Posts Tagged ‘Double Fine Productions’

Clickuorice Allsorts: How Headlander’s look works

Headlander

You want to click on a thing that’s interesting to read RIGHT NOW? This Clickuorice Allsort is a beautiful-looking confection in the form of the art direction document for Double Fine’s head-swappy Metroidvania, Headlander! Writer and director, Lee Petty, lays out things like the game’s influences, and why particular stylistic choices were made – the use of the colour spectrum to accompany progress through levels, so red and orange for early on and blue/violet for later – BUT it also has all these explicit reminders to the team not to fall into common traps of the trade, like mistaking visual unity for uniformity. If you’re interested in art OR design OR Headlander OR all three there’s loads to pick through and enjoy here.

We’ll try to build up a bag of these Clickuorice Allsorts so you can dive in for an interesting nibble whenever you fancy…

RPS Feature Ideas generation

Tim Schafer tells the story of Amnesia Fortnight

“I started feeling a little bogged down by the scope of [Brutal Legend],” says Tim Schafer, founder of Double Fine. “It was really huge and I felt like the team had been doing it for a long time and had a long way to go yet. I felt like they needed a break.”

That break was Amnesia Fortnight, a two week game jam during which anyone at the developer can pitch an idea and, if it’s selected, lead a team to turn it from concept to working prototype. Now in its tenth year, I spoke to Schafer about the jam’s benefits, pitfalls and how it’s changed over the years. Read the rest of this entry »

RPS Feature Bathos: The Game

Wot I Think: Everything

I am a spruce beetle. I call to two other spruce beetles nearby and now I am all of them. I tell them to dance and they begin to skitter of their own volition, making concentric circles and infinity signs and all manner of patterns. Each time a circle fills at the top of the screen – the only visible UI element – I press A in order to spawn another spruce beetle which joins in the dance. I do this for seventeen minutes, until there is a thrumming mass of spruce beetles. Eventually I’ve had enough and so I become a snowball.

This is what Everything [official site] is about.

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Vroom! Full Throttle Remastered roars out today

Today I’m wearing my leather jacket and trying to convince Cara to bop me with a plank then toss me into a bin, celebrating the launch of Full Throttle Remastered [official site]. Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Productions have updated and re-released LucasArts’ 1995 stonking adventure game, which Tim Tam led development on back in his LucasArts days. Parts of Full Throttle always niggled and annoyed but it rose well above them, and I’m hopeful that still holds true. I can’t think of any game in the past 22 years which has surpassed Full Throttle’s opening, for starters. Read the rest of this entry »

Everything has the best animated animals anywhere

Everything [official site] is the new game from David OReilly, artist, director and creator of RPS’s favourite Mountain. We’ve already heard whispers about Everything, notably that it is coming to PS4 before Windows and Mac. Now, along with a lengthy new trailer, the release date has been announced. It’ll be coming to PS4 on March 21st and to Steam on April 21st.

But what is Everything? I’m not entirely sure, but I am in love with every single one of these animals and their outrageous methods of locomotion.

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Full Throttle Remastered rides again in April

The Polecats will ride again, with flash new jackets, on April 18th. That’s the release date announced today for Full Throttle Remastered [official site], Double Fine’s revamp of LucasArts’ fan-flipping-tastic 1995 adventure game about futurebikers. After 22 years, it still has one of the finest openings in games. Read the rest of this entry »

Cuteness overwhelming in Ooblets trailer

Every now and then, in this vast hall of GIFs we call the internet, I see the mini-monsters and dancing townsfolk of Ooblets [official site] and it makes me feel good about life. It’s an as-yet-unreleased game of farming, raising creatures, and living among the townsfolk of ‘Hubton’. “It’s sort of like Harvest Moon meets Pokémon meets Animal Crossing meets the weird awkward people we are,” say the creators at Glumberland. Now they’ve been picked up by publisher Double Fine and have released a new trailer to celebrate that fact. Good stuff.
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Psychonauts 2 peeks at pretty plants, picks up publisher

You like rocks? I’ll show you nice rocks. You like trees? I’ll show you nice trees. You like squirrels? I’ll show you nice squirrels. All these and more are in a new Psychonauts [official site] dev video showing an art test of a quarry environment. It’s not a finished level, just Double Fine feeling out the game’s style, but some pretty stuff is in there.

Over in the world of #business, Double Fine have announced that Psychonauts 2 will be published by Starbreeze, the Brothers and Payday mob. But first, look at these rocks. Read the rest of this entry »

A first peek at Full Throttle Remastered, a bit late

Reader dearest, I fall upon my sword before you. I hurl myself upon it. I take a running start and leap upon my sword. Through the teeth and past the gums, look out guts here it comes and I’m split from the skull down, intestines and shame and regret and apologies spill steaming upon the ground, dissolving into putrid black mucus the cold earth swallows to fester and feed the blooms of so many future mistakes.

