lot of attention for itself," Schafer explained. "We've been through a lot of deals, seen how they happen, how platform-holders operate, how the press works -- all these different things that maybe a first-time indie dev do??esn't know about. We thought we could help them with that and also kind of pick our favorite games and give them more exposure. Whether or not we're still hands-on publishing those games ourselves, we can still be fulfilling that mission of just helping indie devs even though we're a part of Microsoft."

Schafer continued "We can also still do things like Day of the Devs which is another part of Doubl?e Fine Presents that helps elevate 70 or 80 games, and we let people come meet those developers and play those games, and it's free to the public. It's a great way to approach that same mission, and we can still do that without officially putting our name on it and taking a share of the revenue. We don't have to do tha?t anymore."

It's anyone's guess as to where Double Fine Presents goes from here. Maybe it makes more sense to give the program a viking funeral than to adapt it to something that's publishing-adjacent. Whatever the outcome, it's not going to st?op Double Fine from giving quality indies the platform the??y deserve.

We'll have our full interview with ??Tim Schafer later this week.

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Oh, and the game itself

E3 2019 is edging ever closer, with video game fans eagerly awaiting the latest news on their own personal list of dream games. A (double) fine example of said games is the highly-anticipated Psychonauts 2, which will receive a panel at this year's expo.

The Psychonauts 2 panel will be led by Geoff Keighley and feature two very special guests: Double Fine founder Tim Schafer and comedic actor Jack Black. The duo will be on-hand to discuss the ongoing development of the long-awaited sequel and will also ha??ve some fresh game footage to whet fans' appetites, ahead of the game's eventual release on PS4, PC and Xbox One.

No specific tim??e was given for the panel, but we know it will be part of E3 Coliseum. The Coliseum is a series of informal interviews where Keighley chats with developers on their upcoming wares, which allows for a little more detail than is afforded in the big press conferences or on the show floor. No doubt a full schedule will be released once E3 is up and running.

E3 2019 t??akes place bet??ween June 11-13 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Just announced: Join @timoflegend and @jackblack for a special panel and demo of Psychonauts 2 only during #E3Coliseum. //t.co/QOa74rVCXB #E32019 pic.twitter.com/q6SCX5Tjn0

— E3 (@E3) May 21, 2019

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Born to be wild

Classic LucasArts adventure game Full Throttle Remastered is now free on GOG.com. The offer will be valid for the next two days and is being handed out to promote GOG's "Winter Sale." A ton of great games are on sale and you'll even get Everspace for free if you spend $15 or more.

You can head over here to jump on Full Throttle and I'll ??list some of my top picks for GOG's sale.

• Civilization IV: Complete Edition - $7.49
• Hollow Knight - $9.89
• Mages of Mystralia -$5.99
• Samorost 3: Cosmic Edition - $4.59
• SWAT 4: Gold Edition - $4.99
• The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - $2.99

Winter Sale [GOG]

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MANUEL!

At E3 this year, Double Fine will be hosting an event that reunites the original cast from Grim Fandango. Being streamed via Facebook Live, the cast? will do a live reading of select scenes from the game along with live music. ?This is all in honor of the game's 20th anniversary, which suddenly makes me feel very old.

My history with the game is that I completely missed it upon its original release (I was 10 years old and being blown away by Ocarina of Time). I didn't play the game until around 2004 when I had been looking through a list of the "Top 100 Games Ever Made?" and took an immediate inte??rest in the art style. It quickly became a favorite of mine and is something I always recommend to people that pine about the death of adventure games.

Double Fine [Twitter]

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You gotta feed your golden goose

One of the things I'm most interested in hearing about is how creators, well, create -- how they generate ideas and then go about bringing them to life. Everyone seems to have their own personal method. In the case of Double Fine's Tim Schafer, we've gotten an up-close look at how he works thanks to 2 Player Productions' illuminating documentary series about the production of Broken Age.

Speaking at Reboot Develop 2018, Schafer elaborated on his creative process and also shared a fun anecdote about a certain Psychonauts 2 character whose name is decades in the making.

"One of the hardest things to do in a long games career is to manage your own inspiration and your own drive," he explained. "Even if you have success and you have ups and downs, you might h?it this po?int where you're like 'What am I doing? Why am I doing this?' Y'know, the industry is really hard. If you haven't been chasing things you really passionately believe in, you can burn out really easily."

Schafer believes game makers and anyone doing creative ??work for a living has to "take care of whatever thing it is in your brain that comes up with the ideas." Whether it's watching movies, traveling, reading, or simply getting enough sl?eep, there are "all these little things that add up to taking care of the golden goose that lays the eggs in your brain that makes you able to have money and buy food."

"The good ideas will eat away at my brain for a long time," he said. "I tend to write out ideas in notebooks and kind of talk to myself in the book. I'll do this thing called free wri??ting where you sit down with a notebook and you have to keep your hand moving and writing for two minutes, or five minutes, or an hour and you just write and you can't stop. It turns off the editor in your brain. Sometimes you're just complaining about how it's too hot in the office. [Then] you start to come up with 'Oh I'm supposed to be writing this cutscene, I don't know what to do, because?? his character...' and pretty soon you start having maybe an idea. For me, verbalizing your problems unlocks thoughts and creates more thoughts."

Talking through your problems can have a similar result, according?? to Schafer.

"Sometimes I'll go? to lunch with someone and just by telling them the problem I'll also come up with the s??olution. And they'll be like 'thanks for having lunch with me [even though I never said a word].'"

"I think if you're an artist it might be more about drawing and sketching that unlocks it for you. If you're a musician, it's probably a different thing. So just getting into that mode and creating is something that helps the ideas flow. Often the ideas will sit in my head for years though and didn't bash into another idea; it's the two ideas together that reall?y makes the thing work, and I'll get really excited."

Once he's onto something, he likes to test the idea out --?? but only with the right audience.

"I'll try and bring that idea out to the first person. If I tell the wrong person the idea and they react like 'Hmm, hmm' I'll sometimes shut that idea down for years. I feel like ideas for me come out, they don't have any shell, and then they're really soft, and they can be killed really easily. So I bounce 'em off the nicest people I know. In telling them I'll harden that shell a little bit and formulate that pitch -- what it is and how I think about it -- and they'll give me some ideas back. Then I'll tell the second-nicest person I know. Each step along the?? way will make the idea grow a little bigger. Eventually you want to start telling the meanest person you know."

Schafer also opened up about how he write??s characters. "I have a little character template that I try and fill in the form almost like a social media form of what that character was like. I try to get to know every character and then by the time I'm writing dialog, I'm just impr??ovising like an actor almost."

"I have a certain spot in one of my notebooks [where] every time I think of a name for a character that I like, I just write it down. I make this list of names to use some day. Sometimes, like 10 years later, I'll pull one off the list and use it. The main villain in Psychonauts 2 is a name that I've been holding onto for like 2?0 years. [In a whispering internal-monol?ogue voice:] 'That's the best name.'"

