The Winners are Hack & Slash, Spacebase DF-9, The White Birch, and Autonomous! Check out the website for a livestream of Double Fine at 2 PM PST 11/26!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=WTl2V3EDJik
Every year Double Fine (makers of such wonderful games as Psychonauts, Iron Brigade, Costume Quest, Stacking, and so on) shuts down for two weeks. Anyone who has an idea for a game pitches it to the company, and they decide whose game to prototype. Well, Tim Schafer decides. Except this time, Tim isn't deciding. We're voting.
Go watch that video up there if you need more info. It's hilarious, as Double Fine things are wont to be.
They've set up a page on the Humble Bundle site where you can purchase the prototypes + a documentary that documents the Amnesia Fortnight. More importantly, buying the bundle lets you vote on the various pitches and choose which ones get made!
So that's pretty exciting. My current favorite is Spacebase, aka space Dwarf Fortress:
I voted for Spacebase, Battle Bros, Autonomous, Hack n' Slash, Black Lake and Kaiju Piledriver (as Brad Muir is a fantastic person and his idea is great)
Most of them look pretty great though and I'm excited to see the results of this.
I'm a bit confused though, so by supporting we get to pick the 4 games and get their 2/3 week prototype when it's done but are any of the games going to be full fledged products like Costume Quest or Stacking after that?
I'm just glad to get more videos about double fines development process. All the videos/forums posts about the double fine adventure are awesome.
There are some really interesting ideas in the mix, hopefully a few of the prototypes go further and become full games.
Double Fine has really seemed to hit a sweet spot of the size of games it's good at, their turning into a really awesome studio for downloadable/mobile sort of games. Not that they couldn't do a full retail title again, but they seem to have more success going for multiple smaller games developed quickly, then betting it all on one large many years long project.
Anyway I voted for: Milgrim, Bragging & Fighting, Autonomus, The Knockover, Spacebase df-9, Kaiju Piledriver, Double fine high, Silent but deadly, Redbot's reboot, Hack n Slash. And The Flock because Greg Rice is a giant who would probably track down those who didn't vote for him and eat their bones.
Oh man, so many great concepts, I ended up voting on almost all of them.
Of the top of my head we have Dwarf Fortress in space, Super Mario playing as the bad guy and building levels, a card based heist game, a game where you make and deliver moonshine with modified cars, Zelda where instead of upgrades you get to hack the game, a text based hacking game, a godzilla roguelike or something like that, a game about crapping your pants at work and trying to get out unnoticed, a game about building autonomous robots from parts you find, a game about programming a drunk robot so it can get home, and the list goes on...
No matter what 4 projects are chosen we are probably getting 4 little enjoyable concepts and maybe a couple of full games made from these a year or so from now. Man I really love this new path Double Fine has chosen developing smaller projects, this way they can really get their creativity going and we get to see much more from than instead of a high budget game every few years.
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anoffdayTo be changed whenever Anoffday gets around to it.Registered Userregular
edited November 2012
What the heck amazon. Why am "waiting for amazon payments"? Just do it.
3rd time and nothing. Screw it. Guess I'll try later.
edit: Oops. There it is. Bought it 3 times. Here's my 2 other keys if anyone is interested. Let us know if you use them please.
It has been fun to watch the vote totals. Space Station DF-9 and Hack & Slash have been neck and neck the entire time. They're literally tied at 1,637 votes each as I type this.
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anoffdayTo be changed whenever Anoffday gets around to it.Registered Userregular
Hearing space dwarf fortress was enough to sell me.
Steam: offday
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
I forced myself to only vote for four of them since only four will be made.
Voted for Spacebase DF-9, Kaiju Piledriver, White Birch, and Autonomous.
A little sad that it doesn't look like Kaiju Piledriver will make it, but I'm still three for four.
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Kaiju Piledriver was too good for us, it seems.
