When it comes to games I tend to be bit sentimental. I have plenty of fond memories of games like Monkeys Island, even though I usually struggled to figure out all the puzzles on my own. These days it seems that the point and click, 2D adventure games have become quite a rarity. Which is why I was pleasantly surprised to find out about the Double Fine adventure game when browsing through “The top 10 most anticipated PC games of 2013“.
The intro video with Double Fine Founder, Tim Schafer, was hilarious and quickly got me to go to Kickstarter to check out the project. Unfortunately, there I found out that the campaign actually ended months ago. So looking for more information I went to the Double Fine’s website. Given the quality of the campaign video I was curious about the documentary that was going to be part of the project. I do enjoy looking behind the curtain and the topic of “how games are made” has always intrigued me. Especially seeing how similar or different it would be from regular software/web app development.
And I must say that the teaser first episode had me hooked.
With the Kickstarter campaign closed I wasn’t sure if I’d still be able to become a backer (I wanted to watch the rest of the available episodes!), but they did enable latecomers to join via the so-called “slacker backer” option. For a meagre $30 I got access to both the documentary, the private forum, a beta of the game, and the actual game once it’s released. Considering I’d be willing to pay even more than $15 for either the game or the documentary that was a great deal.
And I wasn’t disappointed, watching through the episodes so far you really do get to see the ups and downs of the project, especially the #7th episode shown some harsh reality of the business world. I really enjoyed watching all the artwork preparation and interviews with artists and other employees. As a gamer you do occasionally see some of the concept art being released, but I never realised how much of it is being produced in the course of development. And how much gets thrown out too!
So if you miss old-style adventure games, there still time to become part of the project. And based on the snippets in the documentary the game will be utterly gorgeous and fun to play.