Adventure games are great. Like, really great. Remember Myst? The Secret of Monkey Island? They just don’t make games like that anymore. Apparently, studios don’t think they’re in demand anymore. They’d rather produce Call of Duty 12.
Which is why Double Fine’s Tim Schafer, best known for amazing titles like Grim Fandango and Psychonauts, decided to do something about the lack of adventure games on the market lately: he started a Kickstarter project.
Kickstarter, for those of you who’ve never heard of it, is a really cool concept where fans can contribute their own cold hard cash to causes they want to see funded. In this case, Tim Schafer wanted $400,000 to create an adventure game, developed by himself and a small team over a six to eight month period.
The process of producing the game would be documented by Two Player Productions, known best for Season 1 of PATV, Penny Arcade’s inter-office television series. Minimum contributions to the project started at as little as $1, but fans who donate $15 to the project will receive a copy of the game via Steam for PC and Mac, exclusive access to the Beta on Steam, access to the video series, and access the private discussion community.
The entire concept was posted over at Kickstarter last month, along with a short video starring Schafer and produced by Two Player Productions. “For fans of adventure games,” Tim writes, “this is a chance to prove that there is still a large demand out there for a unique medium that inspired so many of us.”
And what a demand there was. Eight hours after the project went live, it surpassed its goal. And today, with only five hours remaining, the Double Fine Adventure fund hit the $3 million dollar mark.
So, what’s going to be done with all this extra cash? Schafer has promised that the game will be developed for PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. There will also be multilanguage support, and this increase in budget will allow for higher production quality, an soundtrack and voice actors, and a soundtrack for the documentary as well.
There’s still time to throw in your cash for the Double Fine Adventure project, and the Double Fine team will be livestreaming the last 2 hours of the contest. To clarify, you’re getting a brand spankin’ new adventure game from the Double Fine team, plus a documentary chronicling the entire process? Sounds like hours of quality entertainment, and I couldn’t be more excited about it.