Dearest reader o reader dear, while I was off tromping around lochs on my hols earlier this month, Double Fine shared a trailer peeking at Full Throttle Remastered [official site] and it’s taken me this long to notice. THE SHAME. Read the rest of this entry »

GNOG’s Puzzleheads Still Look Delightful

I am quite keen to rummage in the giant puzzleheads of GNOG [official site]. They’re teeny little rooms with plenty of things to press, pull, flip, open, rotate, lift, twist, twirl, plug in, and generally fiddle with. Developers Ko-op Mode have cited inspirations including Windosill and Polly Pocket toys and yes, that all sounds splendid. It looks gorgeous too. Check out this new trailer:

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RPS Feature And which games might do it...

Can Videogames Teach You Programming?

if(desire_to_program > 10)
    continue;
else
    return;

When I tell people I’m a programmer, I get that look. The glazed eyes, the polite smile, the clear desire to change topic. If I’m lucky, I’ll get pitched on an idea for the next killer mobile app that my conversation partner insists will make us rich; if I’m less lucky, I’ll get wrangled into providing free tech support for the rest of my life. The thing is, though, as impossible as it might sound, programming can be more fun than people realise. Fun enough to warrant its own video game genre, even.

Just how educational are these games, though? Is it really possible to become a programmer by playing games? I dug through Steam and came away with three promising candidates. Let’s take a look at them, and see whether they can really teach you skills to pay the bills.

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Thanks, Oth: 140 Dev Announces New Shmup, Thoth

Thanks, Thoth. Ththoth.

Platform game 140 got Graham a-groovin’ and a-boppin’ back in 2013 with cheery rhythmic bouncing quite different to designer Jeppe Carlsen’s work on gothdeath bouncer Limbo. Well, the years since then have seen Carlsen release another grimgrim platformer with the Limbo lot, Inside, and apparently work on another colourful project of his own. Over the weekend, Carlsen announced Thoth [Steam page], a colourful shoot ’em up that’ll be published by Double Fine in October. It’s got local co-op and all. Here, check out the teensy announcement trailer:

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RPS Feature Beautiful, ingenious and a little bit filthy

Wot I Think: Headlander

Headlander [official site], Double-Fine and Adult Swim’s skull-swapping Metroidvania affair is nothing like as funny as it probably thinks it is, but fortunately it’s a quiet delight in so many other ways. It’s also filthy.

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Doublefine’s Robotic Bodysnatcher: Headlander

Headlander [official site] made me think of Wall-E, except there’s only one human left in the robot-run offworld colony. Technically, the bots are humans of a sort, the entire race having transferred their consciousness from its fleshy confines into new robotic bodies. Those robots are under the authority of a wicked computer and it’s up to the last meat-person (YOU) to save the day. Problem is, you’re outnumbered. Oh, and you don’t have a body. Cue body-switching, ability-gathering, side-scrolling action.

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Watch Half An Hour Of Double Fine’s Headlander

Oh, hallo there! You’ve caught me tidying up the last of the E3 stuff on my desk. Sweeping away Tunnock’s Teacake wrappers, mostly. But this? Ah yes, this is a half-hour of gameplay footage from Double Fine’s Headlander [official site]. Yes, I’d also almost forgotten they were making it. Headlander is a side-scrolling action-adventure about the decapitated head of the last living human romping through a ’70s retro-future world. Always got style, that Double Fine lot. See:

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RPS Feature It's time to go BACK, TO THE MANSION!

Wot I Think: Day Of The Tentacle Remastered

It’s frightening to realise that Day Of The Tentacle Remastered [official site] is a reworking of a game that’s been in my top five games since I first played it, a whopping 23 years ago. And a game that for the better part of the last decade, has been near impossible to buy or play. With Double Fine’s Remaster updating or restoring its graphics, music and sound, at the very minimum what we have here is a purchasable, playable version of the original game. On top of that, you can now play it in wide- and full-screen, with a smartly reimagined interface, much improved music, and the voices crystal clear without all the hissing and bubbly weirdness that affected the original CD-ROM version of the game. Which is to say, if anyone doesn’t like any of the changes they’ve made, they can switch them off and they’ve absolutely nothing to complain about. Which is neat. Here’s wot I think:

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Mountain Creator Announces He’s Making… Everything

Working with Double Fine, David OReilly has announced his next project following 2014’s RPS-adored Mountain. And it’s called Everything [official site]. And appears to be promising… everything. A game in which you can play as everything in the game.

Announced as a PS4 exclusive, we poked Double Fine with the patented Rock, Paper, Shotgun Really Pointy Stick (RPSRPS) until they confessed that “exclusive” means “for a bit”, and that it will be coming to PC some time after the dangerously angular console. There are details and a trailer below.

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Day Of The Tentacle Remastered Due March 22nd

Day of the Tentacle Remastered [official site], the redrawn (or not) re-release of the classic 1993 LucasArts adventure game, will come out on March 22nd. That’s the latest word from Double Fine Productions, the folks who are revamping it (and whose head honch Tim Schafer co-directed, co-designed, and co-wrote all those years ago). It’s been a good few years since I played DotT, so I’m curious to revisit it.

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