Double Fine’s Ron Gilbert Explains His Inspiration For ‘The Cave’

Double Fine has a new game in development by Ron Gilbert called The Cave. Not to be confused with the Mumford & Sons song, The Cave is a delightful adventure game designed in the vein of Maniac Mansion. Players choose from a line-up of seven oddball characters (choosing three per game) to descend into the depths of the eponymous taking cave.

The game’s set up should come as no surprise given Ron Gilbert prior credentials as the lead designer Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, and numerous other adventure game classics from LucasArts.

In a new interview with the official PlayStation blog, Gilbert reveals that the concept for The Cave has been floating around in the back of his head for over 20 years, so it’s been a long time coming.

“I’d think about The Cave every once in a while and put another piece of the puzzle in place, so to speak,” he said. “It wasn’t until a couple of years ago when I was having lunch with [Double Fine founder] Tim Schafer that things really started moving.

“We were talking about games and The Cave had just popped into my mind. I told him about it and he thought it was a great idea so he said ‘why don’t you come to Double Fine and make it?’ They had a free team at the time so it was just the perfect aligning of two things. It was just random luck.”

In addition to the interview, Double Fine released a new story trailer of The Cave featuring some of the game’s characters, like the Twins (who count as a single character).

It’s set for release in early 2013, and it just happens to be one of many other adventure games on the slate. Given the recent success of the recently released The Walking Dead, renewed interest in the adventure game genre should come as little surprise to anyone.

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