"Those things that the King of All Cosmos says are just so crazy," Schafer said, referring to the planet-sized Katamari character. And they're atmospheric, Schafer points out. Even when they're melodramatic, those types of games still never seem to take themselves too seriously. Maybe that's why Schafer has fallen in love with what he calls "wacky Japanese games"-titles like Katamari Damacy, LocoRoco, and Okami. Speaking at the NYU Game Center in Manhattan last night, Tim Schafer showed off a prototype for a cancelled Double Fine game that used emotions like anger and fear as puzzle-solving tools. Suddenly you realize that you're playing a video game. When those townspeople don't react, the illusion is broken. "If you don't have anything funny to say about a situation, the player will realize something's fake," Schafer said, bringing up the oft-cited pot-smashing of Zelda games, in which you can destroy and steal from peoples' homes with reckless abandon. But it will also have new ideas, he added-because "people like to be surprised."Īnd-like all of Schafer-helmed studio Double Fine's projects-the upcoming crowdfunded adventure game will aim to be funny. He promised that it would be true to the nature of adventure games, as nostalgic Kickstarter backers might demand. Schafer, who has made headlines recently for his monumentally successful bout with crowdfunding site Kickstarter, didn't give any specifics on his new $3.4 million point-and-click adventure game, though he did assure the crowd that it will be in 2D (because it's cheaper). But by playing it up to absurd proportions, Schafer was able to throw logic under the rug and leave players laughing instead of scratching their heads. So he wrote the scene as if it were a joke, peppering the dialogue with terms like "honey pumpkin" and "plunder bunny." Without that humor, it wouldn't have worked. "Humor is a tool to cover up the fact that this is not a solvable problem." "You can't write a serious scene that has a pirate and a governor fall in love in five lines," Schafer said. While working as a programmer/writer for developer Lucasfilm, Schafer was tasked with writing the scene where protagonist Guybrush Threepwood and Governor Elaine Marley meet on the beach and fall in love. " If the game is not funny, you're missing something," Schafer said, telling the crowd how he used comedy as a tool to solve problems in The Secret of Monkey Island. If you go and ask a game development team why they're not making funny games, the Psychonauts creator said, half-joking, they'd say it's because nobody's made one that sold very much. Speaking to some two hundred people at the NYU Game Center Thursday night, Schafer shared his thoughts on the current state of the gaming industry, discussing the nature of adventure games, his personal favorite titles, and that one important tool that many developers fail to use: humor. The legendary designer behind Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle thinks comedy is necessary and not enough games are doing it right. Tim Schafer wants more video games to make you laugh. But on the off chance that you don't, here's your chance go catch 'em all. Perhaps best of all, all of the games come with their soundtracks, each of which is fantastic and two of which made last year's Best Game Music of 2011. The trailer above does a pretty good job of summing it up. If you don't own even two of those games, this is a bargain… this is like, a great games all-star jam or something. They're all so great, in fact, that I'd be surprised if you haven't played pretty much all of them.īut still: Pay whatever you want for the terrifying and amazing Amnesia: Dark Descent, the hilarious and wildly creative Psychonauts, the dark and clever Limbo, and the lovely and incredibly soundtracked Sworcery, with freakin' Bastion thrown in as a bonus if you beat the average bid. Even by Humble Bundle standards, the Humble Bundle V contains some fantastic-ass games.
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