+1
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited November 2012
I was surprised Spacebase was not #1. That was clearly the best idea :P (not that Hack & Slash is not also a great idea)
I'm a little disappointed Milgrim didn't make the cut tho (but at the same time, happy anything with the words "physics-based" or "card game" in the description didn't either)
I don't understand all the votes for White Birch. I mean, "atmospheric, artsy platformer" is hardly an underserved genre at the moment.
I kind of feel the same way. I watched that video and kind of said "Ok, so it's a game about climbing a tree... but 'artsy'... this is a good idea, why?" Also that "open to interpretation" spiel brought back unpleasant Braid memories...
I mean, you can have, like, an actual idea for a game and then just happen to make it "artsy" :P
I was surprised Spacebase was not #1. That was clearly the best idea :P (not that Hack & Slash is not also a great idea)
I'm a little disappointed Milgrim didn't make the cut tho (but at the same time, happy anything with the words "physics-based" or "card game" in the description didn't either)
I moved my votes off spacebase and onto kaiju and milgrim when I saw that it was guaranteed to get into the top 4.
Bummed that Kaiju Piledriver didn't make it, but I hope that Brazen gets a publisher or something so that can make the jump to a full game. The space station game still sounds pretty cool, at least.
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
Is Brazen fun? I downloaded it but only tried out the Costume Quest prototype (which is amazingly well done... I mean, at least until it crashed on me :P Still though, it looks damn near like the final product visually)
Is Brazen fun? I downloaded it but only tried out the Costume Quest prototype (which is amazingly well done... I mean, at least until it crashed on me :P Still though, it looks damn near like the final product visually)
Brazen is interesting, and fun for a little while. I can see how it could be something good if fleshed out more.
Awesome! Now they're doing 5 prototypes and Black Lake is being made.
I really hope they revisit Kaiju Piledriver at a later date. And that Brazen gets made. I had a blast co-opping it with a friend, though we never managed to beat Gorgoth together because it kept bugging out, forcing us to restart.
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited November 2012
Somehow I didn't even see Black Lake before. That actually sounds like a neat idea, though it's not trying to be something "fancy" like the other pitches. But it seems like a really solid story/setting which is pretty ok too!
Now I'm going to try and watch this "live stream" (non-live), we'll see how fucking slow my internet connection wants to be tonight (I swear, it didn't used to be this bad... I don't know WTF my ISP is doing)
Edit: Ok, so the Autonomous presentation was really good. I'm more excited for that now. The Spacebase presentation is really awful but I think that comes from this guy probably not having a lot of experience presenting stuff :P I'm sure the game itself will be cool, but man he really should have prepared a powerpoint :P Also I feel like he could just say "Dwarf Fortress in space" over and over to describe a lot of this better :P (also Tim Schafer looks really bored )
Edit 2: Watched two more... still have no damn clue what White Birch is supposed to be other than "artsy" (I guess he said kind of like The Cave, but without puzzles and not 2d... which is... um.. I don't know...). The Hack & Slash presentation sounded cool but he had to do the whole thing via Skype so not really any visuals or anything. But apparently he wants to get into for-real hacking techniques which I have no idea how that's supposed to work. I guess stuff like database manipulation and such makes sense, but some of what he was talking about sounded out-of-scope for anything that could be considered gameplay. *shrug*
Man, this livestream is clearly them just dragging on whoever they can get their hands on, but it's still really interesting from a "how to videogames" perspective. Just watched someone model and rig a hand from almost scratch.
I hope Brazen gets made too. Double Fine need to show more people that Monster Hunter is an awesome genre.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited November 2012
Was there anything to Brazen besides that Giant Enemy Crab? I just tried it solo and shot arrows at the crab until I died. Didn't seem like there was anything special to the game but maybe the online stuff is fun?
I was more annoyed that they coded the prototype assuming a widescreen display though. Half the menus and shit are cut off for me (I would have even accepted letterbox, I just don't want crap cut off)
Was there anything to Brazen besides that Giant Enemy Crab? I just tried it solo and shot arrows at the crab until I died. Didn't seem like there was anything special to the game but maybe the online stuff is fun?