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Still VR only

From seemingly nowhere, the once PS4 exclusive Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin is now available on PC. The game doesn't shed its VR requirement, but it is available on the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift via Steam or the Oculus Store. Going for?? $19.99, anyone that picks up the game during its first week on sale will receive 20% off, which isn't that bad of a dea??l at all.

As for whether or not the game is any good, why not take it from our own Jordon Devore? "As someone who is by no means a superfan, Rhombus of Ruin left me feeling proper excited for Psychonauts 2."

Double Fine [Twitter]

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Congratulations, you did

The answer to that question is obviously "yes" because you're here wondering what the heck all this mystery box talk is about. We don't know! That's why it's a mystery box and not a box with plans lai?d bare.

Here's a tweet from Tim Schafer:

ooh! pic.twitter.com/jtw1d7HOHF

— TimOfLegend (@TimOfLegend) March 27, 2017

We'll presumably know more about this in one week and one day, on April 4. Until then,? allow me to take a different "What's in the box???" angle than all the other sites will take:

(Yes, I only posted this as a segue into a season 2 Family Guy clip.)

The post Would you click a headline about Tim Schafer?? and his mystery? box? appeared first on Destructoid.

It's time to ride (again)

With a press of the PS4's touchpad, I quickly switched between Full Throttle's visuals from 1995 and what it looks like in the remaster. It's not a new trick -- both Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle had remasters with the same feature -- but it's a powerful one. It's a good and constant reminder of how far thin??gs have co?me.

But, Full Throttle was no slouch in its day. After the brief demo, I sat down with creator Tim Schafer to talk about the remaster. "It was also the most ambitious game we had done back then as far being re?ally cinematic and moving a lot, a lot of pixels on the screen," he tells us. I believe him; I can see all the pixels and that's indisputable proof.

That ambition was paid back in full. Most of the LucasArts adventure games aimed for the 100,000 sales mark. Full Throttle cleared a million. Schafer muses as to why it did really well, eventually settling on "maybe be??cause it had explosions on the front of the ?box or maybe because it was about bikers."

It made a hell of a lot more money than anyone expected it to, but everything wasn't universally positive. Full Throttle ca??me under fire from fans for its length. "It was the first one that had any sort of blowback about the length. People were like 'Ahh, too short,'" Schafer says. "It's funny because I feel like it fits in a lot better with modern games. It was eight hours. At the time, that was short -- we always did 40 hours for adventure games."

That's why Full Throttle's remaster is particularly interestin?g now. Schafer's right; eight hours is about what people would want from something like this in 2017. "What I learned is that the length is not the most important thing. It's about feeling like you went on a complete adventure. If it feels like the ending is cut off or rushed, I think that's what gets to people more," he ponders.

Schafer continues "I think with Full Throttle you feel like you went through this whole arc and told a whole story. I think we made it the right size and nowadays I think it fits in more with how people play games. There are so many games being released now," he says, pointing out the fact that more than 4,200 games came to Steam last year. "A polished thing like Inside, I think it fits in well."

Even though its length is more in-line with what we'd expect of modern games, there's still the realistic concern that adventure games with sometimes-obtuse puzzles aren't exactly en vogue. Are these remasters for anyone other than the fans who loved them 20 years ??ago? Schafer notes an interesting trend.

"We found with a lo??t of these remasters that there are people who have no idea about adventure games and they like a lot of stuff about it. There are a lot of people who don't like games that move really fast. They like games that move when they move. Adventure games, t??hat's the feel to me. You can sit there and scratch your head and think and the game's not gonna shoot you in the head," he explains.

Schafer continues "You get to think about it and explore and try some things and things aren't going to kill you until you figure out what to do and then you do it and you're rewarded. That's the kind of relaxi??ng experience that a lot of people really like and that's why they like adventure games. But they have to be okay sometimes with being stuck. That's som?ething that is sometimes hard with a modern audience. When a lot of people don't know what to do and they're stuck and they're not in that mindset of 'I need to figure out what to do,' they'll just immediately look it up on the internet or they'll turn the game off. You've gotta get them so wrapped up in the story that they don't want to do that."

Full Throttle rode off into the sunset in 1995. It'll soon do that again but while looking better. According to Schafer, that'll be the extent of protagonist Ben's swan song. "I feel like the story of Full Throttle is complete. I think that story is told. There's always new ideas that we want to try. We make special exceptions sometimes for things when I feel like there's unfinished business. Like, there's stuff in Psychonauts that we want to finish. Whereas Full Throttle was?? kind of seen as a beginning, middle, and end. I think it's complete. ??You could do more but you could also make something new."

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That is just psycho!

Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin will be launching for PS4 on February 21. It is a PlayStation VR exclusive that takes place immediately after the events of the first game. That may sound dau??nting to anyone who hasn't played the first title, but fe?ar not! Sony has a pretty nifty deal going on.

All digital pre-orders for Rhombus of Ruin will include the original game with a purchase. Psychonauts is a PS2-for-PS4 title, so you'll receive higher resolutions, Trophy support, and Remote Play, along with not having to find room for your old PS2. The price for Rhombus is ??listed as $19.99, but PlayStation Plus users can nab it at $17.??99.

A sequel to the beloved Psychonauts was left in limbo for nearly a decade, but recent efforts have made it clear that Double Fine was always interested in continuing the story of Raz and co. Maybe launching your own crowdfunding website wasn't the best idea, but Psychonauts 2 exceeded expectations and received funding. While that full-blown sequel will be arriving at some undi??sclosed time in the future, ?we won't have to wait much longer for more of Tim Schafer's crazy world.

Play the Original Psychonauts for Free with Rhombus of Ruin Pre-order [PlayStation Blog]

The post Get the first Psychonauts for free with a p??re-order of Rhombus of Ruin appeared first on Destructoid.

New gameplay shown

Tim Schafer and Double Fine have announced that Psychonauts 2 will be published by Starbreeze (The Darkness, Payday 2), who is bringing eight million dollars to the table, more than doubling what was raised on Fig (a crowdfunding site similar to Kickstarter that has direct ties to Double Fine). Double Fine is also contributing funding to the project, but just how much is not confirmed. Based on Minecraft creator Ma??rkus "Notch" Persson's claim of Do?uble Fine looking for $18 million to fund the game (the original cost $11.8 million), then that suggests about si?x million being fronted by Double Fine.

To make that eight million back, Starbreeze will take an 85% initial revenue share, dropping to only a 60% share of profits. The other 40% will be divided between Double Fine and its Fig investors, who unlike Kickstarter backers are entitled to a return based on the project's success. Despite this, Double Fine will retain "100% of the intellectual property." Whether or not this implies retainment of creative freed??om is not clear.

In the announcement video, Schafer and the team show off some platforming and new areas. Gameplay appears identical to the original game, swinging on horizontal bars, walking on tightropes, and jumping with psycho balls. The art looks fantastic, but can that same platforming work in 2??018? Even for its time, the original was pra??ised for its style and humor, but was held back by sub-par platforming. 

In general, style does not make up for lackluster gameplay, but Psychonauts' platforming and combat was just acceptable enough to wade through to get to the jokes. I can't imagine Psychonauts 2 having drastically different gameplay, but with systems ?seemingly identical to the original title, I can only ho?pe there are improvements including to overall level design.

