Three unlikely adventures – each with their own personality and skills – will traverse through a subterranean amusement park and a medieval castle as well as a fully armed and ready-to-launch nuclear ICBM.

“The concept of The Cave has been bouncing around in my head for many, many years, and then the little voices that tell me to do things said it was time to make the game,” said Ron Gilbert. “I’m thrilled to be working with amazingly talented folks at Double Fine and ecstatic that the team at SEGA believes in adventure games and quirky ideas.”

Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and the development team at Double Fine stated that $300,000 will go towards the cost of developing the game and $100,000 to 2 Player Productions to document its progress. The project was launched 6pm PT on Wednesday and reached the $400k mark nearly eight hours later. While extra money continues to funnel into the project, Double Fine has stated that it “will be put back into the game and documentary. This could result in anything from increased VO and music budgets to additional release platforms for the game.”

The Double Fine Adventure will occur “over a six-to-eight month period, a small team under Tim Schafer’s supervision will develop Double Fine’s next game, a classic point-and-click adventure. Where it goes from there will unfold in real time for all the backers to see.” Its expected for release in October 2012 but as with all things, development takes time. Double Fine’s reputation in the adventure game genre holds serious weight as studio head Tim Schafer was responsible for Lucasarts adventure games back in the early to late 90′s such as Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, as well as Day of the Tentacle, and the Monkey Island games. Ron Gilbert, the crator of Monkey Island, and co-creator of Maniac Mansion, is currently employed at Double Fine.

Tim negotiates publishing rights

For a $15 pledge, Double Fine promises access to the game when finished, as well as beta access via Steam, in addition to the video series. Rewards build up if you choose to throw more money at Double Fine listed here including lunch with Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert, being an actual character in game, and one of Schafer’s last four remaining Triangle-Boxed Day of the Tentacles “in original shrink-wrap.”

Crowd sourcing is becoming a popular model for independent game developers in funding their ideas to become reality. Double Fine’s high-profile entry may serve as the precedent for others who want to bypass the publisher middle man and tap directly into their fanbase, and just as well, as Double Fine certainly has a lot of adventure game fans!

Hey maybe now they can start funding that Psychonauts sequel or something.

The co-op game pits you in a mech against your enemies in a tower-defense setting. The story, in Double Fine fashion, is pretty absurd and focuses around a competition around the manliest man ever who uses his mechanical wits to take on his evil former comrade.

Check out the intro cutscene trailer below.

Players can expect to solve puzzles and use Kinect’s motion controls for actions like jumping and dancing. The Sesame Street Workshop will incorporate the curriculum for the game. When asked why Double Fine wanted to make the game, studio head Tim Schafer responded,

“Sesame Street had a profound effect on me, and many members of the Double Fine team, when we were children.” “So did video games. Now many of us are parents and we want to share with our kids the great experiences we had, but also the completely new ones made possible by cutting-edge technology like Kinect for Xbox 360. So it’s a labor of love on many levels.”

Players take the role of a small matryoshka doll who enters larger dolls to take control of them and their special powers, then stack larger and larger dolls to solve puzzles.

Costume Quest is a Double Fine game, like Psychonauts and Brutal Legend. Does this mean it’s good? Will it share the fate of Psychonauts, becoming overlooked despite its quality? Well first off, lets backtrack a bit and start at the beginning. Double Fine’s latest game shows off the same charm and fun gameplay that made their previous games stand out.

Costume Quest is basically a standard adventure RPG. You select your character from the twins Reynold and Wren, and began your trick-or-treating on Halloween night. However, your sibling soon gets kidnapped by a monster living in one of the houses, because they dressed up as a big piece of candy. Someone the monsters are fooled into believing this, despite the candy talking and being alive. So Reynold or Wren set out to rescue their sibling via the power of costumes.

One their quest, the hero will encounter a lot of NPCs who will help them out and give them quests. As any modern RPG, the game has a journal to help the player memorize what they need to do, and to check various important things from costume powers to stats. The quests themselves can be mandatory and optional, although for the most part they are all easy to find and complete. Even without a walkthrough, I managed to complete the game to 100% on my first playthrough. As long as you keep your eyes open, you’ll find all the quests and costumes easily, but considering that the game was made with children in mind, this makes sense. While Costume Quest is enjoyable for it humour, charm and gameplay by adults, it is a game that primarily targets children, which shows through in its simplicity. It can serve as a good introduction to the RPG genre for younger audiences.

