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Alright, Tim Schafer, you win. After targeting various industry folks with a typically contrived adventure game puzzle and then assembling their responses in our GDC Quest Quiz feature, we simply weren't prepared for your relentless response to our silly challenge. Not only did you trick us into doing all the hard work, but you successfully navigated through our made-up-as-we-went-along chicane of bizarre logic. But don't grow complacent in your victory -- we'll get you next time.

The Player
Double Fine's Tim Schafer, designer of Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts and upcoming god of gwar epic, Brütal Legend. Prior to the release of those games, he worked on The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2 and Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle.

The Puzzle
You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.

The Inventory

• (1) perforated parasol
• (1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
• (1) sealed manila envelope
• (1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue

Make your way past the break to read our adventurous e-mail exchange.

We, like all good and wise people, love Tim Schafer. What we don't love is having to wait years between fresh infusions of Double Fine goodness. So it gave us no small amount of pleasure to hear that while speaking at the 2007 IGDA Leadership Forum, Schafer said he'd love to make a small XBLA game, even though he didn't have one in the works.

"We talk about making Xbox Live Arcade games all the time. Who doesn't want to make Xbox Live Arcade games?" he said. "It's like when you see a Great Dane taking a giant shit and then you see a poodle taking a little Tootsie Roll shit. The poodle is so cute, but at the end of the day you're still picking up shit. Seriously though, we'd love to make Xbox Live Arcade games, but we're really busy now." ... We're not exactly sure what you meant by that, Tim. But we're fairly sure we couldn't have said it better ourselves.

Alright, the internet, you can officially stop dreaming about a sequel to Psychonauts and go back to dreaming about Brutal Legend. After a darkened version of the game's logo with the words "Coming Soon" on it appeared on the Double Fine site and started the rumor train, chief Tim Schafer had to be the one to put the penny on the track. He told Next-Gen, "the truth is we are just putting together a new page about 'The Excellent Game Psychonauts.' We're not announcing any new games or anything. Sorry if we confused anybody! We lightened up the image to hopefully make things clearer."

Why do you build us up (build us up), buttercup? ... And why did we just call a man who could squish us between his meaty palms "buttercup"?

At 11:00 p.m. ET, the brutally fun countdown on Xbox.com will reach zero, thus signaling a time when Satan and His Minions will ride out from the Gates of the Underworld on flaming steeds of bone and hatred to conquer the world. Probably.

In the event his conquest gets delayed, we're wagering a guess that the countdown will coincide with a new announcement from Tim Schafer's Double Fine studios, who recently registered a trademark for the title Brutal Legend. Of course, with all the work put into Epic Saga: Extreme Fighter, we really don't know how the developer would have had time to work on two projects at once.

Double Fine's previous title, Psychonauts, was a critical darling whose lackluster sales can only be attributed to an unfortunately-timed pan-dimensional rift. Fortunately, we don't have long to wait and see what the countdown means (though its speculated connection to a Ninja Gaiden 2 announcement now appears unlikely).

Update: And Brutal Legend eludes us yet again. The countdown was for Ninja Gaiden 2 after all -- we're disappointed and overjoyed at the same time.