Costume Quest Message Board

Double-Fine's Costume Quest is getting its own comic series. That shold be good enough news for fans of giant french fries monsters, but the even better news is that it's being done by fan artist extraordinaire (and former Kotaku contributor ) Zac Gorman.Read more...

Ahem. So as you may have already surmised, there is going to be a Costume Quest 2. The original Costume Quest was a delightful Halloween-themed role-playing romp from Double Fine that warmed hearts and had Alec’s internal, infernal grin factory working over time. But it was also a rather insubstantial snack of a game, all things considered. A sticky-sweet Halloween treat, but far from the sumptuous meal it could’ve been. That in mind, I’m very, very, very excited that Double Fine is carving a second Costume Quest from its colossal game development pumpkin. I doubt it’ll be some sprawling mega-opus, but I certainly won’t say no to a slightly improved stroll down the darkest of child-friendly candy-filled alleys.

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Costume Quest 2 announced, Gone Home is coming to consoles, Microsoft talks the future of Games with Gold & details on Telltale's Tales from the Borderlands.

Costume Quest 2 is due out on October 31 for consoles and PC, courtesy of a partnership between developer Double Fine and indie publisher Midnight City. There's no word on which consoles Double Fine is targeting, specifically.

Costume Quest 2 stars Wren and Reynold, heroes of the original Costume Quest, plus an improved battle system and new costumes. The game is in full development right now, and once the team decided to go for it, work "got up and running really fast," Double Fine co-founder Tim Schafer tells IGN. This is Double Fine's first sequel.

Double Fine regained the rights to the Costume Quest IP in November, after losing them to Nordic Games when Costume Quest publisher THQ went under and held a bankruptcy auction in April.

We reviewed Costume Quest when it launched in 2010, and found it to be charming and "kind of magical." [Image: Midnight City]

Double Fine's Tim Schafer and Fullbright's Steve Gaynor explain how Midnight City made dreams come true.

Hey! Did you hear the news about Stacking and Costume Quest? No? Oh, right, that’s because I’m still in the process of reporting it. Well, the short version is, Double Fine – after what Tim Schafer describes as “a daring and top-secret midnight raid” on Nordic Games HQ – has reclaimed full rights to both Stacking and Costume Quest. Distribution, production, whatever else goes into making a game – all that good stuff. So what happens now? I got in touch with Double Fine to (double) find out.

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It's not a trick - Double Fine really is treating iOS players to Costume Quest, out now on the App Store for $5. It's an unexpected arrival for the kindergarten RPG that's an oddball mixture of trick-or-treating, turn-based RPG combat, and typical Double Fine humor. That said, it's bang in time for Halloween and it comes with the Grubbins on Ice DLC for free.

We put four chocolate stars in Costume Quest's candy bucket back in 2010, our review deeming it "sweeter than the candy the game's heroes and villains pursue so relentlessly."

“Double Fine?” someone somewhere has probably said at some point maybe. “Who do they think they are, claiming to be twice as fine as the rest of us? I’m no fool. I don’t believe it for a second.” But, Mr Somewhere, what if you’re wrong? Then you’ll just look silly, your only solace coming in the fact that going off the grid in shame would be simple, given that you have the least Google-able name of all time. Clearly, the only solution to your conundrum is a test. You need to play most of Double Fine’s back catalog, but your gleaming shield of skepticism must be kept aloft. Buying these games full price would only create suspicion that you might harbor legitimate interest. We can’t have that. The solution? A new Humble Double Fine Bundle. It’s offering all of the laugh factory’s PC games except Iron Brigade on a pay-what-you-want basis, and a pre-purchase of Broken Age if you’re willing to part with $35. Exceedingly strange, vaguely arousing video after the break.

