Making of Costume Quest 2

The following post-mortem was written by the game's lead producer / designer Gabe Cinquepalmi, and was first published at Gamasutra on October 29, 2015. It has been preserved here with the site's permission.

It's a little more technical than content you might expect as it was written for other developers, it's also very honest - but it's such a great deep dive into the creation of this game, that we think you might find it interesting. We've also added in a ton of concept art to browse through!

Double Fine doesn't traditionally do sequels. Of our 15 catalogue titles, only Kinect Party could be accused of being a sequel, but that was really more of an expansion and rebranding of Double Fine Happy Action Theater. Double Fine's lack of sequels is not necessarily due to a lack of desire to do them.

In fact, we have pitched them for Psychonauts, Brütal Legend, Once Upon a Monster, and Costume Quest throughout the years. Some of them got off the ground a little, but none of them went into full production. They just weren't in the cards for various reasons.

Greg Miller presents Tim with a check for $5

The clamor didn't die down, though. At one point, Greg Miller (Kinda Funny, formerly of IGN) was so jazzed for a possible sequel to Costume Quest that he gave Tim a giant $5 check on his show to seed some crowdfunding money for it. Would this monstrous foamcore check make the difference?

In the fall of 2013, we pitched some of our Amnesia Fortnight prototypes to Midnight City, an upstart indie label for Majesco. They had just gotten the console rights to publish Gone Home, and they were looking for some more titles to grow their brand. Since it was a fledgling label, they were a little more risk-averse and didn't bite on any of our new ideas. We asked if they'd be interested in a sequel to Costume Quest since it is one of our most frequently requested follow-ups. Midnight City loved the idea of being part of our first sequel, and it was enough to get the ball rolling. They actually recalled Greg Miller's giant check gag, and felt that they could work that into their marketing plan... "cash in" on it, if you will.

All of this was happening unbeknownst to me, so it seemed out of left field when one day after a leads meeting Tim asked me if I would be interested in running Costume Quest 2. That is... if we could get it signed. I was excited and humbled to be asked to lead the project, but my mind started calculating the time until Halloween and my mood quickly turned to panic. We were already less than a year away, and the contract hadn't been signed yet. It would probably take a month or more to get things solidified, and then we'd have to figure out how to staff it with everyone already assigned to a game. I said yes anyway. I knew it would be tough, but if I turned it down, there was a chance we'd still do it, and then someone else would get to have all the fun!

I had produced and helped with design and writing on the first game, and then designed and wrote much of the Grubbins on Ice DLC. With the original creator and project lead Tasha Sounart no longer at the company, it felt like a natural progression for me to shepherd the sequel. I felt like I understood the concept and mood of the game intimately enough to do it justice. I also knew all the production pipelines and game systems, which would be key for anyone trying to get this thing done in less than a year. Would the game feel different with someone else at the helm? Probably. But I felt like I could sprinkle my flavors in it and still ensure that it would taste like Costume Quest.

It wasn't long before a deal was reached with Midnight City, but when I saw the contract, I had even more reservations. The overall budget was smaller than the original two-platform Costume Quest budget, and they wanted us to ship simultaneously on eight platforms in less than a year! (PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360, WiiU, PC, Mac and Linux were all stipulated.)

We were sure that last-gen platforms were not worth the effort. Not only were sales declining for downloadable titles at the time of signing, yet another year would pass before we would ship. It also didn't make sense to invest in resurrecting our Costume Quest engine on 360 and PS3 when we would likely never use that tech again. The last-gen platforms became a sticky issue. We pushed back as hard as we could to get them to drop, but eventually had to relent or walk away from the deal. We signed, already thinking about how to outsource that work.

P Chan Monster Housing

Now that Costume Quest 2 was happening, we needed a real plan! Usually we have a pitch or a demo before we start on a game, but this time our four-year-old game was our demo. We didn't have anything representing what CQ2 might look like. We did have that old CQ2 pitch from a few years earlier, but after exhuming and reviewing it, it was no longer viable. It was intended for a much bigger budget with a longer schedule (voice, deep skill trees, etc.) We would need a new design, mostly from scratch, and it needed to be something we could legitimately pull off in 10 months.

The Grubbins on Ice DLC was the template that showed us what could be done with the engine once it was in place. It was a bigger level than any of the three in the original game, and we knocked it out in three months with a smaller team, mostly pain free: Two months to build it and one month for alpha/beta/certification. We had metrics for how long each element took to create and implement, since all those tasks were still in our production tracking software. I felt that a sequel would have to be at least the same scope as the original game for it to be accepted by fans, but we had to figure out areas where we could push even more within our constraints to make it feel fresh and new. It was definitely possible, but there was absolutely no room for error.

