Double Fine Adventure Message Board

The first half of Broken Age, the latest adventure from Grim Fandango designer Tim Schafer and his crew at Double Fine Productions, is now available to the general public.

As Ludwig points out in our review of Broken Age Act 1, the game is clearly the offspring of the classic point-and-click adventure games that Schafer had a big hand in popularizing, though the archaic elements of the genre are mated with more modern, user-friendly features, resulting in an enjoyable, if staid, adventure. "The lack of challenge and a dearth of branching dialogue (sorry - these dialogue trees resemble bamboo shafts) disappoint, yes, but Broken Age always elicits a smile and a desire to continue," our review states before awarding the game 4 of 5 stars.

Whether you prefer the PC, Mac or Linux platforms, you'll find Broken Age Act 1 now available on Steam for $25. Broken Age Act 2 is slated for release "later this year" when it will become available to owners of Act 1 as a free downloadable addition.

Today is likely to be one of the most interesting days for Kickstarter watchers. Broken Age, the adventure game that made the crowdfunding format a gaming household name, is out on sale today. Right now, in fact. So the question that’s left to be answered is: how many people are there who are interested in buying it, who weren’t interested in funding it?

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This is what you wanted from Double Fine Adventure Game: A cartoony stylized world, lovingly rendered in 2D and fractured in ways that only nonsensical combinations of random items can fix. What you're getting in Broken Age, Act 1: All of that, but with a level of cuteness, humor and heartache that's exceedingly rare in the modern video game landscape.Read more...

The first act of Double Fine's graphic adventure game Broken Age will be available to the public on January 28 for PC, Mac and Linux. The game will launch two weeks after being made available to Kickstarter backers today. Broken Age is available for pre-order on Steam at a 10 percent discount ($22.49) until it launches.

Double Fine earned over $3.3 million on Kickstarter in March 2012 for its "Double Fine Adventure" crowdfunding campaign, which was given the name Broken Age one year later. A backers-only update on the game's Kickstarter page revealed that the game will skip Steam's Early Access program and launch in full on Steam with season pass support.

While Broken Age will land on iOS, Android and Ouya at an undisclosed date, the concluding second act of the game will launch as a free update to owners later this year.

It’s finally here. Well, if you were a backer. After almost two years since Tim Schafer kickstarted Kickstarter as one of the primary tools for funding independent videogame development, the Double Fine Adventure, Broken Age, is in players’ hands. With $3.3m raised, from 90,000 backers, and a year and a half more development than they planned, the first point and click adventure Schafer has made in twenty years will be out proper on the 28th, but the “beta” is with the backers today. Double Fine have asked both backers and press to hold off talking about most of the game until that latter release date, and it’ll be interesting to see how that goes. But for the moment, here are some early impressions of the first stages of the game.