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Here’s what puzzles me. We’ve all been so terribly excited about Double Fine making a new point and click adventure game and potentially making Psychonauts 2 – as though the idea of getting games like that had hitherto been openly insane. And yet, on console, they’d already released Stacking, which is positively dripping in adventurey leftfield puzzles and Psychonautsy surreal-slapstick humour. So, before we get entirely wrapped up in crying for more, let’s celebrate lovely Stacking, which arrived suddenly on Steam just a few days ago.(more…)

This patch updates the DirectX redistributables to the version required for Costume Quest. This fixes some issues that new installs of Costume Quest might have.

Updates to Costume Quest have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

- This patch fixes an issue that caused some of the user interface elements to have a blocky appearance when rendered at high resolutions.

This patch of Costume Quest adds a few new options:

- You can now toggle v-sync through the display settings
- We added an FXAA shader to help reduce jaggies. Its enabled by default, and you can toggle it through the display settings
- For those with powerful GPU's, we added support for supersampling for even higher quality antialiasing. In Steam, right-click on Costume Quest, go to Properties…, click Set Launch Options…, and then type in either ssaa2x or ssaa4x. If you launch Costume Quest elsewhere, then just use ssaa2x or ssaa4x as command line arguments.

You might not know who Steven Dengler is, but you've probably used his website, XE.com.

Steven Dengler has money, and he wants to spend it on cool stuff.

Dengler is the co-founder of universal currency converter website XE.com, an early Internet success and an entrepreneurial endeavour that made him rather comfortable financially, and allows him to use his money in a way that most of us might only dream of.

You know, like funding the PC port of Costume Quest and Mac version of Psychonauts.

“I’ve seen a lot of people become very unhappy as they got financially successful because the money goes to their head,” said Dengler to me last year. “It changes who they are. Their whole existence starts to be about the accumulation of things. [...] I really didn’t want to do that, I really did not want to become that person.”

I spoke with Dengler in early November, not long after the first two Double Fine projects he’d been involved in had launched.

In moments, it became clear he's an enormously passionate fan, just one who also happens to be the day-to-day CEO at a seriously focused web enterprise like XE.com. Unfortunately, not long after our Skype call had ended, the busy holiday review season arrived in force, and I never had a chance to write anything about our conversation.

In light of Minecraft creator Markus Persson making an offer to help bankroll Psychonauts 2 and Double Fine launching a $400,00 Kickstarter project to possibly develop a brand-new adventure game, it made sense to revisit my time with Dengler. It’s not like Double Fine is opposed to funding for otherwise impossible projects in crazy ways.

Double Fine founder Tim Schafer made a jokey comment on Twitter in March 2011 about how much money the studio would need to port some of its existing games onto other platforms. Dengler took notice of this, and joked back about what that number might be. Schafer responded with a number, which may or may not have been real. Schafer then pointed Dengler in the direction of Double Fine’s business manager. The whole exchange was tongue-in-cheek.

(Note: I’d love to link to this exchange, but Dengler doesn’t have it bookmarked anymore, and searching Twitter updates from more than a few days ago appears borderline impossible. If you have a solution, I'd welcome it.)

And this is where most stories like this would reach their logical end--joke’s over! Instead, Dengler really did email Zach Karlsson, Double Fine’s VP of business development at the time. Karlsson has since moved on to Capcom.

“The early couple of exchanges, they were just humoring me,” he said, “but in a couple of emails, I was asking relevant business questions and we were talking about specific numbers for specific things and suddenly it became clear that we were actually having a real conversation about this.”

From start to finish, transitioning from jokes over Twitter to actually writing a check, the process took just 18 days.

Since signing his deal with Double Fine, Dengler's visited the studio's offices in San Francisco.

This is not charity, however. Sure, it comes from a place of passion, but this was (and is) a very real thing.

“This is something that’s an actual commercial, business deal, where there’s money involved and I do expect to get my money back and then some,” explained Dengler, “but quite frankly, I’m not a video game publisher, I’m not looking for obscene amounts of long-term ownership or profit or anything like that. I asked them to pitch me a proposal and I accepted what they pitched me--I didn’t negotiate it. That’s what I wanted to do. ‘You tell me, because I’m a stranger to your industry, you tell me what an ideal situation would be like for you, that would let you accomplish your goals.’”