Tim and I had lunch with Tasha to talk about CQ2 and find out if she might be able to be involved in some way. We wanted to make sure that any changes we made didn't veer too far away from her original vision. She was excited at the prospect but was unfortunately not able to get involved with the project due to her current working agreement. She gave us her blessing and reminded us of some of her original design tenets while making the first game, helping to ensure that the sensibilities of the sequel stayed true to the original.

I had a few discussions with Tim about stories and locations before Christmas. By the time Christmas vacation rolled around, we at least had a direction. I hoped it would be enough to get us going, because when we returned in January, we were off to the races whether it was figured out or not!

What Went Right

1. Amazing team!

The biggest concern at the outset of this project (once we came to grips with dates) was staffing. We not only needed to get asses into seats pronto, I was hoping we could get as many Costume Quest veteran asses as possible. Even with a solid schedule and design, if we didn't have the right people at the right time we'd be dead in the water. The more people we had that already knew the game and engine, the better our chances of success. Double Fine was already working on a full slate of titles at the time: Broken Age, Spacebase, mas, Hack n' Slash, Grim Fandango Remastered, and a few ports of library titles. Almost everyone was tied up.

Our first big break was that we had a really strong lead programmer available right out of the gate. Ben Burbank was finishing up work on the final port for The Cave and was able to jump on early to start integrating the old, crufty Costume Quest code into the latest version of Double Fine's internal engine, while I continued trying to figure out what the game would be. Aside from lead programmer duties, Ben is a huge fan of Earthbound, one of the original influences for Costume Quest, and he understood what CQ was all about. He was invaluable on the combat design and had great sensibilities in general to help in design talks.

Kee Chi joined shortly thereafter to helm our gameplay programming. He's a DF veteran who's been cranking out gameplay code since the Psychonauts days. We'd recently worked really closely on his baby, Middle Manager of Justice, and I was super happy to keep that relationship going. CQ2's code was in good hands now.

The next nut to crack was concept art. We had to figure out what this thing was going to look like. All of our concept artists were busy painting Broken Age backgrounds or Massive Chalice doodads. With those games getting close to milestones, no one was available internally. My first thought was to see if our esteemed, long-time DF collaborator, Peter Chan, was available. I also wanted to make sure the characters didn't veer too far away from the look of the first game, so I checked in with Scott Campbell, the company's first art director and the designer of the original CQ combat characters, for his availability. Luckily, both of them had time available! Soon after, Emily Johnstone moved over from the Broken Age team to bolster our concept team. Our good start was turning into a great start!

After a couple of weeks, we finally started staffing up for production. The rest of the core team fell into place: Bert and Panya joined Kee to help make the gameplay fun, Freddie, Lindsay, Jeremy and Kristen gave us the beautiful landscapes, Jeremy and Drew were wizards with the VFX, Paul and Camden tickled our ears with their audio, and Chris, Chris, Dave, Dave, Tyler, Tyler, Adrian, Frederik and Elliott brought the characters to life. Then David, Matt, Oliver, Paul and Joe did crazy things to make the game look great across all of the platforms, Joe and Silvio enslickened our UI, Raz painted up the Creepy Treat Cards, Dan bolstered the production team, and Malena made sure people who spoke different languages could understand the game! Thankfully, almost everyone that touched the original game had some impact on the sequel. Even composer Peter McConnell was able to schedule in a fantastic soundtrack between Broken Age milestones!

We didn't have room in the budget for a full time art director, but the look of the game was set the first time around, with the help of Lee Petty, our Studio Art Director. We also had a lot of senior artists on the team that knew how to maintain a look. Lee was even able to take a little time out from Broken Age here and there to help us ever so often during CQ2. He made sure we didn't go off the rails, and helped us with problem areas when we got into a visual bind.

We had to resort to a moderate amount of outsourcing, but were lucky to work mostly with ex-Double Fine employees that had previously worked on the game or had a solid working relationship with us. It all went swimmingly. (Well, there was a contract or two that weren't swimming, but this is the "what went right" section!)

The only real hiccup I recall is when our lead animator and co-writer took a leave of absence early on in the process that kept him out for the remainder of development. We had collaborated to write Grubbins on Ice together, and we were planning on splitting the load for CQ2 similarly... so his departure meant that I would have to either write the game by myself or try to find someone else to work with. The latter option didn't seem viable, as everyone internal was tied up, and I didn't have time to screen new writers. This was a huge workload on top of everything else, but I really love writing, so I was up for it.

We did have to deal with the usual musical chairs throughout the year as teams ramped up and down, but overall, staffing was the least of our problems. The final team we ended up with was composed of motivated, multifaceted people that worked well together. We didn't have one moment of drama on the team from personality clashes or high-stress conditions. Quite a rarity when working with homo sapiens!