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Three more playable characters for new Double Fine game
Double Fine is building up an intriguing cast of characters for its mysterious, bone-themed game. First we had the monk, the hillbilly and the time traveler, and now we have three more random occupations to ponder: the adventurer, the scientist and the knight.Double Fine's Ron Gilbert posted images of each of these characters on his blog, Grumpy Gamer. The only other information gleaned from the reveals appears to be that the knight isn't exactly Sir Bravery, but we could have gotten that from the little shaking knees in his picture.
'Time Traveler' is another playable character in Double Fine's mystery game
Double Fine's Ron Gilbert has revealed another character from his puzzling new title, this one called "the time traveler."She is one of "three playable characters" that Gilbert has unveiled in three days on his personal gaming blog, Grumpy Gamer. Yesterday and the previous day Gilbert revealed the monk and the hillbilly.The time traveler's silhouette is visible in the background of the puzzle Double Fine sent us earlier this month. We have to admit, she looks way cooler with glowing blue (we assume time-travel-inducing) accessories than as a vague, whispy shadow.The plot, and the question, thickens: What do a hillbilly, a monk and a time traveler have in common?
This monk is suspicious of this hillbilly, only Double Fine knows why
Double Fine's Ron Gilbert isn't content with random websites leaking his own studio's work: he'll leak his own stuff, thank you very much. Gilbert posted the above two photos on Grumpy Gamer, his personal game industry blog.His first post was a link to the monk. Apparently, no, it's not fanart for Diablo 3, unless developer JP LeBreton, who tweeted he'd been working on the related Monk link for nine months, has a lot of down time at Double Fine.Gilbert later posted the hillbilly, a character we recognize from the puzzle Double Fine sent the press last week as an announcement of a new, spooky-tinged title. Now the age-old question returns: What do a monk and a hillbilly have in common? Besides mystery, of course.
A puzzling glimpse of Ron Gilbert's new Double Fine game
Click to enlargeDerived from concepts that predate even Maniac Mansion, Ron Gilbert's new game is becoming a tad less nebulous today. The above image implies a spooky atmosphere, and shows a group of characters that look ready to assail all manner of creeping, moaning mysteries.We captured the art after assembling a jumbled puzzle, sent to us this morning by Double Fine. Though the independent developer trusts the press to dutifully post this new artwork (which doubles as an invite to an upcoming event), it seems to have some reservations about our puzzle-solving prowess. It is, after all, only 35 pieces.(After the break, see the game's matching Double Fine babies!)
Double Fine Kickstarter adds new rewards, Schafer and Gilbert talk it out
Double Fine's fundraiser for its point-and-click adventure title exploded on day one and has currently raised almost $2.1 million, and there are still 18 days left. To celebrate, reward its backers and entice even more, Double Fine has revamped its rewards for denomination-specific donations as follows: $30 tier: Digital Soundtrack of the Documentary $60 tier: Double Fine Adventure Book (digital PDF) $100 tier: Special edition box set with the game disc and DVD/Blu-Ray documentary $500 tier: Double Fine Adventure Book (physical copy)As standard for Kickstarter projects, hitting a higher reward tier gets backers all of the rewards from previous tiers as well. For extra incentive, the 35-minute discussion between Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert -- filmed before the Kickstarter began -- demonstrates the passion and thought that will be fueling Double Fine's game; check it out above.
Ron Gilbert shares more art from his Double Fine game
Ron Gilbert has posted two new pieces of art from the game he's working on with Tim Schafer's Double Fine Studios. Don't get too excited -- as far as we know, it's not that, extremely well-funded game. Nope, it's the pre-Maniac Mansion idea he's working up, and apparently it carnival booths and laser turrets.
Ron Gilbert's Double Fine game is based on unused pre-Maniac Mansion concept
Ron Gilbert is beginning to talk about the game he went to Double Fine to make. Gilbert said he is returning to a concept that he's been kicking around for years. "It predates Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island," he noted on his blog, giving us feverish visions of classic adventuring. Dare we hope to combine items to solve puzzles? Gilbert isn't ready to share details on this new mystery game, except for images of two of its playable characters. The filenames on the images are "TheScientist" and "TheMobster." We'll let you solve the puzzle of which is which!
Hothead explains lack of 'DeathSpank' in The Baconing's title
When Hothead announced the third entry in its dungeon crawl SLASH role-playing series this past week -- titled solely "The Baconing," dropping its usual "DeathSpank" moniker -- we couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the series' main character to get him taken off title duties. Did series creator Ron Gilbert take the rights to the character with him, for instance? As it turns out, there's a fairly simple reason behind the name change: "We haven't removed the words or name 'DeathSpank' from the title for any legal reason. In fact, the title was changed just by asking our fans," a Hothead rep told Joystiq. Aha! Still, we couldn't help but wonder why Hothead would voluntarily ditch the brand name that it stuck to the last two games, effectively walking away from the brand recognition it built up over the past two entries.