Ironically, Dengler and Schafer initially joked about the idea of more Psychonauts, as well, but it was just that: a joke. When the parties involved actually talking, it morphed into ports of Costume Quest and Psychonauts.

Dengler has spent his money on many other personal interests, all collected under the Dracogen Strategic Investments banner. He contributed $5,000 to help make Fallout fan film Fallout: Nuka Break happen, and decided to bankroll his sister’s artistic aspirations with the webcomic MegaCynics. He's active on Kickstarter and IndieGoGo.

“In the worst case scenario, we have fun for a couple of years,” he said.

Stacking and Costume Quest might never have come over to the PC without Dengler's help.

Even though Dengler had no real involvement past the investment stage, his financial contribution meant he was credited at the start of the versions of the game he helped make possible. When he started to talk about the animated Dracogen logo that appears when you boot Costume Quest on PC, his voice elevated in both pitch and speed. For a moment, it’s almost squeaky. He was so, so excited.

“You go from something that’s just an idea in your head, or a joke on Twitter, and then you think ‘Yeah, I can make this happen.’” he said. “I find that immensely satisfying, and that’s where I get my kick out of it. Maybe in the fullness of time this will be proved to be a really good business decision or a really bad business decision or a break-even business decision. Well, okay, we’ll see how that goes. I have my expectations, but in many ways, my goals have already been met just by making it happen--helping it happen.”

During our conversation, Dengler mentioned that he’d be willing to work with Double Fine again, if the stars happened to align--and they did. The reason Stacking exists on the PC is because of Dengler.

With that in mind, maybe the idea of Notch helping make Psychonauts 2 a possibility isn’t that far fetched, after all. And when I asked Dengler about Psychonauts 2, he expressed the optimism you’d expect from a big fan.

“It’s been such a pleasure to work with Double Fine,” he said in an email last night. “I'm really happy to see Markus interested in helping out now. It looks like Markus will be a very positive force in this as well. My fingers are crossed, as are those of many, many gamers, I suspect.”

You can follow Dengler on Twitter, and keep tabs on where his money goes next at Dracogen Strategic Investments.

Ah, the fine art of reporting on non-events: not news as such, but they make us go all misty-eyed and slightly sad. In this case, it’s Double Fine’s Tim Schafer revealing that he would gladly make another Psychonauts game, but no-one will give the studio the money they need for it. Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!(more…)

The latest patch for Costume Quest contains two significant changes:

- This fixes an occasional but serious crash bug, which was causing the game to write off the end of a mis-sized vertex buffer
- You can now disable vsync through the command line option -novsync. To set this through Steam, right-click on Costume Quest, select Properties, click Set Launch Options…, and enter novsync. Well be adding this to the display settings UI in the near future.

4 out of 5

Plenty of new enemies to stick a stake in.

Maybe it was too much time spent watching Charlie Brown holiday specials in my youth, but I find something fundamentally appealing about seasonally-themed games. With all its emphasis on monster archetypes and sinister atmosphere, Halloween is as ripe as any holiday for the game treatment, and around this time last year we got a double dose of creepy little downloadables with Costume Quest and the brilliant Red Dead Redemption add-on Undead Nightmare. This year it's Sucker Punch getting into the act, with a standalone Infamous game rife with vampires. Festival of Blood might be a little short on content, but there are things about it that are genuinely better than Infamous 2 itself, and for only $10, it's hard to argue with how much is included.

As all good what-if games ought to, Festival of Blood works within a framing story that doesn't take itself seriously. Your old pal Zeke is at a bar spinning a yarn to some comely lass, about that one time legendary electro-guy Cole MacGrath became a vampire for one night. That gives the game carte blanche to get as crazy as it wants with undead monsters overrunning the city during a booze-soaked nocturnal celebration known as Pyre Night, which dresses Infamous 2's New Marais up in some attractive seasonal decorations. The city also feels more alive than Infamous 2 did, with more and better ambient sounds, and street parades and revelers almost everywhere you look. The crux of the story here is Cole's transformation into a minion of the sly vampiress Bloody Mary. You've only got until dawn to kill Mary and break your enslavement, and the game does a great job of indicating the passage of time by reminding you at certain points during the story how many hours you have left, and subtly changing the world by lightening the sky to give the sense that time is in fact running out.

