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Costume Quest

Tim Schafer and Tasha Harris on Double Fine's next.

EurogamerThe Snow White one?
Tasha Harris

Yeah. But I don't know if there's anyone in particular...

Tim Schafer

The right-hand middleman quit smoking because Zak quit smoking. That's our business dev guy.

Tasha Harris

Really? I didn't even know that.

Tim Schafer

Yeah. He quit smoking. When I found out what was going on I was like, I'm going to make our guy quit smoking. He was really irritable one day because he quit smoking. And I was like, I want to use that.

EurogamerHe's funny. I didn't get to finish the boss fight with him, but I hope he doesn't go away because I thought he was great.
Tim Schafer

He calls in his mandatory team-building exercises.

EurogamerYou've talked about download-only games allowing you to be more creative and take more risks. Do you feel strongly that this kind of game is the future? Is the 50-million pound blockbuster going to die out?
Tim Schafer

You're going to see both. It's just that there's a lot more opportunity and a lot more diversity. That's going to increase in games. Hopefully that'll bring in more people as players, and that'll perpetuate over time.

Maybe games like Costume Quest will appeal to people who don't consider themselves hardcore gamers. Maybe it'll bring in people's spouses and kids and people who hadn't played before. The more diverse the game industry gets the more people it speaks to and the healthier it is.

Eurogamer You've said download channels allow you to take more risks, but Costume Quest doesn't feel like much of a risk.
Tim Schafer

The risk just came from it being Halloween-themed. Publishers were like, I'm not sure about this because it's seasonal. Apart from Madden, there aren't any seasonal games.

Eurogamer How long did it take to make?
Tim Schafer

About nine months. That's the same amount of time it took to make Monkey Island. But back then that seemed like a lifetime. Now it just seems like a holiday.

Eurogamer Costume Quest is your first download-only game. It's your first RPG. It's the first game of yours in which you can play a female character. And by your own admission it's the first game you've finished on time. Someone - we're not allowed to say his name, let's call him Burger King - made a point of saying you don't make games on time. How come this one's on time?
Tim Schafer

Because of Tasha and the producer. They're both much better organised than me.

Eurogamer It seems like a funny and nice game. It's not violent and doesn't have swearing...
Tim Schafer

It's got people exploding into candy. What are you talking about? It's super violent. But delicious.

Eurogamer Are there too many gory space marine games?
Tim Schafer

I don't think we sit there and say, ah there's too much of this kind of game. It's mostly a more positive thing of what do we like? What do we want to make? Tasha's style is evident in the game. There's just stuff she's into herself.

Tasha Harris

It's a combination of all these different games I grew up liking and I like now. I like cuter stuff. I like Nintendo's games a lot. World of Warcraft I was really into for a while.

Tim Schafer

It's nothing against space marines. If Tasha was like, I love space marines, we probably would have made a space marine game. Probably not space marines. Maybe funny space marines. No one's really done funny space marines.

Eurogamer You should make a funny space marine game.
Tim Schafer

Yeah, let's do that. Funny space marines. That'll be the name of it. I'm feeling lazy. Let's just call it Funny Space Marines. But it's a really sad story, just to keep people on edge. 'It's called Funny Space Marines! Why is it so sad?' Ah, I gotcha.

Eurogamer I can't wait to play it. I expect it to happen.
Tim Schafer

Sad Funny Space Marines.

Eurogamer Let's talk about costumes. I had a go with the Statue of Liberty costume...
Tim Schafer

You had a go at the Statue of Liberty?

Eurogamer It sounds bad.
Tim Schafer

She's a cold lady.

Eurogamer And the Knight in Shining Armour, and the robot. What other costumes are there?
Tim Schafer

There's a lovely unicorn based on Tasha's childhood unicorn costume.

Eurogamer What did you call it earlier?
Tim Schafer

Battlecorn! It sounds more like a piece of corn on the cob with lasers or something. Battlecorn!

Eurogamer Or it could be like a space ship in Star Wars but a massive corn on the cob that shoots lasers.
Tasha Harris

We have a costume idea for DLC now.

Tim Schafer

Yeah. You can have corn on the cob. No one's had corn on the cob, right? There's a really evil, scary pumpkin head.

Tasha Harris

And a space warrior. We can't reveal all of them because we want to leave some as a surprise.