New Double Fine adventure game funded by fans; Psychonauts 2 talks underway

A new adventure game from Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and the rest of the Double Fine Productions gang is on its way, having hit its funding goal of $400,000 only eight hours after launching a crowd-funding plan.

February 9, 2012 6:10 AM41

A new adventure game from Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and the rest of the Double Fine Productions gang is on its way, having hit its funding goal of $400,000 only eight hours after launching a crowd-funding plan. What’s more, Double Fine is now having “a lovely chat” with Minecraft creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson about his offer to fund a Psychonauts sequel.

“If I were to go to a publisher right now and pitch an adventure game, they’d laugh in my face,” Schafer said in a video for the KickStarter project. So Double Fine turned to its fans, seeking $300,000 to fund a new adventure game and $100,000 for video game documentary team 2 Player Productions to record its progress.

The project launched at 6pm Pacific on Wednesday, and reached the $400,000 mark a touch over eight hours later. Clearly, this is something special. The pledges continue to pour in, but are not going to waste, as extra money will go back into the project. “This could result in anything from increased VO and music budgets to additional release platforms for the game,” Double Fine said.

Double Fine has some series adventure game muscle. Schafer himself lead the seminal LucasArts games Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, and had a big hand in Day of the Tentacle and the early Monkey Island games. Ron Gilbert, the creator of Monkey Island and co-creator of Maniac Mansion, is also on the team.

Pledging $15 will get you Double Fine’s adventure game on Steam when it’s finished, plus beta access through Steam and access to the video series. Rewards increase as you pledge more, with some ludicrous goodies if you slap down thousands of dollars, including being in the game or even scoring Tim Schafer’s last four shrink-wrapped triangle box copies of Day of the Tentacle.

“Here’s my promise to you,” Schafer joked, “either the game will be great or it’ll be a spectacular failure, caught on camera for everyone to see. Either way, you win. What could possibly go wrong?”

Double Fine’s plan was to release the game in October, but given how much extra money it’s certain to get, finding ways to spend that may take time.

As for Minecraft creator Markus Persson’s Psychonauts offer, which seemingly began as a bit of banter, Schafer has said, “If you’re wondering about Notch’s generous offer to help Psychonauts 2 happen, all I can say is that we are having a lovely chat about it!”

He added, “These things take time to figure out–if they can be figured out–so please don’t expect any Psychonauts 2 announcements any time soon.”

Of course, given how well crowd-funding is working for the adventure game, Double Fine can always consider that too. The model’s becoming increasingly popular with independent makers-of-things to bring their dreams into reality, but Double Fine is the first video game developer to use it for such a large and high-profile project. Exciting times in the industry.

Here’s the Double Fine Adventure project’s Kickstarter video: