Double Fine staff are currently on a two-week break from their regular jobs. But far from having their feet up, they've been hard at work crafting new ideas for the studio's next big project as part of Amnesia Fortnight, the company's prototype game jam.
The idea is to free up developers to pitch ideas for new games, let the public vote on the best ones, and then produce working prototypes.
From a list of 25 hosted on Humble Bundle, fans have narrowed it down to just four: The Gods Must be Hungry, Kiln, Darwin’s dinner, and I Have No Idea What I'm Doing. And yes, they're as wacky as they sound.
In The Gods Must be Hungry, “warrior chefs” fight for the best groceries and make mega meals to please hungry deities. Darwin’s Dinner is a survival game in which your prey evolves over time based on your actions, and I Have No Idea What I'm Doing is a VR party game that thrusts one player into an impossible situation and asks the rest of the room to shout out instructions: think WarioWare meets Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.
The one we're most excited about is Kiln, a team-based brawler that involves you building your individual fighter out of a lump of clay, almost like a customisable version of Gang Beasts. If the size and shape of your character actually impacts gameplay, then they could be onto a winner. And we'll find out soon enough, with prototypes playable before the end of the event on April 28.
Most won’t make it to a full commercial release, but some might – in 2012 the event produced prototypes for Space Base DF9 and Hack ‘N’ Slash, both of which were developed further and launched on Steam. Admittedly, neither were particularly great, but there could always be a few diamonds in the latest batch.
Watch the pitches for the four winners below, and let us know what you think.
