Double Fine Returns to Kickstarter With Massive Chalice

fantastic. turn based strategy / character progression / permadeath / replayability.

i just heard the announcement i wanted to hear. E3 is whatever.

It's good to see Double Fine promoting Brad Muir a bit.

I backed this Kickstarter because it's a Brad Muir joint, but I really would love to see them complete and release BRAZEN.

it's alright, it's ok. we'll make it through this. together.

*rolls eyes profusely*

The Kickstarter video was fucking hilarious. Definitely stoked for this one.

How can you say no to the :D! man ! You can't. I'm pretty sure it's against the law.

More sreiously, I am on board, Brad. Fly me to the moon !

@endurancefun: I don't think that characters without predefined personality will be a shortcoming. In games like XCOM and dare i say Football Manager, the characters under your control have little more than a name and a nationality. The relationship is built upon their performance, either bad or good. Nurturing them from rookies to experienced warriors adds to that.

:D

I guess they ran into copyright problems with Brazen.

It was too awesome to exist.

The kickstarter pitch video is awesome. I <3 Brad Muir.

I wish them the best of luck in their kickstarter, but I've sunk enough money in projects that have yet to be released and I kinda don't want to back any more for now.

So Brazen is dead then?

I'm jealous of Brad's smile... I mean look at it... just look at it. :D

So delightful.

Jesus, this company are the whores of Kickstarter. Haven't even released their last project yet and they're already scrambling back for more. Rubs me up the wrong way i'm afraid.

Still, not as bad as Zach bloody Braff

We must save Brad Muir.

Invoking Final Fantasy Tactics, XCOM and Fire Emblem is a cruel thing for a game I can't play for over a year.

You had me at "Bra:D Muir".

I may not back it; I don't always like absolutely everything from Double Fine. That's the gamble they take by not waiting to show some gameplay or more assets, and I'm sure they've considered that. Certainly the concept and the genre are exciting to me.

That aside, some of these comments... guys, it's totally okay for Giant Bomb to report on this. In Patrick's opinion this kickstarter is newsworthy enough to mention. If you think that there's some ulterior motive besides actual interest in Double Fine's output, then I don't know what to tell you. The staff around here certainly seem pretty candid about what they think. Next we'll be questioning whether the typical home and garden banter at the beginning of Bombcasts is being sponsored by the Home Depot.

Saying all kickstarters should have equal, impartial news treatment to avoid helping to back them, rather than making a judgment call about their actual relevance as news, is lunacy.

Yeah, but a pre-order is not a donation. You don't lose money if the game doesn't happen. Here, you can lose at least $20. Of course, most will not pick that one because you don't get some cool stuff. When they keep asking for money, it makes people start to lose faith in them. They start to seem weak.

They need to publish Broken Age before doing one more Kickstarter.

Edit: Actually, most people are doing $20 this time. It is probably an indicator that they are pushing their luck a little bit.

If there's one person I don't mind throwing money at, it's BRA:D MUIR.

I can understand being okay with that. But I much prefer the way games I mentioned did character development. I'm not a fan of generic characters in strategy games, it's understandable in grand strategy, but when it's a squad or team it just feels disappointing compared to say, Fire Emblem. Sure, you can imagine up a backstory for the pawns, but you can do the very same in Fire Emblem as well if you so choose. It's really only reductive. It may be a West vs. East thing.

So based on the description, is he remaking one of the Agarest War games?

How come people got mad at Peter Molyneux having a Kickstarter because he didn't need it yet Double Fine, who has had like 6 games published this console generation and clearly doesn't need any help from the public when it comes to getting games made/published, gets the thumbs up and love from all?

There are multiple Kickstarter projects that have made way more than $300,000 within the first day and they didn't report on any of those. It's extremely shady that the only Kickstarter news have been of Double Fine. See here: http://www.giantbomb.com/kickstarter-funded/3015-7378/news/ Only active Kickstarter project reported on is this.

You're all missing the point. No site can cover 100% of the relevant stuff that's going on in the world unless they went to just be regurgitating what everyone else is posting. Jeff has said before that GB would be about stuff that interest them and the community instead of just pointing to stuff that's already out.

Double Fine gets the coverage it has got because the community likes the stand-out personalities there, this being a personality-driven website after all, and because they're literally across the street so you don't have to set the world on fire to get a game demoed.

edit That said, this kickstarter in specific is worth bringing up because of the ties to DFA which made more people aware of kickstarter to begin with, and that fact that it seems to be repeating the massive surge of funders that project had.

I don't think big studios should use Kickstarter. I applaud Kevin Smith for realizing this and not using Kickstarter for Clerks III, now game companies need to fall in line.

You should abstain from applauding because he is directing Clerks III. Clerks II is a poor film.

Brad... make me proud. I'm in.

In their history, GB has always dealt with the issues of friendships with designers in a very open and upfront way. See their review of Bastion (oh wait, there isn't one for that reason) as a classic example. Patrick isn't selling you the game with his personal recommendation, and it certainly qualifies as news being that it is coming from the company which kicked off gaming Kickstarter Campaigns in a big way. There are plenty of instances of "troubling" media behavior across the internet and traditional print outlets that far outweigh anything about this situation. But hey, if it bothers you, so be it.

