Double Fine Adventure now too big for current funds

The Double Fine adventure game project, Broken Age, will be split into two parts with the first half sold through Steam Early Access in order to further fund the second.

Broken Age is the name given to Double Fine's hugely successful initial Kickstarter project which pulled in more than $3.3m despite a goal of only $400,000. Further funding will now be fuelled by the first part of the title going on sale around January 2014 with the second part offered as a free update later on.

In a message sent to backers, studio head Tim Schafer explained that the money they had raised resulted in him 'getting excited and designing a game so big that it would need even more money'.

After a closer look at the project, the studio found that to bring Broken Age in under budget and for it to hit its intended release date, approximately three quarters of the project would have to be cut.

'How would we even cut it down that far? Just polish up the rooms we had and ship those? Reboot the art style with a dramatically simpler look? Remove the Boy or Girl from the story?' said Schafer.

Schafer ruled out the possibility of shopping around for a publisher as it would violate the spirit of the crowd-funding campaign and he also stated that going back to Kickstarter again seemed wrong.

Double Fine has returned to Kickstarter a second time for a different project with turn-based strategy game, Massive Chalice. Although not as massively successful as its adventure game pitch, the campaign still brought in more than $1.2m.