Timothy John Schafer is an American video game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in July 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts. Schafer is best known as the designer of critically acclaimed games Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, Brütal Legend and Broken Age, co-designer of Day of the Tentacle, and assistant designer on The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. He is well known in the video game industry for his storytelling and comedic writing style, and has been given both a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Game Developers Choice Awards, and a BAFTA Fellowship for his contributions to the industry.
Double Fine Productions, Inc. is an American first-party video game developer of Xbox Game Studios based in San Francisco, California. Founded in July 2000 by Tim Schafer shortly after his departure from LucasArts, Double Fine's first two games – Psychonauts and Brütal Legend – underperformed publishers' expectations despite critical praise. The future of the company was assured when Schafer turned to several in-house prototypes built during a two-week period known as "Amnesia Fortnight" to expand as smaller titles, all of which were licensed through publishers and met with commercial success. Schafer has since repeated these Amnesia Fortnights, using fan-voting mechanics, to help select and build smaller titles. Double Fine is also credited with driving interest in crowdfunding in video games, having been able to raise more than US$3 million for the development of Broken Age, at the time one of the largest projects funded by Kickstarter, and more than US$3 million for the development of Psychonauts 2.
Humble Bundle, Inc. is a digital storefront for video games, which grew out of its original offering of Humble Bundles, collections of games sold at a price determined by the purchaser and with a portion of the price going towards charity and the rest split between the game developers. Humble Bundle continues to offer these limited-time bundles, but have expanded to include a greater and more persistent storefront. The Humble Bundle concept was initially run by Wolfire Games in 2010, but by its second bundle, the Humble Bundle company was spun out to manage the promotion, payments, and distribution of the bundles. In October 2017, the company was acquired by Ziff Davis through its IGN Entertainment subsidiary.
Costume Quest is a party-based role-playing video game developed by Double Fine Productions and published by THQ on October 20, 2010. In the game, the player controls a child who is trick-or-treating with their twin on Halloween night when they encounter a monster that kidnaps their sibling. The player must travel around the local neighborhood collecting items for their costume, candy, and fellow children as companions in order to face the leader of the monsters and rescue their sibling. The costume aspects are used in turn-based battle segments, where the player character and companions are transformed into whatever they are dressed as to fight other monsters; the costume aspects are also used for abilities outside of battles.
Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster is a Sesame Street video game developed by Double Fine Productions and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in conjunction with Sesame Workshop. The game was released in North America on October 11, 2011 for the Xbox 360 console. Players use the Kinect controller to control the Muppet characters Elmo and Cookie Monster and new characters Marco and Seamus as they sing and dance. Though Once Upon a Monster represents Double Fine's first foray into licensed property, the title started as one of four smaller titles, alongside Costume Quest, Stacking, and Iron Brigade, during an "Amnesia Fortnight" period during Brütal Legend, and was later found to be easily adapted to the Sesame Street property. The original prototype of the game, titled Happy Song, was released for Microsoft Windows as part of the Amnesia Fortnight 2012 bundle on November 19, 2012. Microsoft developed and released another Sesame Street game that used the Kinect sensor, Kinect Sesame Street TV, in 2012.
Iron Brigade, formerly titled Trenched, is a 2011 video game, developed by Double Fine Productions, published by Microsoft Studios as a downloadable Xbox Live Arcade title on the Xbox 360, and released for Microsoft Windows in 2012. Iron Brigade is a hybrid tower defense and third-person shooter game, set after World War I in an alternate reality, where the player controls units from the Mobile Trench Brigade to fight off robotic species called the Monovision. The player controls giant mecha-style robots with weapon and armor customization through a variety of missions set across the world. The game was released on the Xbox Live service on June 22, 2011, with a delayed release in certain European areas due to trademark issues with the title, with its release scheduled for November 30, 2011 but was ultimately released on December 1, 2011 under the alternate name Iron Brigade. The name of the title was updated worldwide to Iron Brigade alongside the European release.
A game jam is an event where participants try to make a video game from scratch. Depending on the format, participants might work independently, or in teams. The event duration usually ranges from 24 to 72 hours. Participants are generally programmers, game designers, artists, writers, and others in game development-related fields. While many game jams are run purely as a game-making exercise, some game jams are contests that offer prizes.