New Marais' seasonal makeover helps establish the mood.

Festival of Blood is built on the Infamous 2 engine and assets, which is to say it feels almost exactly like Infamous 2 (which in turn felt a lot like the original Infamous). That means a lot of dodging and rolling in between hurling bolts of lightning and electric grenades and rockets at enemies. Since the game is still Infamous 2 at heart, it's worth noting that the same combat issues are here--mainly, it's easy to get ganged up on at inopportune times, or occasionally stick to a piece of the level design when you're trying to dodge. There's one meaningful new ability in here--the power to turn into a cloud of bats and soar right over all those buildings you had to climb up slowly in the previous game--that really changes the feel of how this game plays. It's incredibly fast to get around the city now, so fast that you might have a hard time going back to Infamous 2 after this. Festival of Blood reminds me of BioShock 2's masterful Minerva's Den in the way it accelerates the progression of your abilities over a compressed timespan; you start out with basic Infamous powers at the beginning and quickly advance to more powerful weaponry by completing combat challenges. The game works the vampiric theme into the gameplay pretty well, since you're fighting (and staking) other vampires almost constantly, and you get a "vampire vision" sort of mode that lets you reveal disguised vampires walking among the populace, as well as some nifty hidden collectibles.

It's those collectibles that add a little bit of meat to what is otherwise a pretty lean experience. You could burn through the story missions alone in a couple of hours here, especially since the flight ability makes it so quick and easy to get from place to place. But there are 100 items scattered around that increase the length of your flight time, as well as 10 invisible glyphs painted onto building walls that reveal some voiceovers from Mary about her past, stretching all the way back to Colonial America and even earlier. Those voiceovers do a surprisingly good job of fleshing her out as a character, and I found myself seeking them out not just to earn a trophy but because I wanted to hear everything she had to say. The glyphs are also fun to hunt for, since slipping into your vampire vision will show you ghostly arrows that point in the general direction of more arrows that will eventually lead you to a new tale. Hunting those down makes you feel a little sleuthy.

Some nice new still art helps tell the brief story.

Infamous 2's user-generated mission tools make their way into Festival of Blood as well, though you need to finish the story before you can make your own stuff. There's a nice upgrade to the editor that lets you pose character models in specific positions and then take still images of them, then overlay comic book-style talky bubbles on the image to create a little narrative to go along with your mission. I long ago made the life choice not to create my own content with these sorts of tools, but I could see people creating some decent stories if they put some work in. You can play as many user-made levels as you want after the game ends, though I tend to think open worlds feel a little lifeless once you've completed the storyline that runs through them.

Anyway, the game is $10. In my mind, that throws any quibbles about how long it is right out the window, especially since it contains the visual fidelity and gameplay of a full retail title. Sucker Punch made a laudable decision taking Festival of Blood standalone, rather than casting it as an add-on that requires Infamous 2. As a result, you've got a three-gigabyte download to chew through, but that opens this game up to anyone who didn't bite (ha!) on the previous game. Whether you're curious about trying Infamous for the first time, you wanted more after finishing Infamous 2, or you're just looking for a quick experience in a well-constructed Halloween setting, Festival of Blood is worth a look.

After far too long a hiatus, Double Fine Productions unexpectedly returned to PC last week, releasing their year-old, Halloween-themed RPG Costume Quest on Steam. Hopefully the rest of their games will follow, but in the meantime here’s what I made of their dress-up duff ‘em up.