As far as the big investment by Starbreeze goes, it was known from the start that a large portion of the budget would be handled by (at the time) an unknown pub??lisher, but something feels weird about proper?? developers and publishers using crowdfunding to get additional funding. I suppose the idea of Fig and Kickstarter being platforms for game makers to have projects 100% funded by fans to allow complete creative freedom rather than serve as mere venture capital is a fantasy. There is no explicit word on how much creative freedom Double Fine will retain, but it makes me wonder.

Starbreeze ?invests $8 million in Double Fine??'s Psychonauts 2 [GamesIndustry.biz]

The post Psychonauts 2’s new publisher Starbreeze dumps $8 million into game appeared first on Destructoid.

FIG also now open to non-accredited investors

The latest update to backers of the crowdfunded sequel to Psychonauts went live a little while ago, and Double Fine's president Tim Schafer sat down with project lead Zak McClendon to show off some of what their team has been workin?g on.

Schafer began the video by letting everyone know that FIG, the crowdfunding platform used for Psychonauts 2, has just been certified by the S??ecurities and Exchange Commiss??ion. As such, those people who committed to invest in the game can now do so. While it's too late to back the project to get t??raditional crowdfunding rewards, it's possible to invest and be rewarded financially depending on how well it does when it's released. The big news is that this certification means non-accredited investors can now invest in FIG games going forward. Prior to the certification, investors in FIG games had to be accredited, meaning a lot more paperwork and hassle from banks before they'd be allowed to invest.

With the business out of the way, Schafer and McClendon sat down to demonstrate what they've been working on for Psychonauts 2. They said that the level they're showing off probably won't be in the finished product, and that they made it as a prototype, a way to get a feel for the Unreal 4 engine using a location they were already familiar with. While the art and level design looks great, both men agreed that Psychonauts 2&nb??sp;won't be returning to the Whispering Rock Psychic Summer C??amp. "No one's ever going to see this except for right here," said McClendon. Schafer agreed: "We built it to burn it." ;

The video continues by demonstrating some of main character Raz's movements, from his walk and jump animations to more complicated movements involving tightropes and trapeze bars. They also showed off a new gliding animation Raz can utilize to slow his descent -- something I wish he'd had when I was guiding him through Psychonauts' infamous Meat Circus.

Once Raz's moves were established, they moved on to the combat,?? showing of??f Psychic abilities. These include old favorites like Psyblast and Telekinesis, but there were some new abilities on display as well. At one point he is seen juggling psychic blades that he can throw long-distance, and he'll also gain the ability to project copies of himself to confuse enemies or just even the odds against a group.

The video closes with some rudimentary combat, though McClendon cautions that this is still very early on. He explained that they have to solidify Raz's moveset before designing enemies that he'll have to use diffe??rent abilities to overcome, which makes a l?ot of sense.

It seems like Psychonauts 2 is shaping up nicely, and the team still has plenty of time left?? before its scheduled release in fall of 2018.

Psychonauts 2 backer update [Fig.co]

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Double Fine by me!

[Update: "Psychonauts is coming out soon, but not?? this week," a Sony re?presentative wrote in an update to the company's weekly releases post. "Apologies for the error. Stay tuned for final timing!"]

Back in December, when Double Fine Productions announced Psychonauts 2 is a thing that's happening, Destructoid asked company founder Tim Schafer if a remaster was also in the cards.

Schafer said that while his studio discusses the topic a lot, it "would involve a lot of remodeling" -- way more than, sa??y, Double Fine's recent remasters of Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle.

The Double Fine boss seemed more keen on the idea of taking advantage of Sony's then-recently announced emulation software, which has been used to bring PlayStation 2 titles to PlaySt?ation 4.

Back then, Schafer called the prospect of going that route an "exciting possibility," but now that the PlayStation Blog has confirmed a slightly enhanced version of the classic platformer will be re-releasing on P??layStation 4 in North America this Tuesday, I suppose it's now more of an 'exciting reality.'

The Drop: New PlayStation Games for 6/7/2016 [PlayStation Blog]

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Purple Tentacle is back in action!

To relive the experience of playing an older game for the first time is a special thing. But when playing an outdated game there’s always a separate lens applied, an unconscious awareness of technologies that exist in? games made today. “Nostalgia” becomes the buffer that? allows us to remove or at least placate those biases, but regardless this lens still lurks in the background.

Remastered games give us the closest experience to what it must have been like to originally play without any buffers or biases (with the exception of living your existence in a cave). I never had the pleasure of playing Day of the Tentacle when it was fresh, but I’ve been granted a second chance with updated technology and? it’s one I won’t pass on this time around.

Day of the Tentacle Remastered (PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, PC [reviewed])
Developer: Double Fine Productions
Publisher: Double Fine Productions
MSRP: $14.99
Released: March 22, 2016

Day of the Tentacle is the sequel to the classic Ron Gilbert hit Maniac Mansion, following one of its original cast members Bernard back to Dr Edison’s twisted mansion to save the day from an evil Purple Tentacle who aims to take over the world. Geeky Bernard is accompanied by Hoagie, a dim but tubular metal rocker, and Laverne, a? slightly disturbed med student with a penchant for stabbing things. After being trapped in three separate time periods, the three work together across 600 years to foil Purple Tentacle’s plans through exploring and solving puzzles in the mansion.

The gameplay is very much akin to point and click adventures of the period, with items that can be picked up, pushed, pulled, or used with other items or characters. Moving forward in the game is achieved by being able to put the right items together for a particular situatio??n, or pursuing various dialogue opti?ons. Of course with this being a Tim Schafer creation much of the logic behind the puzzles is, well, not really logical at all. A lot of progression in the game depends on your ability to piece seemingly unrelated situations and items together across three different characters.

To move forward you need to send items across time to other characters through a port-a-potty that doubles as a time machine, so paying attention to each person’s situation and keeping tabs on which items might be useful to other characters is key. However, the game plants a lot of red herrings so there’s also a balance of not thinking too deeply about a situation or an item. It’s definitely a fine line to walk since there are many puzzles that have off-the-wal?l logic but others that are fairly straightforward. I enjoyed this dynamic but I definitely needed a lot of internet guidance throughout my playthrou?gh.

The plot is as silly as ever, and nothing’s been edited or touched for the most part in this realm. In fact, I noticed a few times when bugs that were present in the original are still found in the HD version (ie missing sound clips). There is of course a lot of wa?cky nonsensical humor that people have come to love in Tim Schafer's games -- from asking John Hancock why he signs his name so big, to having philosophical discussions with a mummy wearing a pirate hat, and watching IRS agents obsess over paperwork -- I wouldn’t have it any other way and I’m glad nothing was edited in that sense.

This enhanced version of Day of the Tentacle is much improved from the original -- the most obvious of which is hand drawn clear, pristine graphics which captures the spirit of the original well. While the voice acting is still the same, sound quality got a hefty facelift with completely remastered sound effects and music. And li?ke other remastered Lucasarts games, you can switch seamlessly b??ack and forth between the classic and new version with the press of a button.

