The International House of Mojo

The Double Fine Amnesia Fortnight Humble Bundle Votes Have Been Cast, and the four pitches to become prototype games have been decided:

Hack n' Slash led by Brandon Dillon: an action-adventure (2D Zelda-style) where a young elf uses her hacking skills to cheat her way through.

Spacebase DF-9 led by JP LeBreton: a simulation game where you build a space base where aliens can live and work, and watch interesting stories emerge from their simulated lives.

The White Birch led by Andy Wood: an ambient platform game (in the style of Ico or Journey) in which a young girl climbs a tower to escape a dark, hazardous forest.

Autonomous led by Lee Petty: a first person perspective construction and action game where you where you collect primitives and energy to build self-directed automatons to both explore and survive the hazardous environment of the futuristic "junkyard world".

Also, make sure to check the Double Fine Amnesia Fortnight Humble Bundle site at 2PM PST today, where Double Fine will have a live stream going.

Update: The list of games being made into prototypes has expanded to five! The additional pitch being made into a prototype game is:

Black Lake led by Levi Ryken: an action-adventure where you track animals trough a folk tale forest and purge evil from their dreams which have spilled out into the world.

For those who missed the voting period, you can still donate to the bundle and get the five new prototypes, and prototypes for Costume Quest and Happy Song (which became Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster). If you donate more than the average (currently $7.22 USD), you'll also get the prototype of the stop-motion and Monster Hunter inspired RPG Brazen.

The Amnesia Fortnight Humble Bundle is still going on, flaunting its uniqueness in its on-going effort to get you to donate to it so you can vote on which of the four game pitches will become prototypes over the two week period that is this year's Amnesia Fortnight.

To sweeten the deal, Double Fine has added a new prototype to the mix: Brazen. This prototype, led by Iron Brigade project leader Brad Muir, mixes Monster Hunter with Ray Harryhausen inspired visuals (the stop motion special effects seen in classic Hollywood films such as Jason and the Argonauts and the original Clash of the Titans).

A DRM-free direct download and a Steam key will be given for Brazen to everyone who beats the average (currently just under $7 USD). Everyone who already donated to the bundle will receive the bundle, regardless of the amount spent (think of it as an early adopter's bonus).

You probably remember Amnesia Fortnight, Double Fine's game jam that gave us awesomeness like Costume Quest and Once Upon a Monster. Well, Double Fine is doing it again, and this time you can vote for your favorite concept!

This all runs through Humble Bundle and by contributing there, you not only get to vote, but you also get to download prototypes from this year and last year's Amnesia Fortnight, and... Really, don't read this, but go read and watch the actual announcement instead. Then spend, damn you!

(Spend.)

There are three games by Mojo-related companies that are soon to be released. One has a firm release date. That one is the final episode of The Walking Dead, which will be released on November 20th for PlayStation Network in North America and on November 21st for XBLA, PSN in Europe, and iOS.

The next game that's coming very soon is Double Fine's Kinect Party, which according to True Achievements, now has a placeholder page on Xbox.com with screenshots and cover art (although they didn't reveal the url of the placeholder page, they did post the aforementioned images at their site).

The third incoming game is another Double Fine title: the free-to-play iOS game Middle Manager of Justice, which was featured as a recommended download for iOS in this months Game Informer (so either the editors of the magazine are just wishful thinkers, or the game is coming out soon).

Here's another post chock full of tidbits related to the companies Mojo covers, but that aren't big enough news to warrant their own news post.

Double Fine's Middle Manager of Justice should be coming out for the public on iOS soon. The team is still hard at work killing bugs, polishing the game, and addressing feedback they have received from the people who have become beta testers after the accidental release of the game this summer. In the meantime, to tide fans over until the game is released, there's a nice blog post over at Double Fine about the origins of Middle Manager of Justice as an amnesia fortnight prototype, including the original pitch video and character concepts.

