Things got a little scary after Disney bought out LucasFilm last year, acquiring the rights to all of LucasArts' games before shutting down the studio for good. What would become of classics like Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and Knights of the Old Republic? Well, we've got our first development—the House of Mouse has signed a deal with EA to develop and publish games based on the Star Wars licence.
A Knight, a Scientist and a Time Traveller walk into a cave. Somehow, that feels like it should lead to a joke - especially in a game by Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert. It doesn’t, but that’s not in itself a problem. The Cave has a definite dark sense of humour, but it’s not a comedy. Instead, it’s a laidback tragedy about seven sinners on a search for their deepest desires, only to find their fatal flaws waiting for them instead. A series of light morality plays written to educate and entertain. And, sadly, a really quite dull platform game.
Sega have announced that the Double Fine developed, Ron Gilbert headed 2D adventure platformer The Cave will be arriving on PC on January 23rd. The price has been confirmed as £9.99/$14.99/€12.99 for Windows, Mac and Linux.
We recently talked to adventure game luminary Ron Gilbert about Disney's acquisition of LucasArts, and how he felt about the rights to Monkey Island changing hands. He wasn't optimistic that he'd ever retrieve the series he created, saying that Disney seems like a company which "hoards IP." In an interview posted by Eurogamer today, however, Gilbert confirmed that he does plan to contact Disney. If he's lucky, they'll just read the interview and save him the phone call.
Lock, load, and roll out with T.J., Logan, Evan, and Tyler as we share our experiences on the war-torn battlefields of PlanetSide 2, and bring you news from every wavelength of the PC gaming spectrum. Far Cry 3? XCOM? Ron Gilbert? We've got it all. Plus, is talking about whether or not games are art, in itself, art? Were we too hard on Telltale's The Walking Dead? Why am I still typing when there's science to do? Just hurry up and listen to...
PC Gamer Podcast 339: Designated Marksman
Disney's recent acquisition of Lucasfilm scored it more than the Star Wars franchise: it also picked up LucasArts and its catalog of games, including Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion, landmarks of Double Fine designer Ron Gilbert's career. While discussing his current project, The Cave (and his thoughts on The Walking Dead), I asked Gilbert how he felt about his work being under Disney's control.
Double Fine's upcoming platformer The Cave, directed by click-master Ron Gilbert, deals with a variety of contemporary topics, such as the vagaries of subterranean carnival workers and the possible population of a magical talking cave. The latest round of screenshots still doesn't explain the connections between kingly cathedrals, missile control centers, and "OMDog" vending machines under one stony roof, but we're sure it'll all come together. Dose up on the wonderful weirdness inside.
Double Fine have released the first details, screenshots and trailer of Ron Gilbert's new adventure, The Cave. A bundle of jagged jigsaw images have been teasing the title for a short while now. It turns out the seven characters shown in those mugshots can be recruited into a band of three adventurers who must investigate a talking cave. But this is NO ORDINARY TALKING CAVE, there's an underground theme park, a castle and a fully armed "nuclear tipped ICBM" hidden within its dripping subterranean bowels.
"If you enjoy rappelling, spelunking and dark rocky caverns then be prepared to be disappointed! And then intrigued. And then AMAZED," says the cheerful press release. The seven adventurers, including The Scientist, The Adventurer, The Time Traveler, The Hillbilly, The Monk and a pair of tiny twins, must combine their unusual talents to overcome the cave's traps. It's due out "early 2013."
More concept art for Ron Gilbert's unnamed project with Double Fine has crept onto the legendary game designer's blog over the weekend. The five pictures show off The Scientist, The Adventurer, The Time Traveler, The Hillbilly and The Monk, and the brief description of each suggests that they're all going to playable characters. A multi-protagonist game by one of the men behind Day of the Tentacle? Yes please.
There are only 36 hours left to contribute to Double Fine's adventure game kickstarter campaign. So far 75,766 backers have contributed $2,801,103 to the project. Quite a lot more than the initial $400,000 target, which was surpassed within hours of the campaign going live.
"We're still pushing for more because the more money we have, the more awesome we can make the game, the more people we can put on it," Schafer says in the final call for donations in the video above. "we really have been enjoying the statement and attention that this project has been getting and we can think we can even make a louder statement about what we're doing here."
Not long after the creator of Minecraft offered to fund a sequel to their much-loved Psychonauts, Double Fine looked to a different source to fund a different game. Kickstarter lets anyone donate to a project in return for rewards proportional to their investment, and they don't have to pay anything unless the project gets enough pledges to go ahead. Double Fine set out to raise $400,000 for a point-and-click adventure game, in 34 days. They raised $450,000 in eight hours.
It's a fantastic and exciting accomplishment that reflects how the games industry is shifting towards one where passion, as much as mass market appeal, can make games happen. But, much more importantly, it involves a bunch of nerdy numbers I can make a graph from.
Double Fine give increasingly ridiculous rewards for donations of amounts varying from $15 to $150,000. As you'd expect, the cheapest options were the most popular, but not proportionally so. Which of them actually made Double Fine the most money? I know, because I made a graph.
Speaking at GDC last week, Ron Gilbert said that he'd love to see a new and updated version of Maniac Mansion, similar to 2009's Monkey Island re-releases, which brought the classic adventure game back with revamped graphics and voice acting. Gilbert created the original Maniac Mansion in 1987 and has been contemplating the changes he would make to his first game.
Deathspank is a platform for creating jokes. It uses the framework of a Diablo-alike role-playing game to hang gags from, but that’s what you’re here for. The fact that Monkey Island developer Ron Gilbert’s name is attached to the whole thing is what’s going to make you pay attention, and because of that you expect a certain amount of humour. And it’s there, keeping you on a level of constant amusement that occasionally bubbles over into laughter.
There’s a nonsense story in there about Ancient Evil and Kidnapped Orphans that moves from Demon Mines to Enchanted Sinister Forests, and the look of the game is as much of a facade as the premise; all the buildings are just cardboard cutouts, and it looks like the sky is on a runner, but that’s part of the joke.
