Renowned game designer Tim Schafer, whose credits include some of the greatest adventure games ever made (Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, Day of the Tentacle, The Secret of Monkey Island to name a few), recently spoke to GamesIndustry about the unusual path that led Microsoft to acquire Double Fine in June 2019.
Later in the interview, Tim Schafer also confirmed that Microsoft never interfered in any way with the development of Psychonauts 2.
So an acquisition wasn’t on the plan, but when we heard about their philosophy starting with the acquisition of Mojang – how they’ve had success by acquiring but not absorbing companies, not interfering with them and letting them be creatively who they are – that’s really worked out and been successful for them, and that seemed really appealing to us.
This choice seems to have paid off. Originally crowdfunded via Fig in the early days of 2016, Psychonauts 2 was finally released to warm reviews this past week. Our own Rosh Kelly rated it 9.5/10, adding that it delivers on all of its promises.