It sounds pretty cool, but oh man, that video...it was incredible.

They deserve money for that video alone. So. Fucking. Charming.

Also: :D

@endurancefun: I don't think this will be a casual game, if anything I hope that Double Fine feels empowered by how the community has gotten behind the RTS elements of Brutal Legend and make a more hardcore strategy game.

I think the multigenerational thing is going to work out like XCom, where none of your characters have a developed story but you become attached to them from the emergent gameplay that happens when they continually win battles. I heard this complaint about Xcom, that the characters were just hollow stat vessels, but I didn't mind it because it felt satisfying to have a crew of veteran majors. I imagine this game will have something similar.

I can't recall where but I remember Brad Muir mentioning that players can select which of their male/female characters to marry and that you can also have female soldiers and/or queen. He's been answering questions about this on the KS page.

Overall I'm really hopeful about this game. A lot of the Double Fine games are a bit light on content for my taste although I love their personality, I just hope they are able to carry this success to make deeper experiences.

I thought that was the only thing that could be, but that's a heck of a quick turnaround to be making that goof, considering those episodes just dropped. But I guess the people that like AD probably watched 'em all already anyways.

I like the video and the game pitch. I'll probably back it, though I'm not sure if I'm in for $20 or $50. My biggest concern with DF games is whether they'll go too precious with the art style, and that's particularly a concern for this one. The little bit of art on the page suggests it won't be.

I love their videos so much though Tim minus the bread scares me a little.

Oh god, no! Making this comparison makes go from mildly interested, to wishing for a future where video games no longer exist.

Yeah. If anything, knowing Patrick's stance on kickstarter, the thinks it's newsworthy because they haven't finished the last one before doing this one.

Personally, I don't see that as a problem.

@apocalypselater: Sounds like you should try Crusader Kings 2!

$725,000 is quite low for anything other than a 2D graphics game. If you watch the 'making of' Broken Age documentary web series you see just how much Double Fine blows through in art alone.

2-2.5 million is more realistic for this project.

I feel like I want to back this, but I'm a little uncomfortable with the leg-up that the project gets just by being covered on Giantbomb. With a great deal of legitimately great ideas on Kickstarter, did a new project from a high-profile developer like Double Fine really need this article? It smacks of the type of back-scratching GB usually tries to avoid. I know they're all friends etc, but straight up advertising? Hmmm. This is an unusual move for you, Patrick.

they probably know they will get a shitload more so they probably estimated it low

@grimmy616 said:

It probably has nothing to do with Double Fine an established and trustworthy company, being the spearhead that got kickstarter-as-publisher-model rolling and possibly the cleanest way for studios to get less popular ideas greenlit in a way that broadens the gaming market, especially in this time of ballooning budgets and a potential related crash looming. People they've known for a long time and can trust to absolutely not be running anything shady, making games that have been deeply loved for the last 10 years.


Wait, what did I say? I ment :D

@duffman10: Why? Like the reviews, you come to this site knowing you're getting the Giant Bomb view of things, that includes stuff like this. They don't pretend they're not friendly with Brad Muir, it's well established they're good friends with each other. I'd actually feel worse if there was no article on this, because it'd be them refusing to honestly help out a good friend because they believed we the users couldn't understand.

Hell the whole IDEA of giant bomb isn't "we're unbiased reviewers" It was "We've got our own biases, but you know us and understand our biases well enough that you get a lot more useful information out of our reviews" =P

Dammit Double Fine, I love your games but I don't like strategy games. Why must you do this to me?

Who the hell is the 10,000 dollar backer? My god.

Might be cool, but i never played trenched so what do i know? ;(

Going Kickstarter again is fine and dandy, but I'd like to see a bit more before I back it. I backed the adventure game and didn't really care for what is happening, but the reveal trailer didn't impress me and the art direction in it is not to my liking - doesn't matter, i backed them to deliver a new adventure game and they are doing just that.

However, I'm not going to blindly back a game I've seen nothing of it yet, except 2 conceptual artworks and few words of description of what it is about, or I might end up not being interested in it again when it finally comes to live, like with the adventure game.

I'm also not randomly throwing $50 bucks at games which I don't intend to play, same goes for that.

I'd really like for Kickstarter to include some kind of requirement before you could actually go on it, like maybe a lot more concepts, prototypes and what not, cause really backing people with real cash just because they say nice things is not for me anymore.

Long story short, I'd like to see something concrete before backing stuff.

I backed it, my only complaint is that I worry it's taking some of the thunder from the Armikrog kickstarter which is significantly more interesting to me.

My guess would be that guy who bankrolled Costume Quest or maybe...Notch? I know he, at one point, wanted to pay for Psychonauts 2.

not that it matters but can I say I really hate the name?

They better let me have an all female team like fire emblem. I loved the fact that my friends told me " You could have an all female team in fire emblem but they are usually weaker and more geared towards healing." I showed those assholes.