Psychonauts and Brütal Legend developer Double Fine was among those released from Xbox Games Studios in July 2026, after a major restructuring of Microsoft’s gaming arm. Double Fine’s head Tim Schafer seemed unfazed as he embraced the studio’s return to its indie roots. In late August 2026, Schafer announced the return of Amnesia Fortnight, the studio’s long-running game jam, which would lead to the production of a new game and a documentary.
Double Fine turned to crowdfunding to finance the project, another tradition for the studio, which pioneered the concept with multi-million-dollar campaigns for its games Broken Age and Psychonauts 2. The new Kickstarter campaign asks fans to choose among a list of 12 game ideas, four of which will be turned into prototypes. Then, backers will vote again to choose which prototype will “become a real (small) game.” The campaign seemed to be going well, getting fully funded in just three days and reaching the $550,000 stretch goal by day 19, at which point the next stretch goal was revealed as the inclusion of voice actor Erika Ishii in the winning game.
Double Fine reveals Erika Ishii will work on the game funded by Kickstarter campaign
Ishii, whose acting credits include Atsu from Ghost of Yõtei, Valkyrie from Apex Legends, and Lady Deathstrike from X-Men ’97, has become a controversial figure among a segment of the fandom due to their open views about gender, sexuality, and politics. This had a negative effect on the Amnesia Fortnight campaign: At the time of writing, funding had dropped to a little less than $485,000. Double Fine has since disabled comments on X, and has allegedly started moderating comments on Instagram, too.
At one point, Double Fine said that Ishii was “donating their time to support the campaign and the studio’s independence,” suggesting that they would not ask for payment, but the comment has since become unavailable and is only visible through screenshots. Double Fine has not issued further comments.
It’s unfortunate that this controversy is throwing shade over a funding campaign that could lead to the development of an interesting indie game. The four finalists of Amnesia Fortnight, selected by backers, are: Architactics, a tactical city builder where structures can move around and transform to fight; Bard Crawl, an online co-op dungeon-crawling adventure game; Plot Armor, a turn-based RPG combined with a visual novel; and Uprise, a kite-flying high-speed platformer. All these games are based on original ideas or clever twists on familiar ones, and they all sound very fun to play.
Notably, Double Fine also added an unrealistic stretch goal of $100 million to the campaign, which would greenlight a long-requested sequel to Brütal Legend. I guess that’s a dream that will never come true.
