Visualante2
Member
Has there been any indication of how The Cave performed financially? Not to suggest that it's related at all.
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Ron Gilbert leaves Double Fine, announces iOS game
- Thread starter LiK
- Start date
He really did not have much to do with that game from a creative perspective, that game was petty much the baby of Chris Taylor.
I dont think the Cave was as bad as people made it out to be. Stuff like the miner puzzle weren't that time consuming like people often complain (although the option to skip already completed areas in future playthroughs would have been nice) and a lot of the puzzles were genuinely cool (the time traveler most of all) I thought it was a massive rebound after the mediocre Deathspank
Looking forward to his iOS musical match3 RPG pirate game
Looking forward to his iOS musical match3 RPG pirate game
AgentOtaku
Member
I see what you did there
Also, yeah this is disappointing. Only played the demo of both The Cave and Deathspank ...the latter which was painfully unfunny
CecilRousso
Member
Both Deathspank and The Cave are good games. Not great, but good. It seems like he doesn't really have the passion to make the games great though, considering how he retreats like this.
eXistor
Member
Not very surprising news I agree, but it's still sad to see him go. Gilbert and Doublefine seemed like a match made in heaven. Secretly, I was hoping he'd get back those Monkey Island rights and make a new MI game with Tim....oh well, the series died with Curse I suppose (I know they didn't have anything to do with that one, but Curse gets too much shit).
Stiflers Mom
Banned
Sad to see him go.
Gilbert working with Schafer sounded too good to be true...
Gilbert working with Schafer sounded too good to be true...
The Spoony Hou
Member
Being a fan of classic graphic adventure (point and click my ass) games, I wish Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert would work with Telltale to make a godly awesome game.
He was present in several videos and tier rewards, so it is normal people would think he's involved.
I did. I didn't take iOS side project as a sustainable employment method. I dunno. Reading comprehension fail probably.
Lord British
Member
I enjoyed Deathspank in co-op. It was knockabout fun.
Yup. I kind of no longer care for Gilbert. After his last two games really bummed me out I am no longer looking forward to anything from him.
Brerlappin
Member
As much as i adore the Monkey Island games, they were a long time ago, and neither Gilbert, Schafer, or Double fine themselves have put out anything near a classic in a long ass time.
I like their ideas and passion for games, but their execution leaves alot to be desired.
I like their ideas and passion for games, but their execution leaves alot to be desired.
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
That fucking blows. Good luck to him in his future endeavors, but I was expecting his role in Double Fine to be integral to the latest releases.
I agree. The idea of Double Fine is always better than their products. I like the people, I follow their Kickstarter and game jams, but I never bother with their games.
http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/us/en/pc/games/adventure/cave/
The cave is now half off on GMG (7.50US)....tribute to ron leaving DF.
The cave is now half off on GMG (7.50US)....tribute to ron leaving DF.
As much as I hate it, I'm exactly the same. I really want to like their games - Double Fine is a bohemian game developer. They just ooze style and revel in the virtues of their art while eschewing the capitalist constraints that have so ruined the game industry. And yet, their games kind of suck. Rock, Paper, Scissors described Brutal Legend as "raw enthusiasm in search of a game design". Their games make better art - the passively observed kind - than games you actually want to play.
I have a lot of respect for Double Fine. They are a very talented bunch. I just wish one of those talents was game design.
runnin_blue
Banned
I don't know the entire history between the two guys admittedly, but am I the only one sensing a bit of hostility between Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer? Just going on interviews I've seen from both. Don't know if they're being tongue-in-cheek or not.
I agree, though I thought maybe if he worked on a classic adventure game again it could respark something in him from the olden days. Instead he goes to make not only an iOS game.. but another bejeweled clone.
This puts me in a shitty mood either way.
Same idea for DF as for Ron Gilbert, I suspect with something like an adventure game, where the main focus is not directly the gameplay, but mainly story, characters, art, atmosphere, etc, I think they could excel a lot more on it. Psychonauts is pretty cool also.
Ron didn't really strike me as an artist. He's a programmer, through and through. I think he honestly enjoys making iOS games, if for no other reason than he gets to program them himself. If that's what he enjoys doing, then more power to him, I say. I think a lot people would be disappointed if he just became a writer, not the least of which would be Ron himself.Same idea for DF as for Ron Gilbert, I suspect with something like an adventure game, where the main focus is not directly the gameplay, but mainly story, characters, art, atmosphere, etc, I think they could excel a lot more on it. Psychonauts is pretty cool also.