Double Fine Happy Action Theater is a casual video game developed by Double Fine Productions and distributed by Microsoft Game Studios. The title is a Kinect motion-sensing based title for the Xbox 360 and was released via the Xbox Live Arcade service on February 1, 2012. Happy Action Theater is based on an idea that Double Fine's founder, Tim Schafer, had on devising a game that Lily, his two-year-old daughter, could play with. To this, the open-ended game is a collection of eighteen different modes that allow multiple players to interact in unique ways through the Kinect cameras and motion-sensing in an augmented reality shown on the console's display, such as playing in a giant virtual ball pit or walking through simulated lava.
Broken Age is a point-and-click adventure video game developed and published by Double Fine. Broken Age was game director Tim Schafer's first return to the genre since 1998's Grim Fandango, and was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Xbox One platforms. The game was developed in two acts; the first was released on January 28, 2014, and the second was released on April 28, 2015. A retail version of the complete game for Windows, macOS, and Linux, published by Nordic Games, was released on April 28, 2015. A Nintendo Switch version was released on September 13, 2018.
Tasha Sounart is an American animator, artist, video game designer, and writer. She was the designer of Double Fine's adventure RPG Costume Quest. She is currently an Associate Creative Director of Theme Parks at Pixar.
Razmig Mavlian is an Armenian-Canadian artist, animator, video game developer, and musician. His nickname "Raz" was the inspiration for the name of the main character in Psychonauts. He currently is a concept artist at Oculus VR.
The Cave is a puzzle-platform, adventure game developed by Double Fine Productions and published by Sega in January 2013 on the PlayStation Network, Nintendo eShop and Xbox Live Arcade storefronts via the PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360 consoles and on Steam for Microsoft Windows, OS X and Linux. It was later released on October 3, 2013 on iOS devices and Android. On December 2, 2013 it was also released on the Ouya. The game has been delisted from console storefronts as of April 2, 2018, making it a Steam exclusive until 2023.
Middle Manager of Justice is a simulation video game for iOS and Android developed and published by Double Fine Productions. The iOS version was accidentally released in all territories on September 5, 2012, but was quickly pulled. That build was later branded beta, with the final release planned for later that year. The final release of the iOS version occurred on December 3, 2012 in Canada. The worldwide release of the iOS version occurred ten days later on December 13, 2012. The Android version was released on August 14, 2013.
Chris Remo is an American video game designer, composer, writer, podcaster, and former journalist.
Brad Muir is an American computer game designer and programmer. He was a designer on Brütal Legend, and the project leader of Iron Brigade, Brazen, and Massive Chalice.
Spacebase DF-9 was a space simulator video game developed by Double Fine Productions. It was prototyped during Double Fine's open Amnesia Fortnight 2012, directed by JP Lebreton. After being released as an open beta on October 15, 2013, it was officially released on October 27, 2014, for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux. After the official end-of-life of the game in May 2015, the community took over the development based on an open-source code fork. The community fork of this game has also since been abandoned, the last update Patch v1.09 Unofficial - Jan 16, 2023 marking the end of community accepted contributions. DerelictGames has disbanded afterwards.
Amnesia Fortnight 2014 is a bundle of prototypes made during a two-week public prototyping session in 2014 by Double Fine Productions, which was held in conjunction with Humble Bundle in 2014. Everyone that paid a minimum of $1 had the opportunity to vote on 23 concept ideas from employees, and $7 to vote on one of four ideas from Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward. After the completion of the voting period, Double Fine developed the top three concept ideas from employees and the top one concept from Pendleton voted ideas into game prototypes that became available to those that purchased the bundle after they were completed. 2 Player Productions filmed a documentary about the making of the prototypes, which was included on Blu-ray with purchase of the bundle if you donated $35. The documentary was also released on YouTube.
Hack 'n' Slash is a video game developed by Double Fine Productions. Prototyped during Double Fine's open Amnesia Fortnight 2012, Hack 'n' Slash is a top-down action-adventure game similar to The Legend of Zelda, though with in-game weapons and objects that allow the player to hack the game's world to achieve victory. The game was released to Steam's Early Access on May 6, 2014, for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux computers. It left early access status and became a full release on September 9, 2014.
Amnesia Fortnight 2017 is a bundle of prototypes made during a two-week public prototyping session in 2017 by Double Fine Productions, which was held in conjunction with Humble Bundle in 2017. Everyone that paid a minimum of $1 had the opportunity to vote on 25 concept ideas from employees. After the completion of the voting period, the top two picks were developed into prototypes. In addition, Tim Schafer chose an additional prototype, and the Double Fine Productions staff that was working on Amnesia Fortnight chose another. This was done to give the team a bit of control, rather than have all of the choices be as a result of online voting. Double Fine developed these four concept ideas from employees into game prototypes that became available to those that purchased the bundle after they were completed.
