It’s like something you’d heckle in a moment of drunk inspiration while watching Dragon’s Den: What if Double Fine and the guys behind Adventure Time joined forces for some reason?

Double Fine Studios’ Greg Rice has confirmed just that is happening. Frederator Studios, who you might know best as the folks behind Adventure Time> and Bravest Warriors>, are adapting Costume Quest [official site] for cartoon format. A jubilant Rice wrote: “Wooooo super excited to finally talk about how we’re making a Costume Quest cartoon with Frederator! Been a pleasure!”

… [visit site to read more]

Costume Quest 2 is a roleplaying and puzzle game from Psychonauts and Broken Age studio Double Fine. It’s about kids’ Halloween costumes actually transforming them, and thus enabling them to battle time-travelling dentists and candy-snatching aliens, in a fight to save the future from sugar-phobic tyranny. It’s out now.>

“Is that a children’s game?>” she asked in confusion.

“Uh. Not.. really,” I spluttered in embarrassment. “Sort of. It’s kind of…for everyone.”

Why didn’t I just say “yeah, but so what?” … [visit site to read more]

Ahem. So as you may have already surmised, there is going to be a Costume Quest 2. The original Costume Quest was a delightful Halloween-themed role-playing romp from Double Fine that warmed hearts and had Alec’s internal, infernal grin factory working over time. But it was also a rather insubstantial snack of a game, all things considered. A sticky-sweet Halloween treat, but far from the sumptuous meal it could’ve been. That in mind, I’m very, very, very excited that Double Fine is carving a second Costume Quest from its colossal game development pumpkin. I doubt it’ll be some sprawling mega-opus, but I certainly won’t say no to a slightly improved stroll down the darkest> of child-friendly candy-filled alleys.

… [visit site to read more]

Hey! Did you hear the news about Stacking and Costume Quest? No? Oh, right, that’s because I’m still in the process of reporting it. Well, the short version is, Double Fine – after what Tim Schafer describes as “a daring and top-secret midnight raid” on Nordic Games HQ – has reclaimed full rights to both Stacking and Costume Quest. Distribution, production, whatever else goes into making a game – all that good stuff. So what happens now? I got in touch with Double Fine to (double) find out.

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“Double Fine?” someone somewhere has probably said at some point maybe. “Who do they think they are, claiming to be twice as fine as the rest of us? I’m no fool. I don’t believe it for a second.” But, Mr Somewhere, what if you’re wrong>? Then you’ll just look silly, your only solace coming in the fact that going off the grid in shame would be simple, given that you have the least Google-able name of all time. Clearly, the only solution to your conundrum is a test. You need to play most of Double Fine’s back catalog, but your gleaming shield of skepticism must be kept aloft. Buying these games full price would only create suspicion that you might harbor legitimate interest. We can’t have that. The solution? A new Humble Double Fine Bundle. It’s offering all of the laugh factory’s PC games except Iron Brigade on a pay-what-you-want basis, and a pre-purchase of Broken Age if you’re willing to part with $35. Exceedingly strange, vaguely arousing video after the break.

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Here’s what puzzles me. We’ve all been so terribly excited about Double Fine making a new point and click adventure game and potentially making Psychonauts 2 – as though the idea of getting games like that had hitherto been openly insane. And yet, on console, they’d already released Stacking, which is positively dripping in adventurey leftfield puzzles and Psychonautsy surreal-slapstick humour. So, before we get entirely wrapped up in crying for more, let’s celebrate lovely Stacking, which arrived suddenly on Steam just a few days ago. (more…)

Update: Minecraft-master Markus ‘Notch’ Persson has been publicly trying to get Tim Schafer’s attention today, saying “Let’s make Psychonauts 2 happen” and confirming to us that he’s serious. Who knows what, if anything, will come of this – but how exciting, eh?

Ah, the fine art of reporting on non-events: not news as such, but they make us go all misty-eyed and slightly sad. In this case, it’s Double Fine’s Tim Schafer revealing that he would gladly make another Psychonauts game, but no-one will give the studio the money they need for it. Aaaaaaaaaaaargh! (more…)

This year has been unusually rich in the kind of game that I most enjoy: those that are open-ended, or provide a sandbox world for me to mess about in. We usually get a couple of these every year, but in 2011 we seem to have run into a minor bounty of the open stuff, which is good news for explorers and meanderers alike. I’ve gone into a bit more detail about why this pleases me below. >

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After far too long a hiatus, Double Fine Productions unexpectedly returned to PC last week, releasing their year-old, Halloween-themed RPG Costume Quest on Steam. Hopefully the rest of their games will follow, but in the meantime here’s what I made of their dress-up duff ‘em up. >

There aren’t enough costumes! Then again, any number of additional costumes probably still wouldn’t have been enough to dissuade me from using the very first one, the winged, rocket-lobbing robot suit, over and over again. Maybe it’s because it looks a bit like Thundercracker from Transformers, or maybe it’s just because I’m a boy. Boys like machines and violence, girls like pink and unicorns. Those are the rules. (Apart from when they’re not.) Costume Quest does, after all, play unashamedly to the child in us: it’s a celebration of the goofy cheesiness of American Halloween, admirably managing to keep cynicism out while never falling prey to mawkishness. (more…)