The gameplay is also made much easier with a new, updated radial system which allows you to view and click on your options in a circle after clicking on the area. This not only frees up screen space (as the lower verb menu is now retired) but makes it far easier to click through options. You can also cycle directly through your inventory with a button, allowing you to use it against ot??her items in a room quickly. These shortcuts make the items much easier to navigate and saves a lot of time and energy, especially when guesswork is at play.

Other gameplay features were added including a highlighting tool that shows you which items can be interacted with, and various minor effects sprinkled throughout the game to spruce it up (li??ke animated wind graphics). The autosave feature is really useful and saved me - literally - from losing an hour long playthrough when my power cut out. Controller support is also a much-appreciated function. There’s also over a hundred pieces of concept art to peruse if you’re interested in behind-the-scenes a??rtwork.

The developer’s commentary is probably my favorite addition as I had the chance to learn the reasonings behind why certain game decisions were made. For example, I learned that there?? were originally?? meant to be 6 characters vs the three, but one turned into an NPC while the other two were cut completely. I really enjoyed this feature and highly recommend turning it on for new and old players alike. However, be warned that you can't really move around easily as the commentary ends abruptly if you decide to leave the room.

Day of the Tentacle remastered is an excellent way to feed your 90s soul with good, nonsensical fun. The remastered graphics capture the cartoonish charm of the original perfectly, yet the updated sound and controls give it a much more modern feel. They managed to captu??re the original spirit of the game while still smoothing over any bumps that may have cropped up due to its age. I’m glad I had a chance to play it through this lens, and I’d definitely recommend for any fans of this genre to give it a go, or for old fans of the game to relive the experience in a shinier fashion.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Day of the Tentacle Remastered appeared first on Destructoid.

Maybe, maybe not

Earlier this year, Double Fine released a remastered version of Grim Fandango and the studio has a similarly spit-shined rendition of Day of the Tentacle ready for release in early 2016.

With that in mind, during Destructoid's recent chat with Double Fine chief Tim Schafer regarding Psychonauts 2, we had to ask if the develope??r has any plans to release a polished version of the original game for modern platforms, so new audiences m??ight have an opportunity to see what all the fuss is about before the hotly-anticipated follow-up launches in 2018.

"We talk about this a lot," Schafer said, before mentioning every remaster has its unique challenges. "They’re all different," he added, "And Psychonauts would involve a lot of remodeling."

However, despite the amount of work involved, Schafer has??n't ruled out the possibility just yet.

"We’re trying to figure out what we can do," Schafer told us. "I wouldn’t say we’re never going to do that. If we can figure out a way that we can bring it to a new audience, we would love to have as many people play it as possible." That said, it sounds like a remaster of that scale is more than Double Fine can commit to at present. After contrasting what the studio has done with Day of the Tentacle Remastered with what it would need to do to spruce up Psychonauts, Schafer cut ??himself off ??and admitting "I guess I’m just complaining about how hard it would be."

When we mentioned Sony is working on PlayStation 2 emulation software for PlayStati??on 4, Schafer called it "an exciting possibility," but wouldn't say if Doubl?e Fine would ever go that route.

Psychonauts was initially published on the ori??ginal Xbox, Windows PC, and PlayStation 2 in 2005. Since then it has been re-released digitally for the Xbox 360, PC, Mac, Linux, and PlayStation 3.

The post Will Double Fine do a Psychonauts HD remaster? appeared first on Destructoid.

I've seen enough anime to know...

Yesterday evening, Double Fine teased some new developments on the classic LucasArts adventure game Day of the Tentacle. Today and all this weekend, Tim Schafer's studio will be showing off Day of the Tentacle Remastered at Indiecade in Los Angeles. For those of us who aren't near the City of Angels, we have some screenshots to gander. They s??ure are crisp.

It's especially cool to see how faithful the translation is to HD. Sure, everything has been redrawn to today's standards, but so much of that original art's style is preserved. Along with the updated artwork, Day of the Tentacle is also getting remastered ??audio and some cur?rently unknown "special features" added to it.

The post Day of the Tentacle Remastered is looking slick appeared first on Destructoid.

Everyone loves a good story

Who could forget the great Kickstarter boom of 2012? You remember, right? Out of nowhere, this website called Kickstarter suddenly became a focal point for established developers and indies looking to crowdfund the next big title. Though there were certainly game projects that got funded before the boom, the one that really started the trend was from the developers at Double Fine Productions. After their somewhat modest goal was eclipsed several times over, they found themselves at the forefront for the crowdfunding movement. And now three years later, they've finally got their anticipated and hotly debated title Broken Age out to fans and newcomers alike.

Just a few days before the release of Broken Age: Act II, completing the final part of its development, Double Fine Productions invited members of the press to have a chat with Tim Schafer himself, and Destructoid was lucky enough to attend to check out the full game prior to its release. During our talk, the founder of Double Fine had some time to reflect on the challenges of developing the first high-profile crowdfunded game project under the gaze of many fans and critics alike. Though many assume it was the legacy he and the studio had for adventure titles that made the campaign a success, he credits the power of community and relatability for their triumph. 

With the adventure genre?? now in a renaissance of sorts, the future for the once-forgotten genre looks to be quite bright.

"It seems like there's been so many people talking about adventure games, people crowdfunding new adventure games," recalled Tim Schafer, the founder of Double Fine Productions and game director on Broken Age. "It's just th?at everyone felt that it's okay to talk about it again. We don't have to talk about it like a dead genre anymore, people just throw that word around casually, like 'Oh, you'??re doing an adventure game?' -- it's become normalized now."

With the renewed interest for adventure games in recent years, there's never been a better time to become invested in the once-dormant genre. There was a time when adventure titles were common, and full of optimism, but with a steep decline after the '90s, traditional point-and-click games seemed to have gone by the wayside. But recently, these games have seen a reawakening, t??hanks in part to developers like Telltale Games and Double Fine outputting a steady flow of titles. And with titles spread acros?s so many platforms (including mobile), they're now more accessible than ever.

The development of Broken Age, which is easily the studio's highest-profile project, has been a unique case to watch. Tim Schafer and the team aimed to create a title that was a true throwback to classic LucasArts titles like Day of the Tentacle, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Grim Fandango -- while also taking advantage of today's technology to illustrate visually vibrant and diverse worlds to explore. With the pretty positive reception the first act?? received last year, people have been anxious to get their on the final part of the g??ame.

During my session, I had some time to play the PlayStation 4 version of Broken Age along with Tim Schafer. Though I went in mostly blind, as I opted to wait until the full release was ready to play, I still had a wonderful time experiencing it this way. It felt great with the PS4 on a big screen, and adding to this was a sense of playing with a community that chimed in with thoughts and helped with clues for puzzles. It really added to the fun. Schafer hopes that players who've already cleared Act I will start from scratch now that Act II is out, as he believes m?any of the references and characters from the first half of the game may have been forgotten by players by now.