DeathSpank: The Baconing is the third entry in the DeathSpank series, coming this summer
DeathSpank's run-ins with the evils of thongs are continuing this summer in a third DeathSpank game for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and PC/Mac. Hothead revealed as much this afternoon, detailing DeathSpank: The Baconing as the final chapter in DeathSpank's quest "to once and for all destroy the evil power of thongs." The dev studio tells Kotaku that The Baconing will be "more satisfying to play than last year's games," with a handful of new areas to explore, a brand new sidekick named "Bob from Marketing," and a quartet of new bosses to battle. Hothead also promises gamers will feel "more in control" of DeathSpank's moveset with an overhauled combat system. As Ron Gilbert is no longer with Hothead, this will be the first game in the series he created to not have him at its helm. And other than the teaser logo shown off in a video clip (found after the break), Hothead has yet to release any visuals for this summer's game. But given that we're wearing shorts even here in the USA's usually frozen Northeast, we imagine those assets aren't far off.
Watch the GDC 'Classic Game Postmortem' talks for free
If you want to hear about Mark Cerny's first, overambitious version of Marble Madness for yourself, try to decipher Toru Iwatani's clues about a "singing Pac-Man" game, see the history of Prince of Persia in the time it takes to play Prince of Persia (one hour), or suck John Romero's Doom postmortem down, you are welcome to do so right now. The GDC organizers have uploaded video and slides of many of this year's presentations to the GDC Vault, most of which are restricted to subscribers. However, the GDC Vault offers the Classic Game Postmortem series for free, including the aforementioned talks plus Eric Chahi on Another World, Will Wright on his first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay, Ron Gilbert looking back on Maniac Mansion, and more.
Ron Gilbert reflects on DeathSpank combat, and its under-developed 'intellectual element'
Wired recently spoke with Ron Gilbert, creator of the Monkey Island and DeathSpank series, and the conversation turned to the latter's conventional hack-and-slash combat. Though he didn't stick around long enough to guide the final releases of this year's dual-developed DeathSpank games, Gilbert was their lead designer and said, if he could do it over, he'd likely add more depth to the combat. Instead of just "hacking through a bunch of enemies," he suggested "treating combat as if it was a puzzle to be solved [...] might have helped people a little bit with not just having to button-mash their way through battles." Gilbert cited Dragon Age as an example, "not in its turn-based nature," but "more of the intellectual element" of requiring some strategy to combat. Perhaps that's not the best example. How about Diablo 3? That's shaping up to be a hack-and-slash game that introduces a satisfying level of strategy through its myriad spells and tactics. Now, if you were to marry such fine-tuned gameplay with Unicorn poop, you're talking "Game of the Year." Easy. Next time, Mr. Gilbert?
Ron Gilbert digs up treasure in the form of Monkey Island 2 bug reports
"GB can trick LeChuck into bending over and grabbing his underwear an infinite number of times. GB can collect several pairs of LeChuck's underwear." Ron Gilbert posted some old bug reports filed during the development of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, printed December 10, 1991. It's a rare and fascinating glimpse at the development process of one of LucasArts' famed SCUMM adventure games. The infinite-underwear error was in the "B" category, meaning "truly ugly (but you can finish)." Less severe errors, like "The martini glass looks the same empty as it does full of water," were given the "C" label, meaning "golly it would be nice if we could fix this." That's the category in which we put the major bug in our lives: "We can't go back to 1991 and get jobs working on Monkey Island 2."
Tim Schafer to be honored with lifetime achievement award at IndieCade 2010
IndieCade will be awarding its Honorary Trailblazer Award for Lifetime Achievement to none other than Tim Schafer, he of the Secret of Monkey Island series, Psychonauts and most recently Brütal Legend. Schafer was chosen for the honor as a role model to indie gamers everywhere, and for personifying "the risk-taking, boundary pushing spirit at the heart of the indepedent gaming community," according to a statement from the conference. IndieCade 2010 takes place in about a week on October 8-10, 2010 in Culver City, California. Schafer will get his award presented to him by former (and current) colleague Ron Gilbert at the ceremony on Thursday night, hosted by Levar Burton.
Ron Gilbert reunites with Tim Schafer at Double Fine
Adventure game legend Ron Gilbert, who recently completed work on the Deathspank games, has accepted a position with Double Fine. But what, exactly, is that position? "We haven't really talked about that. I'm the boss of Tim," Gilbert said in an interview with Kotaku. Double Fine head Tim Schafer added, "He's the official Ron Gilbert. Though he started out as vice Ron Gilbert, we want to make sure he works out." The addition of Gilbert to Double Fine is a rather auspicious reunion: Gilbert and Schafer worked together at LucasArts, collaborating on the design of The Secret of Monkey Island and its sequel. Gilbert is also responsible for the creation of the SCUMM engine that powered many LucasArts adventure games. Schafer told Kotaku that Double Fine plans to continue working on multiple small games like Costume Quest. Gilbert is designing one of those games. Though he wouldn't go into specifics about it, he said, "It's an idea that I've been batting around for many, many years," adding that it's "very different than DeathSpank, and "fans of those old adventure games will like it." Later, Gilbert clarified, "That's not saying I'm making an adventure game." In case you thought you had it all figured out.
