Double Fine Productions has had a strong pedigree with adventure games, with the occasional off-beat title like Brutal Legend. But while founder Tim Schafer enjoys making games like the recently released Broken Age, he recently stated to GamesTM that his next project would be the complete opposite of that.

On being asked whether he still wants to make a LucasArts-style adventure game, Schafer answered, “Yes and no. Now that we have this engine and this pipeline, it would be a shame not to make another one. But the whole reason a lot of games we make are different than the previous game is that I get this urge to try something different every time.

“Even if you look at the difference between Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle, and then the difference between Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, you can see that there’s always this pleasure…I’m going to do the complete opposite of what I did last.”

Double Fine’s next title Massive Chalice is a tactical RPG that will be directed by Brad Muir, and that’s as different from Broken Age as you can get. But it’ll be interesting to see what Schafer’s mind cooks up next.

Double Fine Productions will finally release the first part of its crowd-funded adventure game Broken Age on Steam, with the second part to follow in the coming months. How about after that? While speaking to GameSpot, Double Fine boss Tim Schafer talked revisiting Brutal Legend, either with a sequel or even via DLC.

“I love that world and I would love to go back there. And I think Jack Black might be up for it, too. I would love to go back to that world or even just do a DLC pack. We’re always trying to get Lionwhyte in there; a playable Lionwhyte army. Maybe that would happen someday. I would definitely love to do that.”

Currently, the company is busy working on another crowd-funded project, Massive Chalice. Broken Age: Act One will be out on PC, Mac OS X and Linux on January 28th, with Act Two to release some time later this year. Any thoughts on a new Brutal Legend?

In conversation with Kotaku, which asked Schafer about Bethesda turning Dishonored into a franchise and whether he thought about doing the same for his games, he replied, “When we have a game that’s as successful as Dishonored, and makes that much money, we probably would do a sequel. Honestly, currently the only reason we haven’t done a sequel is we always have some other idea that we want to do. They wanted me to do a sequel for Full Throttle at [Lucasarts] but I had the idea for Grim [Fandango], and if I’d made the sequel for Full Throttle I wouldn’t have made Grim, and so on and so on.

Regardless, Schafer does have ideas for sequels for all of his games. “Every one of our games is like, ‘Oh, now I see how to make that game correctly. Oh, I have a lot of ideas of how to make those mechanics better,’ or whatever. So I’d love to get that chance to do that. And there’s certain games that keep popping up, like Costume Quest. There’s an automatic reminder about Costume Quest every year called Halloween, which makes me think about making a sequel to that game every year.”

Currently, Double Fine Productions is busy with Broken Age.

McGee posted on his blog that, “Just want to say to all the press, public and others who are gnashing their fangs at Kickstarter, Double Fine and anyone they think look ‘fishy,’ you can’t have it both ways.

“You can’t complain about big publishers and their bad business models – highlighting all the times they’ve pushed overpriced, buggy, unfinished product onto the shelves in hopes of a quick buck. Then when an indie developer lays bare their business model and struggles, crucify them for taking risks and being honest.

“In both cases the hyperbole is through the roof and completely unproductive.”

“The games you play cost huge amounts of money to develop and market. Productions are insanely complex, which means there are many places where they can breakdown or fail. Outcomes aren’t predictable, so that money to fund these things is nearly impossible to come by. Simply put, this shit is hard.

“Things are going to go sideways and sometimes horribly wrong. Instead of wanting to murder someone when they level with you about these facts, embrace them. The choice is yours – support transparency, honesty and constructive involvement…or don’t complain when the industry shrugs and shifts back to a model dominated by monolithic, uncaring publishers.”

While Broken Age does indeed require more funds, Schafer announced that Double Fine would not be asking more money from Kickstarter backers. Instead, the game will be released in two parts with the first part releasing on Steam Early Access and funds from this being used to complete the second part. Kickstarter backers will still receive beta access earlier than Access users, but most importantly, this step was taken in order to ensure that Broken Age doesn’t get pushed back all the way to 2015.

Speaking to GamesIndustry International, Schafer stated that, “It’s about flexibility in self-publishing. When you do Kickstarter, you publish on your own. Steam is so reasonable about letting you self-publish. Some of the console owners like Nintendo and Sony have made a lot of advances in that as well.