I was more annoyed that they coded the prototype assuming a widescreen display though. Half the menus and shit are cut off for me (I would have even accepted letterbox, I just don't want crap cut off)
just that one fight, it is a prototype with about 4 weeks put into it. Go watch the video of Brad Muir on Giantbomb showing it off, he talks a bunch about what he would like to do with the game, and the problems he sees with monster hunter.
But basically he wants to make a monster hunter game that's much easier for new players to get into, without all the grinding, and focus more on fun fights with giant monsters.
Was there anything to Brazen besides that Giant Enemy Crab? I just tried it solo and shot arrows at the crab until I died. Didn't seem like there was anything special to the game but maybe the online stuff is fun?
I was more annoyed that they coded the prototype assuming a widescreen display though. Half the menus and shit are cut off for me (I would have even accepted letterbox, I just don't want crap cut off)
just that one fight, it is a prototype with about 4 weeks put into it. Go watch the video of Brad Muir on Giantbomb showing it off, he talks a bunch about what he would like to do with the game, and the problems he sees with monster hunter.
But basically he wants to make a monster hunter game that's much easier for new players to get into, without all the grinding, and focus more on fun fights with giant monsters.
Ok that makes a little more sense. I realize it's a prototype but all I was getting out of that was "co-op monster killing" which didn't seem all that original.
Was there anything to Brazen besides that Giant Enemy Crab? I just tried it solo and shot arrows at the crab until I died. Didn't seem like there was anything special to the game but maybe the online stuff is fun?
I was more annoyed that they coded the prototype assuming a widescreen display though. Half the menus and shit are cut off for me (I would have even accepted letterbox, I just don't want crap cut off)
just that one fight, it is a prototype with about 4 weeks put into it. Go watch the video of Brad Muir on Giantbomb showing it off, he talks a bunch about what he would like to do with the game, and the problems he sees with monster hunter.
But basically he wants to make a monster hunter game that's much easier for new players to get into, without all the grinding, and focus more on fun fights with giant monsters.
Ok that makes a little more sense. I realize it's a prototype but all I was getting out of that was "co-op monster killing" which didn't seem all that original.
Ya it's not a real original idea, just taking a game he really loves and trying to work what he feels are the bad parts out and "westernize" it a bit more, while including some of the double fine insanity.
I really like that idea too, Monster Hunter games are really interesting, but how they just throw you into the world with no explanations, and then punish you/your team heavily for failure just isn't that much fun for those first like 10-12hours. and then after that the amount of grinding to get the best weapons/etc is crazy.
Was there anything to Brazen besides that Giant Enemy Crab? I just tried it solo and shot arrows at the crab until I died. Didn't seem like there was anything special to the game but maybe the online stuff is fun?
I was more annoyed that they coded the prototype assuming a widescreen display though. Half the menus and shit are cut off for me (I would have even accepted letterbox, I just don't want crap cut off)
just that one fight, it is a prototype with about 4 weeks put into it. Go watch the video of Brad Muir on Giantbomb showing it off, he talks a bunch about what he would like to do with the game, and the problems he sees with monster hunter.
But basically he wants to make a monster hunter game that's much easier for new players to get into, without all the grinding, and focus more on fun fights with giant monsters.
Ok that makes a little more sense. I realize it's a prototype but all I was getting out of that was "co-op monster killing" which didn't seem all that original.
Ya it's not a real original idea, just taking a game he really loves and trying to work what he feels are the bad parts out and "westernize" it a bit more, while including some of the double fine insanity.
I really like that idea too, Monster Hunter games are really interesting, but how they just throw you into the world with no explanations, and then punish you/your team heavily for failure just isn't that much fun for those first like 10-12hours. and then after that the amount of grinding to get the best weapons/etc is crazy.
Yeah. As much as I love MH, it definitely has problems. I didn't even feel like I'd started understanding my first MH game until well after the 50 hour mark.
Was there anything to Brazen besides that Giant Enemy Crab? I just tried it solo and shot arrows at the crab until I died. Didn't seem like there was anything special to the game but maybe the online stuff is fun?
