Double Fine Productions

Double Fine Productions is a video game developer founded in July 2000 by Tim Schafer after his departure from LucasArts. He started Double Fine with a mixture of personnel from the Grim Fandango development team and new employees.

The name "Double Fine" is a play on the Golden Gate Bridge being a "double fine zone"; the company is based in San Francisco.

The official Double Fine website is also host to five webcomics, which are created by members of Double Fine's art team and are collectively referred as the Double Fine Action Comics.

Projects
Double Fine's first completed project was a multi-platform game titled Psychonauts. Critically praised, it is available for the Xbox, PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Windows. However, despite its acclaim, it did not sell well initially. It was later re-released on Xbox 360 under the Xbox originals banner live arcade as well as for Gametap on PC and for Steam on PC.

Double Fine's second project was Brütal Legend, a hybrid real time strategy, action-adventure game following roadie Eddie Riggs as he is transported to a fantasy world in which demons have enslaved humanity. The game appears to have been inspired by Nordic mythology and heavy metal music. Brütal Legend has been published by Electronic Arts and was released on Oct 13th 2009 (USA) for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

At the Develop 2010 conference in July 2010 in Brighton (UK), Schafer revealed that there was to be no sequel to Brutal Legend. However, he also stated that Double Fine have four smaller games in the pipeline which have been picked up by major publishers. "Some of the games are downloadable, and some of the games will be retail," Schafer said. "Some of these games we're working [on] will come out this year."

Double Fine's website features several free minigames. The most recent of these, Host Master and the Conquest of Humor, is a pastiche of Schafer's LucasArts games, and features Schafer himself as the protagonist.

Games

 * 2005 Psychonauts – Xbox, PlayStation 2, PC
 * 2009 Brütal Legend – Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
 * 2010 Costume Quest - Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network

Double Fine have also produced a few flash games, developed by Klint Honeychurch and showcased on their website.


 * Epic Saga: Extreme Fighter - A low-res 2D fighting game, complete with moral victory quotes.
 * My Game About Me - Three minigames focused around olympic 'events': Eating, Sleeping and Surfing.
 * Tasha's Game - A platformer in which players use a cat to collect platforms to help Tasha progress through the level.
 * Host Master and the Conquest of Humor - A point-and-click game in the style of Monkey Island in which Tim Schafer must find jokes for his speech at the Game Developer's Conference.

Awards

 * 2006 Game Developers Conference: Best New Studio

Psychonauts Awards

 * British Academy Video Games Awards 2006: Best Screenplay
 * GameSpot Best and Worst of 2005: Best Voice Acting, Best Graphics Artistic, Funniest Game, Best Game No One Played, Best Platformer
 * IGN 2005 Awards: Best Platformer, Best Game No One Played
 * EuroGamer: Overall Game of the Year 2005
 * PSM: Buy or Die award in issue #100, #5 on Top 10 Games of 2005 list, Best Characters
 * Electronic Gaming Monthly 2005 Awards: Best Game No One Played
 * 6th annual Game Developers Choice Awards: Best Writing
 * PC Gamer magazine 2005 Awards: Best Game You Didn't Play, Editor's Choice Award
 * E3 2002 Game Critics Awards: Best Original Game
 * GameShadow Innovation in Games Awards nominee (Best Game, Innovative Visual Effects, Best Narrative)