Also, for those of you (if there are any of you reading Mojo, which is doubtful) who haven't yet pre-ordered Double Fine Adventure, there's still time to become a slacker backer at the current $15 USD price tag. That price includes the game once it's finished in DRM free form for PC, Mac, or Linux and a Steam code to get the game through the Steam client, access to the unfinished beta on Steam (once it's available), and digital access to the Double Fine Adventure documentary series. You'll get over a dozen of the Double Fine Adventure documentary videos right now. In a week the price will be raised to $30 USD, to reflect the amount of goods you'll recieve, as well as how much you'll receive immediately (as opposed to before, when there weren't as many goodies already available to backers).

Finally, the Grim Fandango inspired The Journey Down: Chapter One, the first part of a four chapter game, by Mojo forum poster Skygoblin, is now available on IndieGameStand at a pay-what-you-wish deal (starting at only $1 USD). It's well worth picking up, if you haven't already. It's an excellent chapter that's a great tribute to the LucasArts classics, while holding it's own amongst them.

Some guy discovered a gem while rooting through Sub-basement #7194 of Archive.org. It's an interview with Tim Schafer circa 1996 about the freshly released Full Throttle:

Source: Double Fine forums

Tim Schafer has been spotted wearing his "boss" hat while discussing business decisions, contrasting his usual "game designer" attire and Schaferesque wit. Luckily, serious Schafer is by no means inferior to his blockbuster self, particularly when he drops wisdom regarding the video game industry:

The full write up addresses frequent layoffs that generally accompany completion of projects. Read the story for Schafer's reasoning for not firing any of his staff upon completing Psychonauts.

Source: Wired

The Double Fine Mega Action Mega Sale is going on now. Every game by Double Fine is on sale for one week in celebration of October, or Rocktober as it was called during Brütal Legend's release.

Costume Quest is discounted by 50 percent, Brütal Legend is discounted between 69-81 percent (depending on platform), Psychonauts is discounted by 50 percent, Stacking is discounted by 50%, Iron Brigade is discounted by 33-50 percent, Double Fine Happy Action Theatre is discounted by 50 percent, and Once Upon a Monster is discounted by 15 percent.

Double Fine Adventure (codenamed Reds) is being steadily worked on, and art is being made and shown off for it all the time. If you're not a backer, you still have time to rectify that and become one so you can get access to the private backer forum and see the progress for yourself.

Or (or, even better, and) you can buy the Double Fine Adventure Lumberjack Print in pure Bagel style* for yourself for a mere $30.

• That would be the style of Nathan "Bagel" Stapley, the lead artist of Double Fine Adventure

There's been a bit of news of the fluff variety, so like last month, I'm going to include all the tidbits in one post.

The development period for Telltale's The Walking Dead is brisker than usual for the series, as Nick Herman updated his twitter with news that the episode 4 playtest has already been completed.

On the subject of Telltale, a rumor that a second season of Back to the Future: The Game is coming comes straight from Christopher Lloyd, who announced at the Fan Expo in Canada that he's once again playing Doc Brown in an upcoming game in the series.

Finally, over at Double Fine, the lead artist of Middle Manager of Justice, Mark Hamer, posted about the art of the game, including some concept art. Along with this comes the news that this game started out as one of the Amnesia Fortnight titles which was refined from it's original seriousness and rigidity into the quirky title that it is today (or will be when it's released shortly).

The Escapist is reporting that Double Fine accidentally released their iOS Super Hero sim onto iTunes in every region in an unfinished state on September 5th. Unfortunately, due to the difference between Mojo Time™ and real time, we weren't able to get the news out in time for Mojo readers.

But those who were lucky enough to download the unfinished build before it was pulled have now become beta testers. The game's project leader, Kee Chi, states that if you find any bugs to send bug reports to Double Fine. Any items bought during the beta will still be available in the full game. But Chi cautions that this is not the experience Double Fine wanted players to experience and recommends waiting until the completed version is released in the upcoming weeks.

In a nice interview with Eurogamer, Tim Schafer shares his feelings on what he now looks back on as a wrongheaded promotional strategy for the studio's softly successful Brutal Legend, revealing some interesting mindsets behind the three companies involved with regard to the title's RTS elements:

"Vivendi was like 'No. Absolutely not. We'll never say RTS, ever. Even if someone asks us if it's an RTS we'll say no.'"