Though the developers have launched other titles during the three years of Broken Age's development -- such as Grim Fandango Remastered, Costume Quest II, The Cave, and the beta for their second crowdfunded project, Massive Chalice -- firm interest has still been kept on their work for Broken Age. And with good reason. I mean, how many o??ther games in active development have a film crew f??ollowing them around recording all their successes and missteps for the masses to see?

While they had the challenges of their own project to manage, they also had to deal with the high-profile nature of it following the success of the funding campaign. With everyone watching, the developers wanted to ensure they'd knock it out of the park with the ??completed title and not only live up to expectations but also to set a good example for the future of crowdf?unded titles. Because whether they wanted to or not, they essentially became the people to follow and emulate.

"We were like, 'We can't obviously walk away from [the Kickstarter project], we made a commitment to fans and to our backers," said the director of Broken Age. "It did feel like the beginning of something, and it did feel like the responsibility to not mess it up, because our game, our studio, and other people's games kind of were depending on it now, and if done well could lead to a whole bunch of things being funded, that couldn't have been funded otherwise. So we definitely felt like there was a lot riding on our shoulders, bu??t we would've stuck with it anyway, because we always finish our games."

The success of the Kickstarter certainly felt like a watershed moment for many. During my interview with Brian Fargo last year for Wasteland 2, the success of Double Fine's project sparked a lot of enthusiasm among many of the "old-school" designers looking to explore forgotten genres and franchises. In our chat, Fargo spoke about trust being the cornersto??ne of the relationship between developers and their community. And I def?initely got a sense of that from my visit to Double Fine. There was not only a clear respect for the genre that many of the developers were returning to, but also for the many of backers and fans who have contributed to the title as well.

For better or worse, however, the level of transparency has also contributed to scrutiny over the project. While there have been many successes with crowdfunding over the years, there are also many projects that missed the mark, or outright failed to deliver. During our talk, I felt that Schafer was humbled by the process, and even spoke honestly about their own stumbles with limiting content and details to backers only, leaving everyone else out of the loop. One of the important things they wanted viewers ??of the documentary to see is what exactly the process is like for game creation -- to give them an understanding of the challenges they?? often faced.

"A lot of people make games, and they care so much about what they make," he said while discussing the challenges of development. "There are so many hard tradeoffs they have to make, there are features in the game they wanted but couldn't because there ar??e these other things they wanted even more, and I want everyone to see that process, because I do think that when you ship a game everything you see in it is an active choice by someone, and it is, but sometimes it's a miracle the game got done. [...] I don't know if they need to think about that stuff, but I like to know that at least some people out there know how hard people work, how amazingly difficult or complicated problems are solved everyday, and all the choices they have to make while making a videogame."

This definitely struck a chord with me. I'm inclined to think that there are many gamers out there who are unfamiliar with the actual process of game development, and assume many features and key aspects of development can be added in and removed as if they were text on a document. It felt very?? refreshing to see so much openness about game creation. Though that may be in part? to due to the needs of transparency for operating a crowdfunded project, I found that it helped to not only give the developers their own chance to tell their side of the story, but also to humanize the actual process of game creation.

While the added publicity of their project added pressure to make sure they did right by fans, it was the kind of pressure they were more than familiar with during their time on past titles from the LucasArts era and in recent years ??at Double F?ine. Over the years, they've developed games that inspire a lot of love and respect from fans, and making sure they deliver was something that kept them on track.

"It's definitely pleasurable to succeed and fulfill all those promises, and anyone who's kinda hoping we would fail, it's nice to hear their quiet tears in the night. If you listen quietly you can hear them cry into the night," Schafer said while joking about the messages?? they get from cynical commentators. "But we always have this pressure of trying to do things that the fans would like anyway, now that the fans are actually funding the game, so it's the same group. But you put that kid of pressure on you anyway so you'd make a good game."  

With the complete Broken Age experience available now, this marks the end of a long and unique development period for the studio. Though it has still got another crowdfund??ed title in the wings, its first is now out in the wild, ready to be experienced by fans and newcomers alike. But as we'v?e seen in the years since Double Fine's success on Kickstarter, there's no shortage of campaigns looking to reignite the same fire that only a few projects can attain. Schafer definitely believes the future is bright for crowdfunded titles.

"I think crowdf?unding is here to stay," said a confident Schafer. "I think when people realized you could get organized and make things happen that couldn't be made by the old gate-keeper system, I think that'll always be the case. [...] Basically I think things always go crazy on Kickstarter when there's a great story. I think we had a good story that was new, and also people were saying 'Here's this thing we wanted to happen for a while.' Like this new adventure game, and it hasn't happened, but we could fix that and make it ourselves -- and that's really powerful."

"But there are a lot of other different kinds of stories, besides old-timers like me going back and doing the genre again. Just people doing projects no one has ever thought of before, but instantly want to happen, I thin??k there'll be these spikes whenever that happens and continue to be more popular. I mean the things about crowdfunding will change and improve, but I don't think it'll ever go away."

A good story is important. Whether it comes from a struggling developer looking to strike out on its own with a project that was rejected by countless publishers, or from a group of veteran creators seeking to return to a classic franchise all while doing it their way -- crowdfunding has inspired a lot of people with an idea to put themselves out there and hope to find others who share their vision, and to ultimately realize it. And with Broken Age out now, we're approaching the end of another story from the folks at D?ouble Fine Productions.

But as the genre goes, there are always more adventures to be had. It's not often you get to be a part of the revival of a once-dead genre that inspired many to create their own titles, bond with friends and family over the complexity of puzzles, or get caught up in heated debates about what the real ending is for contentious titles. As the name of the genre states, an adventure is an exciting and hazardous journey into the unknown, and the developers of Broken Age experienced just that with their first foray into crowdfunded? game develo??pment.

Regardless of how you feel about Broken Age as a whole, or whether the ?developers at Double Fine made the right choices, it's hard to deny that it all made for one of the most interesting development periods for a game in years. Whether you view Double Fine Productions as the underdog or not, it still made for an engaging story. And aren't those the ones worth telling?

The post Double Fine Productions aims to rekindle th?e spirit of adventure appeared first on Destructoid.

Mostly worth the wait

_{[Disclosure: I backed the Kickstarter. A review copy was used for this verdict.]}

Three years since the launch of the infamous Double Fine Adventure campaign and a year after Act 1’s much-anticipated release, Broken Age has finally arrived in its completed state. The first chapter gave us the charming coming-of-age stories of?? Vella and Shay, two adventurous teenagers who question everything an??d escape the confinement of their lives.

In Act 2 we fi??nd Shay and Vella in a reversal of sorts, trapped in each other’s worlds and working to find a way back to their families. This proves to b?e harder than it looks -- from both a plot and gameplay perspective.

Broken Age (PC)
Developers: Double Fine Productions
Publisher: Double Fine Productions
Released: April 28, 2015 
MSRP: PS4, PS Vita, PC, Mac, Linux, Ouya: $25 / iOS and Android: $15

Broken Age is very much designed and intended?? to be played as one game, not chopped up ?into two parts. If you've managed to hold out this long to play both acts together, rest assured that you've done yourself a favor. The second act gets straight to business, dumping the player into some heavy plot points right off the bat. The game’s challenging puzzle logic also comes through in full force with no time to ramp -- progressing in the game relies heavily on prior knowledge of the landscape and characters.