I was more annoyed that they coded the prototype assuming a widescreen display though. Half the menus and shit are cut off for me (I would have even accepted letterbox, I just don't want crap cut off)
Out of the three characters, I don't care for playing the Waracle as much. Though I haven't tried her after I found the instructions PDF for Brazen, which explains what her different arrows do.
Stalwart is definitely my favorite so far. Actually, I think most of the fun I had with the game was trying to figure out how to play it correctly, comparing notes with friends, and watching myself improve as I learned new tricks (like that you can stun the turtle by bonking it in the head with the Stalwart's shield). The co-op is definitely more fun than playing it alone too, but expect to have it bug out before you can finish off Gorgoth most of the time.
I have a feeling I might not like it as much if they add loot grinding and RPG elements, though. Brad Muir has mentioned crafting monster drops on twitter a few times.
I suffer from the lack of letterboxing too. You can Alt-Enter it to put it in a window. It's not ideal, but it's better than having stuff chopped off.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
Wait she has different arrows? Everything was cut off so I couldn't read any on-screen instructions. I was just trying to cheese the crab by finding hidey-holes he couldn't hit me in :P But then I screwed up and died.
Posts
Most of them look pretty great though and I'm excited to see the results of this.
I'm a bit confused though, so by supporting we get to pick the 4 games and get their 2/3 week prototype when it's done but are any of the games going to be full fledged products like Costume Quest or Stacking after that?
Steam: abunchofdaftpunk | PSN: noautomobilesgo | Lastfm: sjchszeppelin | Backloggery: colincummings | 3DS FC: 1392-6019-0219 |
There are some really interesting ideas in the mix, hopefully a few of the prototypes go further and become full games.
Double Fine has really seemed to hit a sweet spot of the size of games it's good at, their turning into a really awesome studio for downloadable/mobile sort of games. Not that they couldn't do a full retail title again, but they seem to have more success going for multiple smaller games developed quickly, then betting it all on one large many years long project.
Anyway I voted for: Milgrim, Bragging & Fighting, Autonomus, The Knockover, Spacebase df-9, Kaiju Piledriver, Double fine high, Silent but deadly, Redbot's reboot, Hack n Slash. And The Flock because Greg Rice is a giant who would probably track down those who didn't vote for him and eat their bones.
Of the top of my head we have Dwarf Fortress in space, Super Mario playing as the bad guy and building levels, a card based heist game, a game where you make and deliver moonshine with modified cars, Zelda where instead of upgrades you get to hack the game, a text based hacking game, a godzilla roguelike or something like that, a game about crapping your pants at work and trying to get out unnoticed, a game about building autonomous robots from parts you find, a game about programming a drunk robot so it can get home, and the list goes on...
No matter what 4 projects are chosen we are probably getting 4 little enjoyable concepts and maybe a couple of full games made from these a year or so from now. Man I really love this new path Double Fine has chosen developing smaller projects, this way they can really get their creativity going and we get to see much more from than instead of a high budget game every few years.
3rd time and nothing. Screw it. Guess I'll try later.
edit: Oops. There it is. Bought it 3 times. Here's my 2 other keys if anyone is interested. Let us know if you use them please.
ZPQ74-B3VRP-635C5
ECEQP-CNFEL-2HKP8
Grabbed the first key. Thanks!
And I the second. Thank you!
Voted for Spacebase DF-9, Kaiju Piledriver, White Birch, and Autonomous.
A little sad that it doesn't look like Kaiju Piledriver will make it, but I'm still three for four.
Just voted for Black Lake, Spacebase and Autonomous.
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I'm a little disappointed Milgrim didn't make the cut tho (but at the same time, happy anything with the words "physics-based" or "card game" in the description didn't either)
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I kind of feel the same way. I watched that video and kind of said "Ok, so it's a game about climbing a tree... but 'artsy'... this is a good idea, why?" Also that "open to interpretation" spiel brought back unpleasant Braid memories...