"EA mostly just didn't emphasise it," Schafer says. "They never told us not to talk about it. In fact, they did a whole press event at a bar in San Francisco that was all about the multiplayer. We released our multiplayer tutorial trailer before the game came out, so they weren't hiding it at all."

As far as Double Fine goes, it released a hugely misleading demo that focused on the game's driving and melee combat. This was entirely due to accessibility reasons regarding the game's steep learning curve. "The demo was kind of an accident," explains Schafer. "The mechanics ramp up slowly over time, so the demo is usually the first mission, so you just don't know those complicated RTS mechanics yet."I think Tim's sense that openness is the way to go is correct, but it's hard to say how much, financially, it would have helped Brutal Legend. It's known now that the game was effectively built around the stage battles concept, but as Double Fine expanded the single player campaign they were able to give it an open world and imbue it with some of the depth of a dyed-in-the-wool action/adventure epic.

When you're playing through Brutal Legend as a story, though, as you can't blame anyone for doing, you don't really have the context that the stage battles are meant to be the core and that in a sense the single player campaign is a (elaborate, extremely lovingly crafted) kind of training for the multiplayer, and for many the experience came off as an open word action/adventure that had a bizarre identity crisis midway through.

However assumptions or marketing colored one's expectations, the final game was certainly an unusual hybrid of gameplay types that many people didn't know what to make of, and considering the absolute distaste a large sect of gamers apparently reserve for even the most simplified of RTS mechanics out of principle (just glance at the Eurogamer comments), one can kind of see where the cynical Vivendi marketers were coming from.

Personally? I don't fault the vision of the game at all, and blame the response on its scale, which seems to have grown almost too much over development. Here is what should have been a great cult game that got packaged as a blockbuster thanks to the extra single player tinsel, a celebrity cast, an expensive soundtrack and tons of marketing that proved to give the mainstream the wrong idea. Had Brutal Legend been of a similar scope to Iron Brigade, I suspect it would have been understood.

The full interview also contains Tim's thoughts on free-to-play, and how it may have allowed him to execute ideas he had for improving Brutal Legend and Costume Quest post-launch. And as for Psychonauts 2?

Source: Eurogamer

Which means that you can now purchase and download it as a PSN title. The PS2 version of Psychonauts is not the one I'd recommend to anyone with the option (which ought to be pretty much everyone, what with it on Steam), but it's always lovely to see the game get a little boost in availability and distinction. Quoth Chris Remo:

Please accept a similar rationale for the timing of this news post.

Source: Playstation.Blog

Another year of PAX Prime has come and gone. The companies that Mojo covers were represented there, so I thought I'd make a big post covering everything Mojo-related that happened there. But then I realized that the pickings were small for the Mojo crowd this year, so a long post isn't needed.

Telltale had their live recording of their Playing Dead webseries that looks inside the making of The Walking Dead game with questions asked by fans and answered by the writers and developers of the game. They also had some neat swag called the Undead Survival Kit that they were giving away to a lucky few attendees. That's it, unfortunately. It was all Walking Dead oriented. No news on King's Quest or even Fables, which was said to be arriving by quarter three of this year. Since this month would be the last month of the Q3 2012 release window, I think it's safe to say Fables will miss it's original announced release date.

Double Fine was also represented there, with footage shown from the 2 Player Productions documentary about the Double Fine Adventure. They also showed off Ron Gilbert's upcoming adventure with platforming elements, The Cave. There's a load of new screenshots at Mr. Gilbert's blog. The big news is that The Cave isn't just coming to PlayStation 3, PC, and Xbox 360. It's also coming to the Wii U eShop.

Double Fine also showed off their sequel to Happy Action Theater, which has been renamed Kinect Party (it's a wonder publisher Microsoft let them use a clever original title for the original in the first place). Interestingly, in an interview with Eurogamer, Double Fine mentioned they'd like to do an "after dark" version with minigames that aren't child friendly such as "a level that made players shoot explosive diarrhea from their bottoms anytime they'd bent over", "a system that allows you to attach objects to characters such as extra limbs or body parts, and some of them are not meant for family", and most interestingly "having scary things happen only when one player would be present. Then people would drag their friends over to show them the offending terror only for it to not happen with another person present. Then they'd look crazy". Letting the Double Fine go crazy with uncensored Kinect minigames would certainly be interesting, to say the least.

