that the sequel had been put on hold indefinitely, leaving the studio with no projects. Instead, Tim Schafer turned back to the Amnesia Fortnight products and sought to develop those as smaller games among several publishers. Two of them, Costume Quest and Stacking, were picked by THQ for publication as downloadable titles. Costume Quests development was led by Tasha Harris, Double Fine's lead animator and a former Pixar artist, with Tim Schafer providing support where needed, particularly in writing. The concept of the game was an idea that Harris had had prior to joining Double Fine, but never had a chance to expand on while at Pixar. She wanted the game to capture "that nostalgic feeling of these kids playing dress-up", and used old photographs of children in Halloween costumes to flesh out the game. Harris had mentioned the idea to Schafer, and Schafer chose her project as one of the four to be developed during the Amnesia Fortnights. Though Harris' original concept was not based on a role-playing game, she considers the game to have been influenced by older Nintendo games such as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, and games that take place in a modern setting like EarthBound and Pokémon. She also took cues from The Legend of Zelda series, where exploration would be paced through the acquisition of new items within the game. Harris stated that she wanted to "make a game that was like the RPGs that [she] loved growing up, but make it modernized so it looks cool and people enjoy playing it now" to take advantage of the growing popularity of titles available as downloadable content. Unlike Double Fine's previous games, which had four to five year development cycles, Costume Quest was completed in under a year. The time frame and team size were based on Schafer's previous experience in developing The Secret of Monkey Island. Schafer reflected that this limited time scale was beneficial to their development process. The shortened schedule forced them to limit the scope of the game and prevented "feature creep", the addition of interesting but unnecessary gameplay elements. With limited scope, they were also able to focus on making the core gameplay features fun and enjoyable throughout the course of the game. There was also better communication through the smaller team, and with individual members given more control of their own responsibilities within the game. The work done on