Double Fine's Building You Spacebase DF-9

This game is very charming, made a thread where I collected a bunch of GIFs.

http://www.giantbomb.com/spacebase-df-9/3030-41803/forums/spacebase-df-9-is-really-charming-1456418/

is it me or is double fine doing alot of stuff at once

They have to keep their eggs in multiple baskets because you never know what will be that break-out hit, and for a company like Double Fine, they need to try as many things as possible.

Bought this yesterday when I got home from work. The game did not disappoint.

@bombzinski: Brazen was Brad Muir's game. I think he talked about this on the DOTA Today Podcast. Pitching Brazen failed, so Massive Chalice became his focus. So, no, you aren't going to see Brazen. At least not for a long time.

This kind of looks like Dungeon Keeper meets Syndicate, in space. Also Double Fine. So when it's done, just pour it into my mouth with a funnel.

The thing with these alpha releases is that you can jump in right away or later or never, but at whatever point you jump in it's still a kind of cool and interesting way to watch a game develop. I certainly didn't get minecraft right at the start, but when I kept hearing stories about all the cool stuff people got up to I was tempted in.

I really like Double Fine and I followed this game during Amnesia Fortnight, so it was a no brainer to me, I'm jumping in right away and hopefully it'll be fun to follow the development closely. They've already got quite an exciting little development plan on their website, and I can't wait to see some of those features come into existence.

But, y'know, if you have to wait, that's cool. Some (not all) people seem angry that it's not a game they want RIGHT NOW.

so it's kindasorta like startopia? hmm

Looks interesting. I think I'll stick with Maia for now though.

Looks pretty cool.

Double Fine are, day by day, becoming increasingly like my company in Game Dev Story, just releasing whatever the hell, on a regular basis.

I like it.

Prison Architect in space then ?

Quoted for truth.

I'm loving the diversity coming out of Double Fine these days. I always used to think of Double Fine as Tim Schafer games', but these days it's home to a lot more and I love that. Really glad they've been able to pursue smaller games.

YES PLEASE!

Ended up playing for an hour or so when I planned to just take a quick peek. Game has potential for sure. Lots of personality in there, and the keyboard shortcuts feel really smart after a little practice. Looking forward to getting a real station underway now that I have a better idea of what the game wants.

After watching that Lets Play which explains the entire game, I really want to just play the game right now, but $25 is steep who knows when we can expect the full game?

All of these paid Alphas/Betas give the dev too much time to dick around and not finish the game because it relaxes them knowing they've already made money on the product, so "when it's done" seems fully acceptable to them.

This game kinda has me more than Prison Architect because of the space theme but what I've seen from long games of PA is that it really falls apart and you have to micro manage the same extent you had to mid game(when it worked because of scale).

I'm on the fence on this one, but leaning towards buy maybe.

I can't tell if I love or absolutely despise the 90s aesthetic and framey animation on the NPCs.

This is what I was going to say. No one gets mad at Bioware because they have a team working on Mass Effect 4 while another team is working on Dragon Age Inquisition. Double Fine works in a similar manner with different teams handling different projects, it is just on a smaller scale than studios like Bioware.

This looks neat, but as soon as I see Alpha I go later when you are finished, Alligator.

I can't seem to form a post that adequately describes my 'meh' feeling about this. I want to make comparisons to Dwarf Fortress/Theme Hospital/Startopia, but I can't get into words why the combination of those things, which this appears to be, isn't exciting me much.

Also, there has been plenty of other games that have tried to ride the this wave of tile based management games and turned out meh recently (like Towns for one...).

And not even it being from Double Fine is doing much for me. I mean, what does that even mean for this project? It seems like it might be being made by a 'C' team, and even if that's not the case I'm not seeing much avenue for what people usually think of as the things Double Fine are good at (like writing and... comedy I guess?).

Certainly, it's not going to pull me in for a pre-release purchase... not without getting to at least a comparable level of complexity/features as Startopia had (which honestly isn't that much).

Interesting concept, but it looks super-janky at the moment (which is entirely expected if the game is in its Alpha stage). I don't like playing games in Alpha - I don't want to play a broken game, and then slowly watch it get fixed and then play the finished game - all the surprises the game has to offer will have been spoiled for me if I watch them actually put them in the game as I'm playing it. I also don't want to be frustrated with playing a game that knowingly has bugs.

