Updated: The Double Fine Kickstarter project has now officially crossed $1M! Celebratory image below.
Earlier this month we alerted you to what we felt was one of the best docks for the iPhone that has yet to be made. The Elevation Dock still looks just as good but it’s now gained the distinction of being Kickstarter’s first project to garner $1M in crowd-sourced funding.
But it may not hold the highest-funded crown that long, as a new challenger, in the form of a project to create a new point-and-click adventure game, is showing some insane momentum.
The project, which is from Double Fine studios, the company started by the legendary Tim Schafer, is currently at $874,000 and climbing in under 18 hours, well surpassing its $400,000 goal and making it a candidate for the quickest-funded project ever on Kickstarter.
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If you’re unfamiliar with Schafer, he’s the guy behind Grim Fandango, Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle, some of the most loved adventure games of all time. Double Fine studios has produced even more awesome stuff like Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, Costume Quest, Stacking and its newest Kinect adventure Double Fine Happy Action Theater.
Schafer is joined by his partner. legendary game designer Ron Gilbert, the creator of the SCUMM scripting language that was used in tons of classic LucasArts games like Monkey Island.
The project was actually launched an interesting manner, with Markus Persson, AKA ‘Notch’, the creator of Minecraft actually offering to fund a sequel to Psychonauts on Twitter. Schafer and Persson continued to chat about alternative funding for Double Fine’s next project offline, but it turns out that the studio was already working on this Kickstarter project. Persson hasn’t given up hope for a Psychonauts sequel though.
The project, which consists of a new Double Fine adventure title and an accompanying documentary by 2 Player Productions (the guys behind the first season of Penny Arcade: The Series), actually crossed the $870K mark even as I was writing this article and will likely hit $1M before long. Schafer says that the additional funds will go towards an increased budget for translating the game, adding more music and voices, an original soundtrack for the documentary and making the game available on more platforms.
These two successes continue to demonstrate just how viable Kickstarter has become for creators looking to get things made outside of the traditional hierarchy of production company, distribution and manufacturing pipelines. It’s indeed a very exciting time to be a fan of good things getting made.
As a huge fan of Schafer’s work over the years, I’ve backed the project and if it excites you as much as it does me, I encourage you to do the same.
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