All this talk of costumes, and I still haven’t mentioned their role? First off, in the world of Costume Quest, costumes grant power to those who wear it. Much like in a child’s imagination, the costumes are just costumes, made out of cloth or cardboard, but they are actually superpowered outfits, that transform you and grant you power. When faced with enemies, you transform into a real robot, ninja, vampire, and a handful of others, depending on the costume you are currently wearing. Some costumes also have special abilities on the field, but most of them are just situational and rarely used. The only one that you will use frequently is the robot’s, which allows you to move faster. Others, like the knight’s ability to shield yourself from falling debris will only come into play two or three times maximum in the game. This is understandable considering the games length, though it doesn’t help that switching costumes in these situations is kind of a pain. It would have been easier if you could just switch party leader with the press of a button and use the character who is equipped with the correct costume. Switching costumes is still easy and efficient enough, but having to put on a costume just to avoid an enviromental hazard, then switch back to the robot one because it runs fast can get a little annoying after a while.

The game’s combat is simple and fun. You enter a battle, and you see a typical turn-based system. Each character has one attack, and one special move that charges up over time. You can also assign special attacks by buying battle stamps, which can power up your characters by boosting stats or giving them special attacks. For the most part you just select your attack and perform a type of Quick Time Event to execute it, and if successful you deal a critical hit. Defense works the same way, except you only need to press buttons, while attacking can require you to time the button press, rotate the analog stick, and other actions depending on which costume your using. Special attacks also range from dealing heavy damage to healing a party member, depending on the costume. The combat system is fairly simple and fun, although it can be difficult at first while lacking a healer. However, I haven’t died a single time in the game, which is easy to do as long as you pay attention to the QTEs. However, messing up a QTE while defending can really turn the tide of battle against you. To be quite honest, the biggest draw of the game’s combat is its simplicity, but it can also be its biggest flaw. Depending on what kind of player you are, you may grow tired of the simple battle system after a while, as you can play through the whole game using just regular attacks and special attacks/healing when they are charged up, and it doesn’t require much strategy. Of course given that this is a downloadable title, and also made for kids, this is somewhat understandable.

Luckily enough, the game’s length is short overall, but perfect for the game. I’d say it doesn’t take more than 6-8 hours to beat the game even to 100%. The game is simple, the quests are simple and sometimes similar, the combat is simple, and due to this it can get boring after a while, however the lenght of the game is just good enough so that it doesn’t outlast its welcome. By the time I started getting bored with it, I found myself at the last boss. This coupled with the game’s charm, and its humour, which is often made for older audiences as well with it’s ironic and sarcastic jokes make it just fun enough to warrant a playthrough and keep it entertaining. The game’s music and sound effects are also quite fitting for the game’s Halloween theme, though there is no voice acting, be it for better or worse. Sadly though, the game doesn’t offer much, if any, replayability. I don’t see myself playing through it again anytime soon.

The Final Word
Costume Quest is a fun and well made game. It provides good entertainment for both children and older audiences and has that Double Fine/Tim Schafer feel to it that makes it stand out. It’s quality makes the price tag seem worth it, although I’d recommend you play the trial version first and decide for yourself if the price is worth it for you, seeing as the game doesn’t offer any real replay value once you are finished with its 6-8 hour story and its simplicity can drag it down to where it becomes a one-time-only ride.

- MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average

Alright, fine, I’ll buy it. But only because you made a Megazord playable.

The premise seems simple, the combat is dictated by a menu based system that allows you to attack, defend, and use a special attack. Assorted items collected like candy, cards, and battle stamps have a role in the game’s combat system. Also, players will be able to transform into gargantuan sized versions of their costumed to face off against monsters and other kids.

And release date? Take a guess…October 31st for Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade.

Source: G4TV, Shacknews, UGO

Eurogamer journalist, Wesley Yin-Poole articulated that Bobby Kotick was being misunderstood by gamers as one that pandered to them when his job is to ultimately serve his stockholders. At this point, Schafer went on the offensive.

His obligation is to his shareholders. Well, he doesn't have to be as much of a dick about it, does he? I think there is a way he can do it without being a total prick. It seems like it would be possible. It's not something he's interested in.

Elaborating further, Schafer juxtaposes that Kotick’s views on the game industry is a complete polar opposite from his own.

Well, he makes a big deal about not liking games, and I just don't think that attitude is good for games in general. I don't think we're an industry of widgets. I don't think we can approach it like we approach bars of soap, where you're just trying to make the cheapest bar of soap.

Modern Warfare 2 pleased more than just the shareholders, to be fair. He definitely has that that kind of widget-maker attitude. I don't think he's great for the industry, overall. You can't just latch onto something when it's popular and then squeeze the life out of it and then move on to the next one. You have to at some point create something, build something.