“Double Fine is pretty platform agnostic. We want to be everywhere. It really is based on what platforms we can self-publish on. I think there’s a lot more interest in PC, Mac, and Linux, as we start to bring our engines to those platforms.”

He also talked about how, “[Sony] reached out to a lot of indies like us and wanted to talk about what our needs were for the next platform. What we’d like to see, if we’d like to do stuff for it. Sony has definitely been putting a lot of energy into getting to know indies. Nintendo has also been forthright about letting us know how we can get involved.

“The optimistic part of me is thinking that [Microsoft is] holding off on announcing their new, indie-friendly platform policy and they’re going to tell us all about it at E3. I’m going to reserve judgment until after E3.”

Schafer tweeted the same recently, which can be viewed below.

Excited about announcing something new tomorrow! Not a sequel or a port. Something NEW. I might even put on new underwear.

— Tim Schafer (@TimOfLegend) May 30, 2013

The reiteration that it is neither a sequel or port – along with the revelation about Schafer’s current underwear – indeed means that it will be a new game. Given how Double Fine has been experimenting heavily over the years, bringing us Stacked, Costume Quest, The Cave and now Broken Age, it remains to be seen just what kind of new game this will be.

Doesn’t make it any less exciting however.

Stay tuned for more news and details on Schafer’s latest project. One can only hope the announcement will be followed by a reveal of the same at this year’s E3.

“I’d rather be independent and I’m not comfortable when I have to explain my actions to a higher authority. I don’t like having a boss, and when you take somebody’s money, they’re your boss. The exception to this is Kickstarter – I took the backers money, so they’re my boss, and I like it!”

More importantly though, given the lack of touting that Double Fine does when it comes to financial success, a user asked if things were fine financially at the company. Schafer responded that they “have money in the bank, and we don’t owe anything.”

And what more could you ask for really? Double Fine’s next project is the Kickstarter-backed Broken Age, expected to be revealed in more detail soon.

When asked how the company can “continue [to be] relevant in the game biz after so many years and so many financial flops”, Schafer responded that, “Full Throttle was actually a big hit. Gave me the money I eventually used to found Double Fine.

“Every game we’ve made at Double Fine has made a profit. We just haven’t had a blockbuster yet. Luckily our business plan isn’t dependent on blockbusters. You can make a lot of money off a game that sells less than that if you keep your costs down and plan ahead.”

Funny enough, Schafer stated that the term blockbuster for him meant something else entirely. “in the old days, it was selling a million copies. These days, it’s like six million or more.”

Schafer stated that of all the games he’d like to make a sequel to, mind-bending platformer Psychonauts is the first choice.

Broken Age has been revealed as “a point-and-click adventure telling the stories of a young boy and girl leading parallel lives. The girl has been chosen by her village to be sacrificed to a terrible monster – but she decides to fight back.

“Meanwhile, a boy on a spaceship is living a solitary life under the care of a motherly computer, but he wants to break free to lead adventures and do good in the world. Adventures ensue.”

You can check out the website for Broken Age here, and even find out about 2 Player Productions’ documentary detailing the development process from start to finish. Well worth becoming a backer for, you can check it out here.

Tim Schafer was the one who set the precedence about gaming developers getting funds from Kickstarter, and in his and Double Fine’s patch a lot of studios have found success with a studio even shipping critically acclaimed games such as FTL. Have you played that? You totally should. It’s also 50% off today on Steam, so what are you waiting for?

OK, that was an obvious plug, but it’s still one of the best indie games ever, and tells us that Kickstarter funded games could be successful. Here’s what Shafer had to say about Kickstarter and how it made him an open guy.

“It made me unafraid of being open,” he told Venturebeat. “I come from a background… Starting at Lucas, the most closed company of all. It’s like Willy Wonka when the doors are closed. He gets a lot of…Lucas is a very secretive company because of all the crazed Star Wars fans out there. And the regular game development is like, “keep everything a secret and release it when you’re polished and ready.

“The Kickstarter thing and the documentary that we’re doing with the Kickstarter has just taught me that there’s nothing to be afraid of. You release your stuff out. You show a piece of concept art that may or may not be in the game.

“It doesn’t matter. People are just like, “Oh, that’s cool!” People get on your side more, not get on your side less. The fear is that if it’s not perfect, you can’t show it to people because they’ll freak out. The fact is, they just feel more bought in. They feel like they’re part of the development team.”

That’s some wise words from Schafer. Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Thanks, VG247.