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Watch Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight game jam right here
Amnesia Fortnight, the annual two-week internal game jam at Double Fine, is fully underway. This year includes three game ideas from Double Fine developers and one pitched by Adventure Time scribe and Broken Age voice actor, Pendleton Ward. In Dear Leader, players guide the development of a post-revolution country as its tyrannical leader. Mnemonic, a first-person noir adventure game, explores the fragmented memories of a man searching to find out who killed the woman he loved. Steed is an open-world action game set in medieval times and centered around a horse-for-hire stuck in a world full of inept heroes. Finally, Ward's Little Pink Best Buds is a game centered around little pink characters who all wish to be your best friend. Everyone can purchase and play the finished prototypes through the Humble Bundle store. Purchase also guarantees copies of 2012's prototypes, including space station management sim Spacebase DF-9. Double Fine will be streaming portions of Amnesia Fortnight through Twitch, starting at 1:30pm ET (10:30am PT/6:30pm GMT) today. We've embedded the Twitch player past the break, so feel free to join us here to watch the festivities go down. [Image: Double Fine]
Double Fine Amnesia Fortnight game jam includes Adventure Time creator
Double Fine's annual game jam, Amnesia Fortnight, is upon us once again. Over the next two weeks, small teams within Double Fine will conceptualize new games and create working prototypes that will, through the power of internet voting, be made into full-fledged games. This year's festivities include a special twist: Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward is participating as a special guest project leader. Ward will head up his own team and create a working prototype based on one of his four designs, as voted for by the fans. A list of Pendleton Ward's prototypes are available over on the Amnesia Fortnight Humble Bundle page. Mathematical! The pitch video above shows Double Fine is full of ideas - we kind of lost count after the eighth game idea - but there are individual pitch videos for each idea over on Double Fine's YouTube page. There are games about cats, space exploration, fantasy wars, karate troopers, turning Tim Schafer into a pocket monster, something about a ghost dog (not that Ghost Dog) and Bad Golf 2 Bad Golf 2 Bad Golf 2 Bad Golf 2. A documentary from 2 Player Productions will chronicle the whole event. You can head on over to the Humble Store page right now and contribute some cash for the right to vote on which prototypes move on. Doing so will grant immediate access to 2012's prototypes, which include Amnesia Fortnight 2012 winner Spacebase DF-9. [Image: Double Fine]
Humble Double Fine Bundle adds Amnesia Fortnight prototypes
The Humble Double Fine Bundle has crammed in eight more games today, a collection of Double Fine Amnesia Fortnight prototypes – the results of annual internal gamejams at Double Fine. All eight games are Windows PC only, available to all who plunk down more than the average $8.15 (at time of this writing) for the Humble Double Fine Bundle. The Amnesia Fortnight prototypes include: Autonomous, a first-person sandbox game set in the future; Spacebase DF-9, a top-down simulation where you construct and maintain a space station; Black Lake, an adventure game set in a dark forest; The White Birch is a 3D puzzle-platformer set in a massive tower; Brazen is a co-op action game where four players team up to take on monsters; and Hack-n-Slash is a Legend of Zelda-inspired 2D action-adventure game. Happy Night, a prototype from 2007 and the precursor to Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster, is also here, as is 2009 prototype Costume Quest, which eventually became, well, Costume Quest. Finally, there's the 2 Player Productions' documentary compiled during Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight event in 2012. The Humble Double Fine Bundle was introduced last week, as an initial collection of the studio's most recent works: Psychonauts, Stacking, Costume Quest, Brutal Legend and a pre-order for Broken Age, the studio's Kickstarter-funded adventure game. The Humble Double Fine Bundle comes to a close in six days.
Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight prototypes collected in boxset
The Double Fine Amnesia Fortnight game jam resulted in a series of prototypes for games to be made later. And yet, you can buy those prototypes in a fancy boxed set even before the games exist!The new $30 collection includes the five games from the most recent Fortnight: Autonomous, Black Lake, Hack 'n' Slash, Spacebase DF-9, and The White Birch, along with the documentary about the event by 2 Player Productions. Also included are the prototype versions of Brazen, Costume Quest, and Happy Song, and an original soundtrack. All of this was originally released in the Amnesia Fortnight voting Humble Bundle dealie.For an extra $15, you can get a slipcase for one of the prototype games, signed by that game's project lead. For $70, you can get the boxed set and signed covers for all five games. Or, if you want zero boxes instead of many, you can download the set for $9.99.