I mean, you can have, like, an actual idea for a game and then just happen to make it "artsy" :P
I moved my votes off spacebase and onto kaiju and milgrim when I saw that it was guaranteed to get into the top 4.
Brazen is interesting, and fun for a little while. I can see how it could be something good if fleshed out more.
I really hope they revisit Kaiju Piledriver at a later date. And that Brazen gets made. I had a blast co-opping it with a friend, though we never managed to beat Gorgoth together because it kept bugging out, forcing us to restart.
Steam // Secret Satan
Now I'm going to try and watch this "live stream" (non-live), we'll see how fucking slow my internet connection wants to be tonight (I swear, it didn't used to be this bad... I don't know WTF my ISP is doing)
Edit: Ok, so the Autonomous presentation was really good. I'm more excited for that now. The Spacebase presentation is really awful but I think that comes from this guy probably not having a lot of experience presenting stuff :P I'm sure the game itself will be cool, but man he really should have prepared a powerpoint :P Also I feel like he could just say "Dwarf Fortress in space" over and over to describe a lot of this better :P (also Tim Schafer looks really bored )
Edit 2: Watched two more... still have no damn clue what White Birch is supposed to be other than "artsy" (I guess he said kind of like The Cave, but without puzzles and not 2d... which is... um.. I don't know...). The Hack & Slash presentation sounded cool but he had to do the whole thing via Skype so not really any visuals or anything. But apparently he wants to get into for-real hacking techniques which I have no idea how that's supposed to work. I guess stuff like database manipulation and such makes sense, but some of what he was talking about sounded out-of-scope for anything that could be considered gameplay. *shrug*
Like it sounds like some really cool theoretical concepts that won't play out well in terms of making an actual game
It's why I didn't vote for it
A little sad to hear that White Birch doesn't seem to have any sort of strong concept to it
I wonder if it ranked so high because he namedropped Ico and Journey in the 30 second pitch and and Limbo in the PDF.
Great news on Black Lake! Voted for it originally and was a little sad it hadn't managed to sneak into the top 4.
I was more annoyed that they coded the prototype assuming a widescreen display though. Half the menus and shit are cut off for me (I would have even accepted letterbox, I just don't want crap cut off)
just that one fight, it is a prototype with about 4 weeks put into it. Go watch the video of Brad Muir on Giantbomb showing it off, he talks a bunch about what he would like to do with the game, and the problems he sees with monster hunter.
But basically he wants to make a monster hunter game that's much easier for new players to get into, without all the grinding, and focus more on fun fights with giant monsters.
Ok that makes a little more sense. I realize it's a prototype but all I was getting out of that was "co-op monster killing" which didn't seem all that original.
Ya it's not a real original idea, just taking a game he really loves and trying to work what he feels are the bad parts out and "westernize" it a bit more, while including some of the double fine insanity.
I really like that idea too, Monster Hunter games are really interesting, but how they just throw you into the world with no explanations, and then punish you/your team heavily for failure just isn't that much fun for those first like 10-12hours. and then after that the amount of grinding to get the best weapons/etc is crazy.
Yeah. As much as I love MH, it definitely has problems. I didn't even feel like I'd started understanding my first MH game until well after the 50 hour mark.
Out of the three characters, I don't care for playing the Waracle as much. Though I haven't tried her after I found the instructions PDF for Brazen, which explains what her different arrows do.
Stalwart is definitely my favorite so far. Actually, I think most of the fun I had with the game was trying to figure out how to play it correctly, comparing notes with friends, and watching myself improve as I learned new tricks (like that you can stun the turtle by bonking it in the head with the Stalwart's shield). The co-op is definitely more fun than playing it alone too, but expect to have it bug out before you can finish off Gorgoth most of the time.
I have a feeling I might not like it as much if they add loot grinding and RPG elements, though. Brad Muir has mentioned crafting monster drops on twitter a few times.
I suffer from the lack of letterboxing too. You can Alt-Enter it to put it in a window. It's not ideal, but it's better than having stuff chopped off.