Speaking at this year's Develop conference in Brighton earlier this morning, Tim Schafer revealed that his Double Fine studio will be developing multiple low budget projects in the future as opposed to the relatively big budget rock fantasy juggernaut that was Brütal Legend.

And before you ask, no, one of them isn't a sequel to the Jack Black-starring rock opus: "We got a phone call from a publisher saying 'we're not going to do a sequel to Brutal Legend.' My fault was that I had not prepared for that, so we did not have a project ready to go," said Schafer.

With publisher interference and legal wrangling swirling around the four and a half year development cycle for Brütal Legend, Schafer is now convinced that "going small" will be the way forward for Double Fine in the future.

"We've seen the benefits of it right away. The advantages of doing small budgets means there's less compromise. Publishers are not as afraid of doing something unusual with smaller budgets, of $2 million or less. They're less likely to grab your IP rights if you're only asking for a small amount of money."

Schafer has taken some of these smaller game prototypes whipped up by the Double Fine development team in just two weeks as a motivational exercise and promoted them to publishers. "So we picked the best four took them on a roadshow and showed them to publishers," he said.

"In a couple of months all four games got signed. So we became officially a multi-project studio. Trying to kill us made us multiply." 

"Some of the games are downloadable, and some are retail," confirmed Schafer, also revealing that the four projects will span different genres and furthermore, see release later this year. 

"We have choice now", stated Schafer. "We have as a company found our way as a result of this challenge."

[Via GamesIndustry.biz]