I think it'd be more like Single Citation.
There's no such thing as "modern game design". If anything, the things that make "modern game design" fun are just lessons that gamers are rediscovering from older, forgotten games (now with micro-transactions!). Show me a case of amazing "modern game design" and I'll show you a game at least 20 years old that did it better.
Sorry. I saw an excuse to further The Cause and couldn't resist commenting.
Personally I think Gilbert isn't that a reflective individual who puts a lot of thought into the issues he is faced with. He tweeted this during this year's DICE:
Which I think is a pretty ignorant reaction.
Kobe for three... It's good!
Personally I think Gilbert isn't that a reflective individual who puts a lot of thought into the issues he is faced with. He tweeted this during this year's DICE:
Which I think is a pretty ignorant reaction.
he's so grumpy
OldJadedGamer
Banned
Let me guess, you're one of those that think that arcade games aren't real games.
Exactly how I feel. I keep trying their games hoping some day they can couple style and substance and I keep ending up disappointed.
Psychonauts and Brutal Legend could have been so much more if they had better designers. Even costume quest got boring and it was 4 hours long.
I don't think he's against frustrating players. There's several moments in DeathSpank that exist, literally, just to frustrate players. They wanted to award an achievement to anybody who could sit through the history of felt (this was when the history of felt dialogue was literally the history of felt, before liberties were taken in the name of great justice).
I can't really speak for him, but I think his position is that Sierra adventure games sucked, and everything he has said about game design in the past 30 years is largely about how Sierra adventure games were a frustrating mess and how we shouldn't do that.
Sentenza
Member
I'm going with Psychonauts.
I'm not a fan of the mechanics. Where they aren't dull they're clunky.
This is more or less how I feel. The only game of theirs that I've finished is Psychonauts, and it's still not that great of a platformer. If they had some people on the team capable of creating great gameplay, they'd be unstoppable.
Lasthope106
Member
Paging Remo. Gives us the inside story Boost.
I put down Stacking once I got to the airship (or was it a zeppelin?) because it became so repetitive even the wonderful art style wasn't enough. It was like a Hitman game but without the action or stealth part of the gameplay, just wander around until you find the puppet who's got the ability you need, rince and repeat. Pretty dull imho.
Not to say that Psychonauts didn't have its faults, but I found the core gameplay to be way more robust than Stacking's.
Clever Pun
Member
I'd love to hear a postmortem on the Cave that goes into some of the decisions that were made for that game. I mean, how could they not realize how frustrating and annoying the backtracking would be? Or the need to repeat generic puzzles on a subsequent playthrough? I mean, they must have seen these things in development, and I would love to hear the reasoning on why they weren't changed.
Sentenza
Member
Can't really say I agree to any extent.
Good controls, solid mechanics and outstanding level design, as far as I'm concerned.
I kind of disagree. In fact, I think Double Fine under Schaeffer's lead has been some of the best work in his career. Psychonaughts is a little rough around the edges in places, but it's a brilliant platformer with the best hub world fo any platformer and amazingly creative levels. Brutal Legend is the only recent game he has made that I couldn't feel comfortable calling a complete success. But even then it has a lot of great elements and it is still solid fun to play.
Moreover, I think their line up of games in the last couple of years since they started focusing on smaller games has been some of the best content they have eve produced. Costume Quest is an amazingly charming little game like Charlie Brown meets Earth Bound. Iron Brigade is perhaps my favorite Tower Defense style game because it has mechs, awesome co-op, and full blown loot system. Stacking is totally weird, and quirky and great. They still produce really charming, fun games. They many not be AAA blow your socks off experiences, but they are largely original efforts that stand out conceptually from most of the stuff that surrounds them in the industry. And their mechanics and execution are almost always solid. I don't know what more you could ask for, really.
Now are they better at creating worlds and concepts rather than evolving interesting game design? That I won't argue. But it isn't like the games are frustrating to play or are bad. They just are kind of mechanically more single noted, smaller. And there is nothing wrong with that in my book as long as they are doing other things interesting and they execute well.
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