Double Fine's top four Amnesia prototypes chosen
The four most popular game ideas from Double Fine's weird Amnesia Fortnight have been chosen. Brandon Dillon's Hack n' Slash, JP LeBreton's Spacebase DF-9, Andy Wood's The White Birch, and Lee Petty's Autonomous are now being made into prototypes, and will be included in the pack of downloads offered to contributing voters. Depending on how the prototypes turn out, they may end up being expanded into full-size games.Check out pitch videos for all four games above and after the break,
Double Fine adds 'Brazen' prototype to Amnesia Fortnight rewards
Double Fine's internally developed and externally funded Amnesia Fortnight game jam soldiers on, and as is always the case with Humble Bundle promotions, an additional reward has been added for those that donate above the current average.Now, anyone that drops coin beyond the norm (currently sitting at $7.05) will receive a playable prototype of Brazen, which was originally created during a previous Amnesia Fortnight game jam. Designed by Iron Brigade project lead Brad Muir, Brazen is a Monster Hunter-style four-player online co-op homage to Ray Harryhausen, whose revolutionary work in the field of claymation helped define an era of movie monsters. Players choose between three classes (Stalwart, Waracle or Beerzerker) and join forces to slay retro mythological beasts, such as the massive two-headed snapping turtle/scorpion seen in the trailer above. Personally, we're still keeping our fingers crossed for some unsettling, disturbingly animated skeleton warriors.
Double Fine game ideas compete for your dollars in Amnesia Fortnight
Double Fine's first "Amnesia Fortnight" event resulted in prototypes that became all the company's recent games: Costume Quest, Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster, Stacking, and Iron Brigade. For the latest iteration of the internal game jam, the company has opened up the process to you!No, you don't get to make prototypes for Double Fine games. Instead, you can put your money towards a vote on 23 different ideas, in order to pick the four that will be made into prototypes by the studio. The voting process is hosted by the Humble Bundle, and the money goes to Double Fine, Child's Play, or the Humble Organizers, in a proportion of your choice.Contributors will get the finished prototypes when they, you know, exist, and they'll get downloadable prototypes of Costume Quest and Happy Song (which eventually became Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster) now.
Double Fine remembers 'Amnesia Fortnight' in GDC postmortem
In a GDC panel called "Creative Panic: How Agility Turned Terror Into Triumph," project leads from Double Fine's quartet of "Amnesia Fortnight" projects each outlined the process and inspiration behind their games -- with the exception of Costume Quest's Tasha Harris, who didn't share her insights because she wasn't there. "Amnesia Fortnight is a psychedelic mushroom and we all took it," studio head Tim Schafer said, before adding that it was really a two-week team game design exercise held in the middle of Brütal Legend work.Born from a break in AAA development, the Amnesia Fortnight forged a new direction for the company when Brütal Legend 2 was canceled.
Double Fine's 'Amnesia Fortnight' game design jams saved the company
The recent downloadable releases from Double Fine, as well as the upcoming Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster, all had their genesis in the company's "Amnesia Fortnight" events, in which small teams would make quick game prototypes. Schafer says that if not for those informal sessions, the company might not still be running. "We had done one Amnesia Fortnight in the middle of Brutal Legend, and one at the end, so we had eight prototypes," studio head Tim Schafer explained to Edge. "I thought eventually we'd start working on smaller games with the extra money that we got from these huge games, and then we found out that Brutal Legend 2 wasn't happening." With nothing else going on, Double Fine started looking for deals for the best four Amnesia Fortnight prototypes. "The thing I like about it is that we had a catastrophic event and the company saved itself purely based on the creativity of the team. Lee [Petty, responsible for Stacking], Tasha [Harris, who came up with Costume Quest], Brad [Muir, of Trenched], and Nathan [Martz, the game design puppeteer behind Sesame Street]- their ideas." Had the Amnesia Fortnight not have been a success, we can only imagine that Double Fine would be forced to hold "Amnesia Fifteenminutes" within the fortnights, in which each employee rushed out prototypes while rushing out their other prototypes.
