Concept for Ron Gilbert's next game pre-dates Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island

Ron Gilbert's first game with Double Fine is slowly beginning to be revealed, and it looks, well, extremely Ron Gilbert. On his blog, Gilbert released the first two pieces of concept art, showing off two of the game's multiple playable characters: The Scientist and The Mobster.

"Here are a couple of fine pieces of concept art from the game I'm making with the amazing folks at Double Fine. I'm so excited," Gilbert said in a post on his blog. "This is an idea that has been in my head for a long long long time. It predates Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. It's a game that needed to be made." The character art certainly looks like something Gilbert would have drawn up during the Maniac Mansion days, and we're hoping the gameplay, too, is of a more "classic" variety.

Don't get us wrong, we loved Stacking and Costume Quest, but we really want to see Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer get back into the "rubbing items on other items to solve puzzles" genre. There aren't nearly enough of those anymore.