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Double Fine's adventure game Kickstarter was one of 2012's great success stories, bringing in over $3 million in community funding. A year later, though, it turns out that wasn't enough money to get the game finished. In a lengthy and honest message to backers sent earlier today, Double Fine boss Tim Schafer explains that, basically, he designed too much game. And that for the title - now known as Broken Age - to be finished, it's going to need more money. It's worth noting that the project originally asked for a mere $400,000 in funding. Going to a publisher is out of the question, and a second Kickstarter is also written off as a bad decision, so Schafer has decided to cut the game in half and sell it on Steam. What if we made some modest cuts in order to finish the first half of the game by January instead of July, and then released that finished, polished half of the game on Steam Early Access? Backers would still have the option of not looking at it, of course, but those who were sick of waiting wouldn’t have to wait any more. They could play the first half of the game in January! We were always planning to release the beta on Steam, but in addition to that we now have Steam Early Access, which is a new opportunity that actually lets you charge money for pre-release content. That means we could actually sell this early access version of the game to the public at large, and use that money to fund the remaining game development. The second part of the game would come in a free update a few months down the road, closer to April-May. Schafer adds "With this shipping solution I think we’re balancing the size of the game and the realities of funding it pretty well", and says that "whatever date we start selling the early release, backers still have exclusive beta access before that, as promised in the Kickstarter." Double Fine recently concluded funding for its second Kickstarter project, which was also successfully funded. You can read the full statement below. A Note from Tim Hello, Backers of Adventure! Those of you who have been following along in the documentary know about the design vs. money tension we’ve had on this project since the early days. Even though we received much more money from our Kickstarter than we, or anybody anticipated, that didn’t stop me from getting excited and designing a game so big that it would need even more money. I think I just have an idea in my head about how big an adventure game should be, so it’s hard for me to design one that’s much smaller than Grim Fandango or Full Throttle. There’s just a certain amount of scope needed to create a complex puzzle space and to develop a real story. At least with my brain, there is. So we have been looking for ways to improve our project’s efficiency while reducing scope where we could along the way. All while looking for additional funds from bundle revenue, ports, etc. But when we finished the final in-depth schedule recently it was clear that these opportunistic methods weren’t going to be enough. We looked into what it would take to finish just first half of our game—Act 1. And the numbers showed it coming in July of next year. Not this July, but July 2014. For just the first half. The full game was looking like 2015! My jaw hit the floor. This was a huge wake-up call for all of us. If this were true, we weren’t going to have to cut the game in half, we were going to have to cut it down by 75%! What would be left? How would we even cut it down that far? Just polish up the rooms we had and ship those? Reboot the art style with a dramatically simpler look? Remove the Boy or Girl from the story? Yikes! Sad faces all around. Would we, instead, try to find more money? You guys have been been very generous in the tip jar (thanks!) but this is a larger sum of money we were talking about. Asking a publisher for the money was out of the question because it would violate the spirit of the Kickstarter, and also, publishers. Going back to Kickstarter for it seemed wrong. Clearly, any overages were going to have to be paid by Double Fine, with our own money from the sales of our other games. That actually makes a lot of sense and we feel good about it. We have been making more money since we began self-publishing our games, but unfortunately it still would not be enough. Then we had a strange idea. What if we made some modest cuts in order to finish the first half of the game by January instead of July, and then released that finished, polished half of the game on Steam Early Access? Backers would still have the option of not looking at it, of course, but those who were sick of waiting wouldn’t have to wait any more. They could play the first half of the game in January! We were always planning to release the beta on Steam, but in addition to that we now have Steam Early Access, which is a new opportunity that actually lets you charge money for pre-release content. That means we could actually sell this early access version of the game to the public at large, and use that money to fund the remaining game development. The second part of the game would come in a free update a few months down the road, closer to April-May. So, everybody gets to play the game sooner, and we don’t have to cut the game down drastically. Backers still get the whole game this way—nobody has to pay again for the second half. And whatever date we start selling the early release, backers still have exclusive beta access before that, as promised in the Kickstarter. I want to point out that Broken Age’s schedule changes have nothing to do with the team working slowly. They have been kicking ass and the game looks, plays, and sounds amazing. It’s just taking a while because I designed too much game, as I pretty much always do. But we’re pulling it in, and the good news is that the game’s design is now 100% done, so most of the unknowns are now gone and it’s not going to get any bigger. With this shipping solution I think we’re balancing the size of the game and the realities of funding it pretty well. We are still working out the details and exact dates, but we’d love to hear your thoughts. This project has always been something we go through together and the ultimate solution needs to be something we all feel good about. In the meantime, I’m hoping you are enjoying the documentary and like the progress you’re seeing on Broken Age. I’m really exciting about how it’s coming together, I can’t wait for you to see more of it, and I feel good about finally having a solid plan on how to ship it! Thanks for reading, Tim

