The International House of Mojo

(Thanks to SurplusGamer for this new update.)

Are you looking forward to Double Fine's Trenched? The always-lovely folks at Giant Bomb sat down with Double Fine's Brad Muir and did a Quick Look video of the game, showing off a full 45 minutes of gameplay and a dozen or so reasons to buy it.

Trenched, for those of you who don't know, is a tower defense by-way of third person shooter game about the brave soldiers of World War I, those young, forgotten souls who fought for liberty and freedom with nothing more than their wits and mecha tanks. The game comes to XBLA on June 22nd. Here's the same 45 minutes of reasons you should buy the game.

Source: GiantBomb

Boom!

I'll cut the suspense: despite what the headline may or may not have indicated, Tim Schafer - Grim Fandango creator and Mojo BFF - has not joined Telltale Games. This news story is about Tim Schafer wanting to tell you a tale, one presented by a floating mouse cursor (see the video) and narrated by Timothy himself. It centers on a strappin' feller with a strange haircut making his way through the cesspool collectively known as "the games industry". You ought to check it out.

I should probably mention that the original name for the first Monkey Island game gets revealed. Ya know. Just in case you needed another reason to click.

Source: Gamespot

Trenched project lead Brad Muir discusses with an abundance of visual aid how men's magazines for the 40s and 50s influenced the game's art style in a piece on Bitmob. It's thoroughly rad.

And don't give me any lip about how that article is dated May 2nd. What with the height of the Mississippi due to break record levels down here, the Army Corps of Engineers needed me to open the Bonnet Carre spillway by hand. Lord, these unbelievable muscles can be a curse sometimes.

Trenched!

Source: Bitmob

Adventure Gamers reports that the first DLC for Double Fine's Stacking is now out and about. The expansion is called The Lost Hobo King, and here's the synopsis:

The Lost Hobo King of course features the same gameplay you're familiar with, and offers one new level (with a new, self-contained narrative) along with fifteen new dolls. The percentage of new content in relation to the original game seems pretty comparable to Grubbin's on Ice and Costume Quest, with a price that reflects. You can get it on XBLA and PSN right this moment for $4.99.

Source: Adventure Gamers

Check out the newly launched official website for Double Fine's Trenched, then go listen to Double Fine's third podcast where the game is discussed by people who are making or have at least probably seen it.

TRENCHED!

Giant Bomb's latest Bombcast (imaginative name, eh?) contains a short segment where they visit Double Fine to look at the company's upcoming game Trenched, including details of the gameplay and the setting.

Source: Giant Bomb

David Fox of the olden LucasArts days wrote in to tell us that the Smithsoniam Museum is looking to select 80 games for its upcoming The Art of Video Games exhibit. You can vote for your favorites from the pool of candidates, which have been organized into five "Eras," and then by system and four genres.

What David rightly wanted us to be aware of was the fact that amongst the nominations you will find the following seminal works and Mojo darlings: Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (Era 2 - Commodore 64 - Adventure Genre), Grim Fandango (Era 4 - DOS/Windows - Adventure Genre), and Psychonauts (Era 5 - Microsoft Xbox - Action Genre).

So make your voice heard, and do your part to ensure that these classics may bask in the eternal prestige they deserve. "It belongs in a museum!"

Update: As Kroms (not to mention Ron Gilbert) notes, Monkey Island 1 will be playable at the exhibit, having leapfrogged the entire voting process due to its inherent worthiness.

Source: The Art of Video Games

Symbols of all that is original and unique in the world of video games, Double Fine, have decided that symbolism is probably rubbish; and, with that in mind, are making Trenched, an XBLA-exclusive that is all about the brave, brave soldiers who everyday fight aliens from outer space. I think I saw that in a game somewhere.

In the spirit of this development (get it?), I'll borrow this next part from Eurogamer:

The link also contains screenshots and some sort of trailer. Anyways, I am probably/hopefully being too harsh on the usually-creative Double Fine. We shall see.

Source: Eurogamer

As part of our plan to review Double Fine's latest console game, Stacking, we have reviewed Double Fine's latest console game, Stacking.

The review contains many pleasant passages to be read or sung.

If you like what you read, you may buy the game on your Playstation Machine or X Box Contraption, for around $15 (American money).

According to one of the Face Books, the game will shortly be enhanced with Downloadable Content.

Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster is the third Amnesia Fortnight game, which are the four projects Double Fine worked on during Brutal Legend's development and continued into today. How do I know this? Like everything I know, it's from this interview Tim Schafer and Nathan Martz did with Gamasutra:



Oh snap. The rest is an interesting and informative read as well, and well worth your time.

