Ron Gilbert's New Game Announced
The hero of a generation of gamers, Mr Ron "Monkey Island" Gilbert, has announced his new game, and the publisher who'll be distributing it.
Ready?
DeathSpank Episode 1: Orphans of Justice.
It's an "RPG Adventure", featuring a character from the short-lived Grumpy Gamer cartoons. Gilbert explains,
"I called up Tim Schafer and said "Loan me a desk, I have a game to design!" and I proceeded to crank out what can only be called the perfect melding of a Monkey Island style adventure game with the wicked RPG game play of Diablo. Clayton [Kauzlaric] and I got together and banged the kicks out, slapped some meat on the characters and tightened up our story and world, and damn it, we had a design you could cook an egg on."
Published by they giving us the forthcoming Penny Arcade game, Hothead Games, this is the triumphant return of a man who's been helping many other developers behind the scenes for a few years now (including said PA game). Gilbert explains on his blog that it's been four years in the making. Four years of being refused by publishers. After co-creating the DeathSpank cartoon with Clayton Kauzlaric, he was switched in as the main character and the world built accordingly.
"I roughed out a game design for the first episode and started pitching it around and a funny thing happened. Everyone hated it. But the weird thing is the more publishers that turned it down, the more convinced I became that this was a great idea. Every rejection fueled me with excitement and the knowledge that I was right. Nothing says innovation and creativity like armed security showing up to escort you out of the building while saying 'Let's not have any trouble."
But then came Hothead, with a completely different attitude/crazy naivity, and the game is going to happen.
So it seems Gilbert has moved to Canada and become the Creative Director of Hothead, as well as lead developer on DeathSpank. So that's rather good news then!
Press release here.