... or something like that, with Middle Manager of Justice.

This will be a free-ish iOS game -- meaning you'll optionally pay for upgrades and what not through micro transactions -- revolving around you taking on the role as a manager of an office full of superheros and taking part in RPG-like turn based superhero battles. Really, just read Kotaku's preview. Much better than having to read my recap of the preview.

The whole thing looks like the type of Double Fine fun we expect from the company. Office manager for superheros? It's hard to see how that can fail, as long as it's not too dependent on the micro transactions.

Update! Hey, there a website! And a trailer!

Source: Kotaku

Giant Bomb has a first look at some of the minigames in Double Fine's sequel to Happy Action Theater, Happy Action TV, as part of their Quick Look EX series in a video that is 38:49 in length.

Double Fine's going even crazier with the sequel, adding voice recognition, putting costumes and objects on the images of the players, adding a picture editor that lets you add filters and borders, and the ability to post pictures from the game directly to Facebook, and more. The dubstep mode looks especially crazy and fun. There are 18 new minigames and the good news is that if you own the first Double Fine Happy Action Theater, the 18 minigames from the original will be playable right in the new game, making it especially convenient for children (and parties!).

Happy Action TV will be playable at Pax Prime, which is happening from August 31 to September 2 in Seattle (if you were lucky enough to get tickets months ago for the few days they were available).

Much has been said about the benefits Double Fine has been enjoying since they began pursuing multiple types of investment sources for their projects. Their non-exclusionary approach has resulted in smaller games funded by traditional publisher relationships (The Amensia Fortnight titles, Happy Action Theater, The Cave), crowdsourcing ("Reds") and the good fortune of an angel investor like Dracogen, a "fan with money" whose support led to the studio being able to self-publish their Psychonauts upgrade and Amnesia Fortnight PC ports on Steam.

In fact, it may not be long before Double Fine, in a downright Telltaleean twist, will be selling games directly through its web site. We already knew that there's been a big shift underway in the company's business strategy since Brutal Legend came out, and according to this article published last week on Venturebeat, the studio isn't turning back.

Sounds like Double Fine's managing to find a way to have their cake (creative freedom) and eat it too (keep the lights on). Read the full article.

Source: Venturebeat

Double Fine has announced that Iron Brigade will finally be available for PC. The game is set to be released on Steam on August 13th and will include the DLC expansion Rise of the Martian Bear.

If you own an Xbox 360 and still haven't bought the game, know that it has been discounted to 800 MS points. The Iron Brigade t-shirt has also gone on sale over at the Double Fine Shop. For just $15.00 you can be as cool as sound designer Camden Stoddard pictured below.

Source: Double Fine Action News

The Double Fine presentation from GDC 2012 has made its way to the GDC Vault where you can now watch it...as if you were there.

Creative Panic: How Agility Turned Terror Into Triumph is an hour long talk about Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight and the four games it birthed given by Tim and the respective project leads (except Tasha Harris, who was reclaimed by Pixar). I like Tim's recollection of the cancellation of Brutal Legend 2: "Well, that's interesting - we're gonna go out of business."

Source: GDC Vault

It's been in the works since 2009, but The Art of Brütal Legend Book is finally coming. The book features artwork from Double Fine artists (and friends of Double Fine) including Scott Campbell, Peter Chan, Mark Hamer, Razmig Mavlian, Lee Petty, Levi Ryken, Nathan “Bagel” Stapley, and others.

It's being published by Udon Entertainment, and is expected to be released in November or December of this year.

To celebrate, Double Fine has marked down their prices for all of their copies of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Brütal Legend, including the ones signed by Tim Schafer, which can now be picked up for a respectable $20 US (or $10 US if you don't like Schafer ink on your games).