Day of the Tentacle, also known as Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle, is a 1993 graphic adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It is the sequel to the 1987 game Maniac Mansion. The plot follows Bernard Bernoulli and his friends Hoagie and Laverne as they attempt to stop the evil Purple Tentacle - a sentient, disembodied tentacle - from taking over the world. The player takes control of the trio and solves puzzles while using time travel to explore different periods of history.
Full Throttle is a 1995 graphic adventure video game developed by LucasArts and designed by Tim Schafer. It was Schafer's first game as project lead and head writer and designer, after having worked on other LucasArts titles including The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (1991), and Day of the Tentacle (1993). Set in the near future, the story follows motorcycle gang leader Ben, who must clear his name after being framed for the murder of a beloved motorcycle manufacturing mogul. A remastered version of the game was developed by Double Fine Productions and was released in April 2017 for Windows, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, with later ports for iOS and Xbox One.
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.
Psychonauts is a 2005 platform video game developed by Double Fine Productions and published by Majesco Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, Xbox and PlayStation 2.
Brütal Legend is an action-adventure video game with real-time strategy game elements created by Double Fine and published by Electronic Arts for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game was released during October 2009 in North America, Europe, and Australia. Though Brütal Legend was originally to be published by Vivendi Games prior to its merger with Activision, Activision dropped the game from its portfolio after the merger. It was later picked up by Electronic Arts, though Activision and Double Fine brought counter-lawsuits against each other over publishing issues. The issues were settled out of court. Later, Double Fine announced a port of the game for Microsoft Windows via Steam, which was released in February 2013. Mac OS X and Linux versions of the game were made available as part of the Humble Bundle in May 2013. A physical collector's edition for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux was released by IndieBox in October 2014.
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.
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.
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.
Video game development has typically been funded by large publishing companies or are alternatively paid for mostly by the developers themselves as independent titles. Other funding may come from government incentives or from private funding.
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.
Amnesia Fortnight 2012 is a bundle of prototypes made during a two-week public prototyping session in 2012 by Double Fine Productions, which was held in conjunction with the Humble Bundle group in 2012. Everyone that paid a minimum of $1 had the opportunity to vote on 23 concept ideas. After the completion of the voting period, Double Fine developed the top five voted ideas into game prototypes that became available to those that purchased the bundle after they were completed. There were also three bonus prototypes included, including two from the first Amnesia Fortnight that were made into commercial games, and one prototype from the previous year's Amnesia Fortnight that hadn't been released to the public before that point. 2 Player Productions filmed a documentary about the making of the prototypes, which was included with purchase of the bundle. Amnesia Fortnight 2012 was later released on physical media as part of a special edition bundle.
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.