Announced in January as Project Shield, Nvidia's intriguing new handheld now has a price, a June release window, and the promise of Double Fine's Broken Age. Who's ready to spend $350 on a dedicated Android gaming device? Now simply dubbed Shield, Nvidia's Tegra 4-powered Android portable / streaming PC game device is now accepting preorders from folks who sign up for the newsletter at the project's website before May 20. The unit will begin shipping next month — just in time for the Ouya — and will be available at retail from GameStop, Newegg, Microcenter and Canada Computers. It's a hefty price tag for an Android device, but this is an Android device like no other, powered by the next generation of Nvidia's Tegra chips, with the ability to stream PC games from a computer outfitted with a GeForce GTX graphics card with virtually no lag. Here's Nvidia's official list of eye-catching features, which you can counter-balance with my own analysis of the device. Tegra 4 - the world's fastest mobile processor, Tegra 4 packs 72 custom GPU cores and four Cortex-A15 CPU coresConsole-grade controller - dual analog joysticks, a full-sized D-Pad, left and right analog triggers, full-sized bumpers and A/B/X/Y buttonsHigh Fidelity Audio and Video -5-inch, 720p retinal multi-touch display and custom bass reflex tuned port audio systemMemory and Storage - 2GB RAM, 16GB internal flash storage and microSD storage slotAndroid Jelly Bean - the latest Android Jelly Bean operating systemAnd More! - 802.11n 2X2 MIMO game-speed Wi-Fi , GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, mini-HDMI, micro-USB 2.0 and 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack It's a fair price for a luxury item, the sort of shiny new tech that no one really needs but some people can't help but want. Nvidia also sweetens the pot with five new games TegraZone games coming to the Shield later this year, including Double Fine's eagerly-anticipated Kickstarter-funded Broken Age. Double Fine is also bringing Costume Quest to Shield, with Steel Wool Games' Flyhunter: Origins, Dedalord's Skiing Fred and Chuck's Challenge 3D from Niffler rounding out the list. With the Ouya going wide next month, GameStick due out sometime soon and now Shield dropping in June, it's going to be an interesting spring for Android gaming. You can read more about the Shield launch and the upcoming games at Nvidia's blog.

Double Fine has shared the first footage of Broken Age, the studio's upcoming adventure game starring a girl who is to be fed to a giant monster, and a boy living on a space station with his only companion, a computer.

Double Fine must be celebrating their crowdfunded adventure game’s birthday, or some other sort of coming-of-Broken-Age event, because the game has received lots of gifts this week. First it was an actual name and a website, and now there’s a trailer. Lucky Broken Age! Nobody has ever made a trailer about me and I’ve had more birthdays than I care to remember. This is my first proper look at the art style and I think it’s absolutely delightful.

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Double Fine has offered up its first look at Broken Age, the studio's upcoming adventure game starring a girl who is to be fed to a giant monster and a boy living on a space station, his only companion a computer.

The Double Fine Adventure has a name and a website. It’s called Broken Age, which strikes me as a decent moniker, although I’ve already started reading it as one word, rendering it all but meaningless. “The toaster is not working. It is suffering from severe brokenage.” Broken Age is a point and click adventure and it has two protagonists, both of whom are presumably playable. They are “leading parallel lives”:

The girl has been chosen by her village to be sacrificed to a terrible monster–but she decides to fight back. Meanwhile, a boy on a spaceship is living a solitary life under the care of a motherly computer, but he wants to break free to lead adventures and do good in the world. Adventures ensue.

They should have called it ‘Adventures Ensue’.

Double Fine Adventure, the adventure game whose progress has been a secret to all but Kickstarter backers, was revealed as "Broken Age" at a PAX East panel today. The website for the game is now live, offering art and plot information to the rest of us outside of the privileged Kickstarter class.

"Broken Age is a point-and-click adventure telling the stories of a young boy and girl leading parallel lives," the website explains. "The girl has been chosen by her village to be sacrificed to a terrible monster--but she decides to fight back. Meanwhile, a boy on a spaceship is living a solitary life under the care of a motherly computer, but he wants to break free to lead adventures and do good in the world. Adventures ensue."

Pre-orders are still available on the site, and provide access to the backer-only forums, as well as all past and future episodes of the documentary series about Broken Age's development, by 2 Player Productions.