I asked for more puzzle complexion in my review of Broken Age: Act 1, and boy did I get it. The puzzles are of the same kindred as the first act -- difficult to piece together at first, with a dash of trial and error mixed in. However, this time around the obstacles are far more difficult and obtuse, requiring deep creative thinking, but more often than not bordering on the “impossible to solve without help” realm. I ??found? myself pondering puzzles for long periods of time until eventually giving up, clicking through every possible option as a last resort.

Where the first part of Broken Age had more environmental exploration and ??shorter, more gratifying puzzles, the second act tends to lean on more long-term challenging puzzles. Puzzle solutions from the first portion of the second act were used throughout almost the entirety of the game -- much of my time was spent drawing out diagrams on post-its and endlessly referencing them.

The abi??lity to switch between stories is still present, which comes in handy when stuck on a puzzle or in need of a change of sc??????????????????????????enery. However, during certain parts of the game some puzzles require information from the other side of the story. This caught me off guard at first but was less annoying once it became obvious that this would be a theme throughout the latter half of the game.

The bar from Broken Age: Act 1 is definitely met if not exceeded in Act 2 in terms of the visuals, nostalgia, and clever dialogue. However, the setting in the second act is practically the same as the first half of the game, with the exception of a few minor changes. Although I adore the characters in Broken Age and was happy to see them again througho?ut the second act, I had hoped to e??xperience new scenery and perhaps new characters.

The story in Act 2 goes in a strange directi??on, and feels rushed -- especially compared to the first act, which has an even progression and was much more cohesive. Conversations are had between characters that lay plot points out on the table very quickly, and in an uninventive way. It seems a tad thrown together, and I would have preferred to discover the plot through means of gameplay instead of having it explained via single lines of conversation. Unfortunately, by the end of the game I was also left with with a lot of unanswered questions. Since it had taken a year for this second installment to make it to us, I had expected a little more on that front.

Broken Age: Act 1 was so perfect that perhaps my expectations were inflated when playing through the second half. However, despite the challenges Broken Age is still very much a ?beautiful game with a heartwarming story. The puzzles, as frustrating as they are, come from a place of creative invention that defines the point-and-cl?ick genre. I choose to treasure its high points-- the charming characters, ingenious dialogue, and silly childlike whimsy.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by?? the publisher. This reviewer also backed the game's Kickstarter campaign.]}

The post Review: Broken Age: Act 2 appeared first on Destructoid.

Schafer talks Broken Age, crowdfunding, narrative, and butts

Last night Destructoid attended the videogame BAFTAs in order to do some hard-hitting journalism. Speaking to Tim Schafer, who was in attendance to hand Shadow of Mordor t??he BAFTA for Best Design, we spent ten minutes discussing everythi?ng from the harm Kickstarter is doing to developers' careers to how little attention he pays to butts when crafting a character.

We kicked off the interview by trying to be vaguely interested in the award he had just handed out to Shadow of Mordor and asked him what his opinion was o?n procedurally-created narrative in videogames as a developer who crafts experiences with muc?h more scripted stories.

I think there have always been these two types of stories in games, the stories where somebody crafted an authored experience for you and then there's the stories where I jumped out of my car in GTA just as? the cop fired on the br??idge and you just kind of make up your own stories and they're both totally different.

I thin??k that typ?e of story is really important to the player because you created it, but there's always going to a place for the other kind because you know somebody spent years crafting this perfect game for you. I think both are really important and I'm glad we have both of them.

With that out of the way, we got Tim to chat a little abou??t his career over the years. First up on the chopping block was a question we had been dying to ask Schafer for a while. Just how did he expect people to get through his obtuse adventure game logic back in? the day?

I have no idea; people were smarter back then. Playing the games I sometimes wonder that myself. I thi?nk, "This puzzle's really hard, how are people supposed to get that?" Part of the reason is that back in the day [...] the thinking was "people are not going to finish this game." Sometimes we thought that.

That's why we did the easy mode in Monkey Island 2, but the answer is for most of these puzzle the hints are there if you keep talking to people, if you keep digging d??own. Most of them are hinted at if you keep exploring all the dialog.&nb??sp;

So we made the first half of Broken Age and the first half is always easier than the second half of a game. We were like "this is too easy." We made Grim Fandango and that's too hard. Adventure game fans are??? hard to please.

Next up on our list of questions was one that readers have been trying to get a?n answer to for a while. Which of Tim's series means the most to him, and which would he most like to revisit?

That's a tough question because of course every game is important at the time. There's things people don't expect when they ask me this like Kinect Party -- did you ever play Kinect Party? It was our lowest-selling ga?me of all time. It's a Kinect game where little kids play with their grandparents together and it was really rewarding to see families playing that, it was just so rewa?rding, you know?

The world of Psychonauts is so interesting because you can just keep creating more brains every time you meet somebody and wonder what the world inside their brain looks like. It also feels like the kind of unfinished story of Eddie Briggs [Brutal Legend] would be? a great excuse to work with Jack [Blac??k] again.

It's hard because of how Grim ended. It was a really rich and full world but I feel ?like that character had such a complete progression that I feel like he's done with. I don't know if I want to go back down that ro?ad with someone who isn't Manny.

All the other ones, a lot of them at least like Psychonauts you can just imagine. For Brutal Legend it's kind of already designed because we had to throw away half that game to get it done two years late. It's a lot easier to imagine going forward with that or Psychonauts.

A recent hot topic brought sharply into focus by Peter Molyneux's Godus was the effect crowdfunding campaigns can have on audience's faith in developers. From pitching your game to fans for financial investment before development has begun to t??he pitfalls along the way, with Schafer himself previously facing the firing line from disgruntled Kickstarter backers, we wanted to know if he plans to continue crowdfunding his future projects and what effect he thinks Kickstarter failures have on the reputations of developers.

There were so many great things to Kickstarter when it first exploded and we had that rush of not just money but also goodwill too. That love and support from the community told us that peopl??e want to play adventure games still and that was really important to us.

Because everything's announced at the start of creating your game and not the end like we normally do, it makes more sense to be transparent like we were. That made us vulnerable to a lot of criticism because people could see "oh, the schedule's changing" or "You're doing this thing the way I don't want you to do it." The experiment's not over yet and?? I'd still call it an experiment, but being that exposed and vulnerable was difficult. There were some good things and toward the end there have been some bad things.

My hope was that by being really transparent and showing all the ups and downs of game development, that people who play games would start to understand more of what goes on when maki?ng a game. But still, after all this time, it still seems like people get super mad about things that are totally normal. Things like schedules slipping happen on almost every project but people just don't hear about it because we don't usually show people. 

I think developers have to learn like publishers had to lear??n before the warning signs when a game is in trouble and what is just going through the normal ups and downs of development.

The question I personally wanted an answer to the most: when is Broken Age: Act 2 coming?

Well we're in beta now and we're going to come out t??his spring. There's not much time left in spring. When's the last day of spring? It's coming out this spr?ing which is very soon.