There aren’t enough costumes! Then again, any number of additional costumes probably still wouldn’t have been enough to dissuade me from using the very first one, the winged, rocket-lobbing robot suit, over and over again. Maybe it’s because it looks a bit like Thundercracker from Transformers, or maybe it’s just because I’m a boy. Boys like machines and violence, girls like pink and unicorns. Those are the rules. (Apart from when they’re not.) Costume Quest does, after all, play unashamedly to the child in us: it’s a celebration of the goofy cheesiness of American Halloween, admirably managing to keep cynicism out while never falling prey to mawkishness.(more…)

Gentlethings, prepare to perform your happy dance. Unexpectedly and suddenly, Psychonauts-makers Double Fine have ended their silly sabbatical from PC games, and announced that they’ll be releasing their Halloween-themed RPG Costume Quest on Steam. When? Why, it’s there right now.

Happy, happy days. And hopefully CQ is but the first of many of the Tim Schafer-headed studio’s titles due to return to the motherland. In fact, they imply as much below.(more…)

Costume Quest is available on PC right now, Double Fine announced at an event in San Francisco, just in time for you to teach your 6-year-old cousin how to really work that cowboy hat for the most candy possible. Go get your candy on!

Just is time for Halloween Costume Quest is Now Available on Steam.

Costume Quest is a Halloween adventure from Tim Schafer's Double Fine Productions. In this charming role-playing game, choose your hero and trick-or-treat through three beautiful environments full of Double Fine humor and story. Complete quests, build your party, and collect costumes along the way that allow you to transform into powerful champions and take down the evil Repugians. This heroic holiday tale will capture the imaginations of kids and kids-at-heart.

PS3 owners won't have to wait long to get their Grubbin hands on some new Costume Quest DLC. "Grubbins on Ice," the winter-themed content released on Xbox Live yesterday, will make its way to PSN on December 21. That's still in time for Christmas, for those of you who want to reinforce the tradition of playing Costume Quest on a holiday.

The DLC brings the quest to a new area, the snowy Repugia, and, more importantly, new costumes including a ziplining pirate, an eyeball costume that can zoom out the in-game camera to find secrets, and a Yeti costume that can shield the party -- and is also nice and warm.

#doublefine Halloween has come and gone, but Double Fine Productions' candy-coated role-playing game Costume Quest will continue. The first add-on for that downloadable game, Grubbins On Ice, is coming soon. More »

Double Fine's earnest candy collection adventure, Costume Quest, is set to receive a new downloadable add-on in December for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Gamespot has the first word on "Grubbins on Ice," which sees the soon-to-be-rotund rascals entering Repugia, the snow-dusted realm of the Grubbins. Though the turn-based combat remains the same, Grubbins on Ice will introduce new costumes and patterns, along with several enhancements for the original game.

An accompanying patch will address Costume Quest's save system (you'll now be able to save at phone posts within the neighborhood) and allow you to pause during cutscenes. Grubbins on Ice will also adjust the speed of the dialogue textsoyoucanfinishreadi-

We'll let you know as we hear an exact release date and price.

#food Super Mario cakes? Doom jello sculptures? No edible homage to video games would be surprising unless the edible homage was... healthy? One inspired cook made a dish of Costume Quest for her boyfriend to eat and for us to admire. More »

As anyone with kids or young siblings will tell you, finding quality games to play with them can be kind of a chore. Most are either too frustrating, too simple or just impossibly stupid. ... The games, that is. Not the kids.

For those stumped parents, brothers and sisters out there, Double Fine's new RPG-lite Costume Quest is going to be sweeter than the candy the game's heroes and villains pursue so relentlessly. But even the mature, grown-up adults among you may be tempted to indulge in a piece or two, if you've got the patience.

Trick or treat, smell my feet, Tim Schafer gives us something good to beat...

Is this Halloween-themed RPG a trick or a treat?

Game designer Tim Schafer makes his foray into digital gaming in a frighteningly fun way.

Double Fine's test-drive into downloadable titles, Costume Quest, is ready for those ready to experience a Unicorn wearing a purple and rainbow outfit.

For those with the Move, try out the demo for The Shoot. The title if pretty self-explanatory of what one should expect, but check out the trailer if you need more info.

Choose your platform to view the corresponding release list:
(Note: Continue past the break to view both release lists.)

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