Ron Gilbert digs iPhone, hopes DeathSpank inspires other devs
GamerBytes has a nice long interview with DeathSpank creator Ron Gilbert, and while he waxes philosophical on all sorts of stuff found in the excellent XBLA/PSN hack-'n-slash title, he says he's not sure what he plans to do next. But iPhone gaming has grabbed his attention for the moment: "iPhone games are very interesting to me right now. I play a lot of them, and they're neat because then you can do two- or three-people teams to make those things," he says. Making DeathSpank was tougher than expected, according to Gilbert -- he started out wanting to make Monkey Island meets Diablo, but the Diablo half of the game was more difficult to balance than he'd thought it would be. Not only did he have to balance weapons and combat, but he had to deal with DeathSpank's own character attributes. A class system was originally planned, but Gilbert wanted to play his character (which originally came from a Flash cartoon series), not yours, so the team eventually went with the "Hero Cards" system. Gilbert also says he hopes that DeathSpank influences the downloadable market -- rather than simply house reissues of older games or big budget titles, he hopes that downloadable game platforms can be a place for originality, and that "we can get some really good, interesting games in the download space." We'll hack and slash to that!
Review: DeathSpank
"DeathSpank? What a ridiculous name!" I can hear you saying it now. Yes, it is a ridiculous name, for a ridiculous game which revels in the fact that it's ridiculous. Well, that and damned funny. Oh, and a super-fun, retail-caliber yet downloadable action-RPG. If you haven't been following all things 'Spank, know that it's the creation of Ron Gilbert (one of the mad geniuses who brought the world the Monkey Island series) and Hothead Games (makers of the delightful, and also downloadable, Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain Slick-Precipice of Darkness). Also know that it stars a hero, DeathSpank, who possesses enough machismo to fill a football stadium. His grasp on reality, on the other hand, would barely fill a football. %Gallery-71890%
DeathSpank trailer previews some unorthodox armaments
We've discussed some of the unique weapons you'll be wielding in Ron Gilbert's upcoming XBLA and PSN title, DeathSpank, but you really can't get a good feel for them until you see them in action. It's like, you can read about the Demon Poop Hammer all day, but you've really got to see it swing.
DeathSpank dispensing co-op justice on PSN July 13, XBLA July 14
DeathSpank, Monkey Island co-creator Ron Gilbert's homage to Diablo, has been fully loaded with laughs and is ready to make its debut on PSN July 13, arriving on Xbox Live Arcade the next day, July 14 (barring any temporal anomalies). We played the game a couple months back and were smitten with its charm, humor, loot and bacon. What we didn't see back then was DeathSpank's cooperative mode. Since there can only be one DeathSpank (we don't think the world could handle two of him) player two will control his spell-casting sidekick, Sparkles the Wizard. We're sure Sparkles is just fine with his silly name, so long as he gets to tag along with the Hero to the Downtrodden. DeathSpank will loot your wallet for $14.99 on PSN and 1200 Microsoft Points ($15) via the Xbox Live Marketplace. %Gallery-96046%
DeathSpank trailer dispenses justice, toll-free hotline number
We get to see a little bit more of DeathSpank, the Diablo-like adventure from The Secret of Monkey Island co-creator Ron Gilbert, in the above video just dispatched by publisher EA. We've already spent some hands-on time with the game, which is due to land on PSN and XBLA this summer, and it places petty high on our list of games we want to spend a lot more time with, and soon. Not just because it's fun, but also stupendously funny (not to mention filled with forbidden bacon). You can get an interactive taste of the game's humor right now by calling the DeathSpank Hotline at 1-866-631-1574 (toll-free from the US). It's reassuring to know there's a hero out there ready to dispense justice, vanquish evil and be a hero to the downtrodden in so many different languages!
Hands-on: DeathSpank (XBLA/PSN)
When a game is described as "Diablo meets Monkey Island," two reactions come naturally: "Neat!," followed by, "Wait a second ... how can that even be possible?" Well, it is. I found this out for myself earlier this week when the 'Stiq had its first hands-on (we'd seen it at PAX 2009) with DeathSpank, the latest game from Ron Gilbert, designer of The Secret of Monkey Island (but not Diablo). His new downloadable game is a fast-paced, button-mashy loot-'em-up, as well as an adventure filled with interesting characters and diabolically funny dialog. Also, it's about bacon and a hero who's favorite number is ... plaid. %Gallery-92049%