At this point we pushed him on how soon wa??s very soon? We confirmed basically that it's more than three days away still.

Well, not this week. I've been playing th?e Vita version on the plane over here. It's finished, we just want to catch all the bugs.

Finally, with all our serious questions out the way, we ended the interview on a slightly lighter note. Yes, you guessed it, we asked him about his favorite? butts in videogames. We mainly learned that Tim Schafer rarely thinks about butts when designing a character.

Favorite butt in videogames? Are there a lot of butts in videogames? I guess everyone has a butt but you don't often get to see them. I ?guess in third-person games yo??u're running behind them.

I'm now trying to do the interesting task of trying to visualize butts from videogames, they don't usually get a starring role. I??'m now seriously worrying I've not been paying enough attention to butts in the games that I've made. Have we ever shown any butts in my games? ??Yep, you've stumped me with butts.

Manny's butt in Grim Fandango i??s boney; it's basically just a pelvis i??n a suit. 

In Costume Quest actually there was a cat that had a very prominent butt feat??ured, so I guess that butt.

The post Tim Schafer open to revisiting Psychonauts appeared first on Destructoid.

Feels his colleague was treated unfairly by the press

In a YouTube video posted by Double Fine Productions, founder and CEO Tim Schafer provided an update on the current state of the point-and-click adventure Broken Age's second and final act. Schafer also took time at the end of the video to share his thoughts concerning his friend and industry veteran Peter Molyneux's recent run-in with the gaming press.

Regarding the events surrounding Molyneux's interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun's John Walker, Schafer had this to say: "We've seen some extremely rough treatment of Peter on the Internet and on the games press. I think it's really unfortunate and unfair and I don't think it's healthy. Obviously, things did not go as expected on his game and because of that people are making some nasty accusations about Peter -- and I can relate to that, believe it o?r not.

I'm not saying developers?? like Peter and I shouldn't be responsible and shouldn't be accountable for deadlines -- I am just saying the reaction to recent events and the tone of that reaction are really way out of proportion to the seriousness of the events? themselves."

Schafer makes some fair points in his defense of his colleague, and I do agree somewhat that Walker's interview was perhaps too harsh in tone; but the problem remains -- how should the games press and public investors hold developers acco??untable, especially in the case where the developer has had a very public history of over-promising and under-delivering?

In gaming's recent past, it's been much easier for customers to stomach when a game that's been funded by faceless corporations fails to live up to expectations -- someone else is left holding the bag and eating that loss, not the customer. The worst case scenario here is that the customer is left with a choice: purchase a s?ubstandard product or don't. It's completely optional.

However, in the brave new world of crowdfunding and Steam Early Access sales, things aren't going to get any friendlier or less complicated. Now that develop??ers are reaching out directly to customers for funding they have to realize that these individuals need a direct and public channel to address these sorts of situations no matter how "fair" or "healthy" their reactions seem. Hard questions concerning money are never going to get any easier to answer, and I'm sure most developers who have been held accountable by private investors are well aware by now.

The post Tim Schafer comments on the Molyneux interview appeared first on Destructoid.

January 27 to PS4, Vita, PC, Mac, Linux

I know a skeleton of people are waiting to play this, what with it being a chore to track down a playable copy of the classic adventure game. And?? now we get?? an even more playable, modernized version with nicer textures and smoother controls. Good things come to those who wait every once in a while

Next month, January 27, Grim Fandango will be easily playable and downloadable, as?? it should be. It will be available on PS4, Vita, PC, Mac, and Linux. 

The post Remast??ered Grim Fandango looks great, out next month appeared first on Destructoid.

Soooo...this happened

Sony's really been gearing up for this weekend's PlayStation Experience. There have been projects teased. There's been confirmation of a big No Man's Sky event. Now, there's a Between Two Ferns knock-off interview with Tim Schafer to promote the presence of Grim Fandango.

It was a good effort, Sony. There are even a few more Between Shu Ferns videos on PlayStation's YouTube channel. Commendable, but nothing's going to top the James Franco episode of the real deal. (Probably NSFW for language, and partying stuffs, and general awesomeness.)

The post ??Tim Schafer, Grim Fandango, and a Between Two Ferns knock-o?ff appeared first on Destructoid.

Aiming for 1080p, but keeping the 4:3

Double Fine has the original Grim Fandango ;running on PS4, with some joystick tweaks so it controls smoother. In the development video, they talk about things they want to address, like the? compression, and things they want to keep the same, down to the aspect r?atio. 

This is basically the original Grim Fandango running on PS4 at the moment. The PS4 and Vita remaster is, "going to be running at 1080p, all of the 3D models are going to look a lot nicer fo??r pixel lighting." 

The remaster was also announced for PC.

The post Here’s Grim Fandango running on PS4 appeared first on Destructoid.

Sounds (double) fine to me

Doubl?e Fine Productions has decided to point its talents in the direction of helping indie game studios with publishing and marketing. In an interview with Tim Schafer, it was revealed t??hat although Double Fine won't be a publisher per se, it will be helping a select group of indie developers with whatever key problems arise.

Schafer explained that while it would not be lending its support to games that aren't its usual fare, such as military FPSs or sim racers, it will be proud to support indie devs that bring something creative and distinct to the table. Schafer pointed to MagicalTimeBean's Escape Goat 2 and Sam Farmer's Last Life as examples.

Although Shafer was reluctant to discu?ss the aspect of what moneta?ry compensation Double Fine would receive from these indie developers in exchange for their services, he did state that if the game was funded via Kickstarter that Double Fine would not be taking a chunk of the funding intended or the game. He pointed to their policy being more of a royalty system, by stating that if a game is a huge hit that Double Fine would want to share in the profits, but nothing concrete has been decided yet.

Double Fine's new adventure: Publishing [GamesIndustry International]

The post Double Fine embarks on new publishing venture appeared first on Destructoid.

Now's the best time to check it out

Double Fine's latest adventure game Broken Age has made its way to the iPad, and it's just as gorgeous as a mobile game as it was upon its original release. It's split up into two releases, and right now, you can catch Broken Age Act 1 available now for $9.??99, ??with Act 2 soon to follow as an in-app purchase.

The game has been updated with hi-res art, new touch controls that wer??e seen on the previous PC build, and other surprises. Double Fine hopes to reach new a??udiences with this release, especially those who like to game on the go. Do you think you'll try it out now that it's made its way to the iPad?

Pick it up here, if you're so inclined, and let us ?know what yo?u think. 

The post You can play Broken Age now on your iPad appeared first on Destructoid.

Yesssssssssssssssssss!

I always complain about how hard it is to find a copy of Grim Fandango, which I desperately need to play. Well, Grim Fandango is getting a PS4 and Vita exclusive remaster. Of all the remasters, reboots, remakes shown off th?us far at E3, this is by far the best. 

Thanks you based Schafer.

The post Yes! Grim Fandango remaster for PS4 and Vita! appeared first on Destructoid.