#doublefine The Amnesia Fortnight sessions at Double Fine have been a sort of open secret at Tim Schafer's Double Fine development studios. People can point to what's come out of those brainstorming marathons, in the form of Iron Brigade, Costume Quest and Stacking. And the folks at Double Fine have made the latest Amnesia Fortnight public, letting folks play prototypes and vote on the game concepts they like. More »

I suppose we all knew this deep down, but it’s startling to see it laid out in pretty graphs: 2012 has seen a massive, massive increase on games funding through Kickstarter. Eye wateringly huge. In six short months they have exploded from the eighth most-funded category in Kickstarter history to the second most-funded, and the first-most funded category of the year, having raised a staggering $50,330,275 in 2012 alone. I mean, just look at that graph. JUST LOOK AT IT.

And I do mean in 2012 alone. Look at 2011! Nothing! Pittance! Pennies compared to this year.

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Seven of the eleven Kickstarter projects to surpass $1 million in funding belong to the games category. In a post entitled "The Year of the Game," the crowd funding site reveals that games have gone from the eighth most-funded category in the site's three-year history to the second.

This year has seen over $50 million pledged toward game projects on the site, with film and design several million behind at $42 million and $40 million, respectively. In 2011, games only had $3.6 million in funding and in 2010 it was at a mere $519,885.

The great change began in February, when Double Fine Adventure surpassed a million dollars in 24 hours and concluded with $3.3 million pledged. The most recent game to surpass a million was Uber Entertainment's Planetary Annihilation. Head on over to Kickstarter for "the year of the game" breakdown.

Are you a proud (or otherwise) backer of the Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter project? If so, you could be in for some good news very soon, as the Kickstarter rewards have begun shipping, reports VG247.

Rewards range from T-shirts. posters and art books to lunch with Tim Shafer and Ron Gilbert themselves. Shipping time on that last one probably depends on how long it takes Double Fine to find a box large enough to house Tim, Ron and a reasonably sized table.

I feel like uplifting documentaries may be the secret cure for all of societies greatest ills. This goes double, for some reason, when independent game developers are involved. Minecraft’s proof-of-concept made me feel like I, too, could single-handedly build a blocky bridge between Sweden and the rest of the world, and Indie Game: The Movie will probably be used to bring Sylvester Stallone back from the brink of defeat in the next Rocky movie. And now, along comes Double Fine Adventure’s variation on the theme, in all its zany wonderfulness. It is, however, also an irresistibly smile-inducing glimpse behind the scenes of a company just as shocked by Kickstarter’s piggy-bank-stuffing prowess as we all were at the time. Kick off your weekend by giving part one a watch after the break.

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If you pledged financial support during Double Fine's now-legendarily successful Kickstarter campaign, you probably already saw this video. But if you didn't, now you get to. More »

The Kickstarter may have ended, but you still have a chance to throw money into Double Fine's impressive coffers, and guarantee yourself access to both the game and its ongoing documentary. Double Fine has opened up a PayPal account to which you can contribute now -- you can find it on this very slow-loading page.

For $15, you get a Steam code for the PC or Mac version (when it's done), beta access, backer forum access, and HD streaming documentary videos as they finish. Double Fine graciously released the first episode of the documentary, which we've placed at the top of this post so you can have something to do while the PayPal page loads.

#doublefineadventure A few hours ago, Double Fine uploaded a clip on Vimeo. It had some interesting imagery in it. Of what looks a lot like the company's new, Kickstarter-funded adventure game. More »

You're reading Reaction Time, a new weekly column that claims to examine recent events, games and trends in the industry, but is really just looking for an excuse to use the word "zeitgeist." It debuts on Fridays in Engadget's digital magazine, Distro. In 1998, Tim Schafer asked the world to buy his darkest, funniest and greatest graphic adventure, Grim Fandango. Players planet-wide gave a big ol' shrug, despite the impassioned clamor of genre buffs and the constant yelling of critics, who could only find so many synonyms for "masterpiece."

In 2012, Tim Schafer asked the world to give him $400,000 for a new point-and-click project, which had yet to be designed, documented or even described. This time, he got over $3.3 million.

This stratospheric level of success on Kickstarter, a venue for crowd-sourced funding that's now being directed at unconventional games, is not the norm. Tim Schafer and his Double Fine studio are in the midst of a perfect storm of publicity. The designer's cherished legacy, and his perceived role as the charming genius who just can't catch a break in a harsh industry, are the components of a great underdog story. And maybe lifelong Grim Fandango guilt is the glue that holds it all together.

