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Psychonauts and Costume Quest maker Double Fine has launched its new game development Kickstarter project after cutting ties with Xbox, and says it’ll make Brütal Legend 2 if it raises an impossible-sounding $100 million.
Double Fine is crowdfunding support for its new game jam on Kickstarter, the platform it previously used to successfully fund Broken Age, long before its recently-concluded stint as an Xbox-owned studio, and subsequent layoffs affecting 25% of its team.
With the Microsoft money pipe now severed, the maker of recent titles such as Kiln and Keeper must now fund its own experimental indie projects. And so, once again, it is holding a two-week stint of creating a series of bizarre prototypes, which fans of the company can choose to vote on and support.
At the time of writing, Double Fine’s crowdfunding campaign has raised just over $275,000 of its current $400,000 goal, with 29 days still to go. It remains to be seen what further stretch goals will be added to the project as its progress continues, though the company has already promised it will develop a Brütal Legend sequel should it hit $100 million.
Now, to be clear, there is no realistic chance of this Kickstarter hitting $100 million, which begs the question of why Double Fine is teasing a follow-up to its beloved Jack Black-fronted real-time strategy title from 2009. Is this just a pipe dream, dangled in front of fans without likelihood of it occuring?
A year ago, Double Fine stated it had multiple projects in the works and that none of them were sequels. But this was before the company split from Microsoft, and it’s reasonable to assume that plans have changed significantly since. Indeed, Double Fine has now clarified it is still working on larger game projects in the background, while the Amnesia Fortnight crowdfunder pays for the team’s immediate future. Perhaps Brütal Legend 2 is one such larger project? It did depart Xbox with the rights to its game back catalog intact, after all.
We are still working on bigger games! This is to help keep us open while we seek funding for those larger projects, and also for the team to have fun with one of our favorite traditions after a very long, tough summer. 🫶🏼— Double Fine Productions (@DoubleFine) August 31, 2026
In the meantime, you can browse pitch videos for more than 25 game prototypespledge your support to then vote on which gets turned into an actual (albeit small) game. Which of these sounds worthy to you?
- Architactics, a small scale tactical city builder where your structures can move like giant robots and fight back against environmental monsters
- Astro Slam Intergalactic Pro Wrestling, a deck builder with tactical elements and story-driven branching paths
- Bard Crawl, an online co-op adventure where a bar crawl with up to three friends shifts into a fantasy dungeon crawler
- Brouroboros, a local multiplayer party game where each player controls a snake head on a shared body
- Centauride, a 2v2 game where you scavenge, build and race a mechanical centaur
- Cosmic Bonsai, a horticulture-inspired astronomical pseudo-simulation game
- Dragons, Gels, and Bear-Owls, Oh My!, a chaotic, co-op survival game where you take care of magical beasts via mini-games
- Echo, a music-based multiplayer 2D platformer, where your goal is to perform a short tune through parkour
- Emergency Foley Artist, a party game where you create silly cartoon soundtracks
- Fermi’s Playground, tweak the laws of nature to shift the odds of habitable worlds and run the simulation to see what a galaxy of explorers requires
- Friendslap, a satisfyingly silly and slap-tastic multiplayer arena
- Golem Hero, a roguelite mix between Dynasty Warriors and Castle Crashers
- Insolation, a survival game where you pilot an agile spider-bot to find and protect the last few plant species alive
- Lesbian Sled Death, a four-player, jet-powered, full-contact Rocket Sled Derby racing game
- Lucid Gardening, where you cultivate a supernatural garden of mysterious plants and animals
- Mochimochi Line Dancer, a fast-paced Mochi-collecting game where you build the longest and wiggliest line dance before time runs out
- Muscle Madness, a four-player creatine-fuelled race to see who’s the swolest of them all
- Plot Armor, a turn-based RPG/visual novel combo in which your narrative choices in the latter affect your character’s performance in the former
- Quokk ‘n Roll, a play with your friends co-op escape gameReluctance, an arena shooter that bends its genre according to player action
- R.U.N, a third-person action platformer where players must flee a mysterious force, making quick decisions to find the best path forward
- Super Power Performance Evaluation, a co-operative action puzzler where you use randomly assigned superpowers to perform heroic feats
- Tonight We Feast, a chaotic co-op caper about a fox, raccoon and pigeon trying to score a meal for the night in the big city
- Tractor Takedown, a four-player local battle game where players drive hotrod tractors to stop data center construction
- Uprise, a kite-flying high-speed platformer where you build and fly kits to rise up against a mysterious invading force
- Virtual Pet Manifesto, a social idle game where you and your friends are virtual pets
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky@tomphillipseg.bsky.social