Yes, I squeed like a little girl

This glorious video before us is a Let's Play of Tim Schafer himself playing Day of the Tentacle. The 40-minute video features Tim narrating a playthrough and sharing little tidbits of information regarding production, voice act?ors, scripting, and other juicy trivia abo?ut the classic LucasArts adventure game. And while the video was posted on May 9, it was actually released back in June 2012 as additional bonus content for the "Double Fine Adventure" documentary.

This is a great watch, especially if you're a huge Day of the Tentacle fan like I am. You probably already saw in my latest c-blog, but I immortalize?d Purple Tentacle on my left arm as a tattoo, and this game is near and dear to my heart. I don't believe there's a part 2 to watch, but this is a fantastic look into a game that deserves your time and attention, even today. Give it a l?ook and check out one of my favorite games of all time.

The post Watch T??im Schafer play through Day of the Tentacle after a 10-year lull appeared first on Destructoid.

Tim sticks his fingers in our nostalgia veins, as only he could

This past Wednesday, Tim Schafer and Greg Rice of Double Fine Productions brightened our doorstep and hung out in the Dtoid HQ studio. Tim was like a magical woodland creature, exploring the nooks of our office, and majestically sipping Perrier. Passages from my fan-fiction aside, Tim sat down with the man with that hair, Max Scoville, and talked us through Broken Age live on Dtoid.TV. For those of you who aren't aware, Broken Age, formally known by the working title Double Fine Adventure, is the game that Double Fine Kickstarted after ?getting fed up with The Man and his pushy big-money publishing practices. At least, that's how I inte??rpreted it.

At the top is the first part of our adventure, with all the sneak-peek gameplay of Broken Age you'll need to whet your appetite for the game. Between that, and our own glowing review of the game, you might just want to jump on Steam and pre-order Broken Age for that slightly reduced ?price?? before it unlocks tonight.

Here?? we have the second part of the show; a brief AMA with the legend of adventure games:

In the conclusion, Max lures Tim into hanging out longer with some Brutal Legend action:

The post Video: We played Broken Age with Tim Schafer appeared first on Destructoid.

Point-and-click heaven

_{[Disclosure: I backed the Kickstarter. A review copy was used for this verdict.]}

The game formerly known as "Double Fine Adventure" has finally made its debut -- or should I say, half-debut. Broken Age: Act 1 is the culmination of almost 100,000 backers, over 3.5 million dollars, and nearly two years of waiting. The project, once asking for a mere $400,000, broke Kickstarte??r history and subsequently forged high expectations for Tim Schafer and his team.

Broken Age follows the lives of Shay and Vella, two young teenagers yearning to escape from their predestined paths. Although the description sounds coming-of-age generic, the stories and puzzles are anything but. Broken Age follows its point-and-click adventure predecessors while forging its own path -- and what a compelling pa??th it is.

Broken Age: Act 1 (PC)
Developer: Double Fine Productions
Publisher: Double Fine Productions
Release Date: January 14, 2014 (for backers) / January 28, 2014
MSRP: $24.99 (with free update for Act 2)

Shay has lived his entire existence on a spaceship designed for toddlers. Day after day he’s coddled by the ship’s “mother,” an overbearingly saccharine computer unwilling to allow him to take care of himself. Mother babies Shay in every way, i?ncluding knitting sentient pals to keep him company and forcing him to take his daily nutrition paste. Shay’s unending routine consists of completing childlike “missions,” like saving his yarn pals from an ice cream avalanche or a hug-attack, which are designed to keep him occupied throughout his existence. Struggling with his confined life, Shay manages to discover a secret part of the ship and quickly experiences what it means to have real res??ponsibility.

Vella wakes up on the last day of her life, prepar??ing to uphold the long-standing tradition of being eaten by a giant abomination named Mog Chothra to keep her village safe. A town that once prided itself on raising fierce monster-fighting warriors, Sugar Bunting now concedes to offering up its finest maidens to Mog Chothra during what th??ey call the “Maiden’s Feast.” While the other maidens are excited to be considered potential meals, Vella can’t help but wonder if there’s another way out. She rises up to fight against her supposed destiny of becoming a delectable treat for Mog Chothra and breaks free to search for a way to defeat the monster before it consumes her town.

Both stories are engrossing and highlight a certain childish curiosity that I haven’t felt in a long time. I adored every second wandering through these worlds - the dialogue on all fronts is hilarious and crafty, the story elements thoughtful. Broken Age captures a style that is imaginative and expressive while still maintaining an environment that's easy to interact with. Above all, the art is captivating so much so tha??t at certain points in the game I found myself staring at scenes just to take it in.

Almost everything comes to life in Broken Age - characters range from charming to downright ingenious, all with spot-on humor and fantastic voice acting. One of my favorites is a needy spoon who regularly vies for the attention of Shay by shouting things like "It is my honor to be your training spoon today sir, I can't wait to start MISSION NUTRITION!" Puzzles are integrated well into the character’s personalities - I found it amusing to di??scover what dialogue or actions would make characters give up an item or a piece of information.

The game allows for switching between both stories seamlessly, which is not only creative, but a very useful feature. I enjoyed going back and forth regularly because it allowed for me to pace out the stories (for example, not getting too far on one side) and also gave me a chance to escape if a particular puzzle was stumping me. I also felt that Shay’s story involved more interactive gameplay elements while Vella’s focused more on dialogue and riddles, so being able to leave one story and hop to ?the other gave me a nice break.

The format of Broken Age is obviously very reminiscent of the older point-and-click adventure games, however there a?re a few interesting camera perspectives and design choices in the game that change up the formula a bit. For example, in one area of the game you can literally fall through clouds if you’re not careful where you step. Another section has the camera angle peering in through a window th??at’s being cleaned by an adorable spaceship minion. These details seem marginal, but they keep the gameplay fresh and original.

I found?? that the gameplay is so seamlessly integrated with the art that it’s sometimes hard to tell when you’re supposed to be viewing a scene and when you need to take action. For instance, it took me a while to solve one of the first puzzles in the game because the action I needed to take was during what I thought was a cinematic sequence. Although I appreciate that the game never took me out of the moment mentally, it did become frustrating after a while. My solution to this was to whip my mouse around the screen just in case the action circle appeared in future cinematics.

Broken Age manages to keep the hand-holding clues to a minimum w?ithout completely withholding answers from the player. However, as the game progressed I wasn't entirely clear on what actions I could take. During one puzzle in particular, I had tried to combine and use every item possible to get past what I thought was the obstacle, but really all I had to do was move around it. The puzzles eventually make sense in time and are fairly thoughtful, although some of them could have stood to be a bit harder -- because for the most part, they didn't require a lot of brainpower. In the end this may not be a terrible thing bu?t I would like to see a tad more complication thrown into the mix for Act 2.

I haven’t felt this surge of nostalgia and excitement about a game in a long time, and I truly think Broken Age will be looked back fondly as one of the greats. That being said, the first Act is only a few short hours and ended on a nail-biting cliffhanger with no word on how long we’ll be waiting for the rest of the game. In some?? ways I feel cheated, but in the end it’s the heart of the game? that matters - and that certainly isn't broken.

The post Review: Broken Age: Act 1 appeared first on Destructoid.