#doublefineadventure If you even thought about giving money to Double Fine's Kickstarter project for a new adventure game, you'd have seen that the minimum contribution was $15. That got you a copy of the game when released, so it wasn't a bad deal. More »

"It's been an amazing experience," Tim Schafer said as the last bit of funding rolled in for Double Fine Adventure. "So much love."

And so much money! The Kickstarter project, which aimed to collect a mere $400,000 for a new, classically designed adventure game from Schafer's San Francisco-based studio, concluded with a total of $3,335,265 in funding -- after just over a month. An accompanying documentary will capture its creation, step-by-step.

"I don't want to say this is the end of the whole game industry as we know it ... it's not, it's not!" Schafer joked, surrounded by festivities in the Double Fine office. As the Kickstarter clock counted down, the visibly grateful designer said fans no longer had to accept no for an answer when it came to their favorite "niche" entertainment. "You can choose."

Double Fine's ambitious Kickstarter project is approaching the end of its fundraising period. The project has come a long way since its launch back in February, officially crossing the $3 million mark earlier today. Funding will end at 5:00 p.m. PST today, and Double Fine has organized a l...

The allure of t-shirts proved irresistible (also, we assume, the continued allure of new video games, etc.) The "Double Fine Adventure" Kickstarter, on its last day of availability, has crossed $3 million in contributions. As of writing, the developer has $3,018,892 to put into both a new adventure game and a documentary about its development.

If you think this is exciting, just wait until 6pm PDT/8pm EST, when Double Fine will begin broadcasting the final two hours of the drive live on Ustream. Watch Tim Schafer rake it in in real time!

The crowd-funding for the upcoming adventure game project from Tim Schafer's Double Fine Studios already broke all kinds of Kickstarter records weeks ago, when it reached its funding goal of $400,000 in eight hours. It's passed $3,000,000—which was the budget for Schafer's classic Grim Fandango—making it one of the highest funded projects ever on the fund-raising website. Double Fine's announced a livestream of the project's last few hours on Kickstarter, where we'll hopefully be able to see the studio's developers hard at work under a shower of money. More »

Double Fine's Kickstarter project has passed the $3 million mark, and still has 11 hours to go. At the time of writing, Double Fine Adventure has received $3,008,783 in donations from 79,278 backers. The company will be streaming the final two hours of the Kickstarter live via UStream from its offices...

I first heard about Kickstarter at San Diego Comic-Con 2010 in an early morning panel about black writers and artists in the graphic-novel industry, titled "Nappy Hour." I was there to secure a seat in the following panel -- which was a Dark Horse feature and may have included an appearance by the wonderful Gerard Way, writer of The Umbrella Academy and singer in this amazing band you probably haven't heard of (don't judge me) -- but "Nappy Hour" turned out to be one of the best presentations I saw that weekend.

Throughout the panel, author and performer Pam Noles mentioned Kickstarter as an underground, free-spirited way of funding creative projects, and said she had used it to fund a few of her own endeavors. I imagined an online co-op of artists and philanthropists holding hands and running through rich, green fields together, composing sonnets about how wonderful everything was, and supporting only the most remarkable of projects. When I got home and checked it out myself, I found a site similar to Etsy, but where the items for sale were half-finished, semi-formed ideas from people who seemed dedicated to carrying them out.

I thought it was wonderful.

So, that Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter. You know, the one you contributed to. With 22 days left on the campaign, the total sits at $2,005,826 -- 501 percent of the developer's $400,000 goal.

When the project hit its goal (in about eight hours), Double Fine studio head Tim Schafer said the extra money would go into more production values for the games and accompanying 2 Player Productions documentary. The result of that, so far, has been multiplatform, multilingual development of the game.

How many of the world's 6,909 known languages can Double Fine translate into, if the money keeps rolling in like this? Think of all the populations who have never experienced an adventure game!

The Double Fine Adventure fundraising effort on Kickstarter has just hit $2 million in pledges, less than two weeks in...