In a move that's sure to delight parents with a taste for the fine wine that is Double Fine, it's been revealed that the next game to come from Tim Schafer's unstoppable studio is Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster.

The game is being developed exclusively for Kinect, Microsoft's creepy body-reading device for the Xbox 360, which means you get to not only enjoy the exquisite experience of playing a Double Fine game with your children — or by yourself should you be particularly into The Muppets — but you also get to look like a dong get fit while doing so!

On a slightly more forward-thinking note, hopefully Double Fine getting more well-known licenses under its belt will give it the funds and clout it requires to develop more of the kind of games we've all been gagging for the studio to develop (Psychonauts 2).

Whether or not this game is part of the infamous 'Amnesia Fortnight' collection is unclear. Considering Ron Gilbert's experience with children's games it's very much possible he's leading this project, meaning we could still see the promised four games in addition to Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster.

Source: Destructoid

People looking for excuses not to play Stacking are not exactly in a buyer's market right now, which is going to make this big Gamasutra feature about the game that much more devastating to their prospects.

Read the five page spread to get all of Tim and Lee Petty's thoughts on Stacking, Costume Quest, the downloadable space, the very active legacy of adventure games, and a bit, if not nearly enough, about farting's importance in puzzle mechanics.

Is it ever really enough, though?

Source: Gamasutra

Double Fine's new game, Stacking, should be hitting the PSN/XBLA download circuit sometime yesterday. Err, today. Depends on where you live. Anyways, the game is Double Fine's follow-up to last year's Costume Quest. It's innovative for being about stacking, but not about stacking crates - surely a video game first. Plus the whole matryoshka doll thing. That thing is so rad.

You know Stacking, Double Fine's next game, is out next week right? 8th February? It will cost £11.99/1200 Microsoft Points. Apparently though, a certain group of people will be getting it for free: Playstation Plus members.

If you don't know it, Playstation Plus is Sony's recently introduced paid online subscription service - similar to Xbox Live Gold. To entice people to pay a premium for a service that's otherwise free, they offer a monthly free downloadable game. Stacking is this month's free game, which will be given the same day as release.

Great if you're already on the service, but the best thing about it is that it's official support from a console manufacturer, so should hopefully bring Double Fine to a much bigger crowd - and that's a very good thing indeed.

Source: Playstation Blog (via Eurogame

As noticed by the prone-to-notice Ascovel in the forums, you can view a nice Youtube interview with Ron Gilbert, recording during his appearance at "Game Forum Germany 2011," where he gave that Maniac Mansion talk that I know you're about to host for us any second now.

The interviewers are informed and ask good questions, so I would definitely watch the interview. Attempts are made, unsuccessfully, to get some details on whatever Ron is developing at Double Fine; also discussed is how much he'd like to see and/or partake in a Maniac Mansion remake, some miscellaneous adventure game breeze-shooting, and the inevitable mention of the "real" Monkey Island 3 among other [double] fine topics.

Seriously, get going!

Source: Youtube

Want a Raz action figure? How about Eddie Riggs? No? Well then, how about some Russian Stacking dolls instead, designed after the characters from Double Fine's Stacking? You do? Good news then, they're now available in the Double Fine store!

Just be warned though: they're VERY LIMITED QUANTITY (emphasis theirs, not mine). It's also a back order, so they won't ship until March at least. Still, cool!

Source: Double Fine Store

Prepare to be shocked - doubly - by this brief video interview with Tim Schafer and Lee Petty at DualShockers. The subject is, of course, Stacking, and the four minute probe sees Lee Petty describing how he came up with the concept and attempts to define the area between "casual" and "hardcore" that the game occupies. Stacking!

Source: Dualshockers

Usually we have to wait years between Double Fine games. That ends now, as their eagerly anticipated (especially by us) sort-of return to the adventure game, Stacking, is out February 8th on PSN for $14.99 and February 9th on Xbox Live for 1200 Microsoft Points. I'm not sure what either of those equate to in real money.

So, will you be getting it?

Source: Destructoid

Tim "The Man" Schafer and Lee "Almost Bearded" Petty of Double Fine Productions have recently been talking in a 1UP podcast in a series called "Games, Dammit!"

The podcast can be listened to here. It's like listening to some annoying buffoons talking loudly in a pub, except you can't join in with their conversation, and one of them is Tim Schafer.

Source: Twilo