I will wait for this to come out and for reviews before giving them money.

Hey.

I bought early access.

All my guys died, thanks a lot.

Alpha game? More like Alpha Centauri.

I am into this. I like space and building bases. So, I guess they've got me.

Looking forward to it. I think I will wait until a bit later to join. I watched their live stream today and the game seemed to still be very basic and with a lot of bugs like doors not opening having to tear down walls.

White Birch & Black Lake both seemed like neat games

Hack n Slash might not ever work, but seems really neat

Autonomous looked really cool, but gameplay didn't make too much sense.

Another 30 dollar "ongoing" alpha :(

I know these days are long gone, and call me whatever you like but I miss the days where the developer would give you the Alpha in return for the bug-testing you were doing for them. Supply and demand I guess.

Much like Prison Architect I think I'll wait for release. Chances are by the time it comes out my interest will probably have dropped enough to wait for release and a sale. And if Starbound comes out first I'll probably forget about both altogether.

...oh yeah, also, it looks awesome.

My post got lost...

For those that complain about Double Fine making too many games:

The company employes 60+ people. Only about a dozen work permanently on Broken Age. The rest of the company needs to work on something else. they have been doing this since they shipped Brutal Legend. They developed Stacking, Trenched, Costume Quest, Sesame Street, and Happy Action Theater at the same time. That's 5 games at the same time! It worked out for them. The only difference now is that they have adopted a transparent stance on their development. You get to hear news about their project way before the release date.

Also this SpaceBase game is kind of special, it came out of the Amnesia Fortnight Humble Bundle package. Fans got to vote on more than a dozen game ideas to be made into prototypes, and follow the development process for 2 weeks. They live streamed coding, graphic, music composition sessions. And now a year later, SpaceBase game came out of that. When have any gaming fans experienced something like that?

Out of all the Amnesia Fortnite games I would not have expected Spacebase DF-9 to be the one they developed into a full product but it makes sense as the one that works best for Steam Early Access, plus it acts as a testbed for them before they try and launch Broken Age on Early Access next year.

Looks cool so far, and I’m excited, but hmmm, after watching some of the early gameplay, it feels a bit simplistic.

Great! This was the coolest game from Amnesia Fortnight 2013 (2012?) if you ask me.

Looks cool, but I'm still waiting for some of their other projects to finish before I feel any hype.

The funny part is that when they were making Trenched/Costume Quest/Once Upon A Monster/Stacking all at the same time things were probably working similarly, but nobody thought to complain because nobody knew what they were doing.

Kind of explains why big publishers don't talk to people unless it's through marketing drones, doesn't it?

:D

Startopia HD?

yeshhh! i so glad this is coming out!

They've shipped many games over the years. Don't give them money if you don't believe they'll deliver.

Awesome. I hope this works out the way they pitched it.

Yes, you are. They have multiple teams working on multiple games of various sizes. They have been doing this for a few years now; it is a method that works.

They have the big release: Broken Age.

Then they have two super tiny passion projects (Muir's Massive Chalice and JP's Spacebase DF-9).

Am I the only one that thinks the art style looks terrible? I also think it would benefit from a higher angle camera like Prison Architect; you currently see way to much wall.

Space Theme Hospital? I'm super in.

Spacebase DF-9 obvious reference to ds9 but thats great so many ways

I loved Startopia, so I'm pretty excited for this.

I thought this was about Space Station 13 :(

Looks more like a combination of Evil Genius and Rymdkapsel than Startopia. Still looks really rad!

So what do you expect them to do? Put the entire rest of the studio on hold? Fire everyone? Devote more resources to Broken Age than they believe would be worth it? Sorry, but anything other than "have everyone else continue to make and sell games" while Broken Age is in development would be a terrible decision. It's a bummer that Broken Age has been delayed but it's not vaporware, the first act's release is in sight, and we'll all get a taste eventually. This is what we signed up for when we backed the project.

There won't be a Brazen until after MASSIVE CHALICE is done and out. Brad Muir can only work on so many games at once.

Looks ok. Hope it turns out well. I really do enjoy these types of games. They are just not usually done well. Startopia seems have set the bar, and that game isnt great imo. Only played that for the first time a year or two ago so the jankyness and difficultly werent really flying with me. Prob shit you overlook back in the day.