Double Fine's PsychOdyssey is a 32-part documentary series which charts the creation of 2021 platformer Psychonauts 2, from initial brainstorming sessions to its final release. Or it was - now it's 33 parts, as a new 94-minute episode was just released which looks back at the game, its reception, and the release of the documentary itself.
]]>Before the big Xbox Games Showcase aired earlier this month, some of the Xbox’s Twitter accounts seemed to tease that a Psychonauts announcement might be on the cards. The Xbox ANZ account tweeted an image of a noughts and crosses board that spelled out Psycho with three Xs. It was a rather confusing tease to say the least, and lo and behold, there was no Psychonauts 3 announcement during the showcase. Now Double Fine boss Tim Schafer has confirmed that he’s not working on it either.
]]>A tweet from the Xbox Australia and New Zealand account might - might! - be teasing Psychonauts 3. That's the conclusion of much of the internet, anyway. The tweet features a picture of a noughts and crosses board (aka tic-tac-toe) in which the letters for PSYCHO are written in pink and interspersed with three green Xs.
Psycho. Noughts and crosses. Three Xs. You can see where they're coming from.
]]>Crowdfunding platform Fig will go offline on Sunday, May 28th, and all pages related to previously funded campaigns will disappear along with it. That means that creators who were continuing to use the platform to communicate and deliver rewards to backers are currently scrambling to transition to alternative methods, including the likes of Double Fine and Gearbox.
]]>I like a lot of Double Fine's games, but none as much as I like the documentary which charted the development of Broken Age. I can't get enough of watching funny, smart, creative people work, and Double Fine Adventure offered a one-of-a-kind, candid and thorough glimpse of game development.
It was one-of-a-kind until yesterday, when Double Fine released PsychOdyssey, a 32-episode documentary series charting the creation of Psychonauts 2. Each episode is typically between 20 minutes and an hour long, and I've had a great time watching the first three so far.
]]>Last night, RPS' Bestest Best game of 2021 Inscryption won the Seumus McNally Grand Prize at the Independent Games Festival Awards, confirming that once again, we are correct about everything. If that wasn't enough, though, an hour later, Inscryption then won the Game Of The Year award at the Game Developers Choice Awards. It's the first time a game has ever won both awards in the same year, which is a stonking achievement. Clearly, our Advent Calendar made some pretty big waves this year. Just saying.
]]>Reader dear, I have to ask: do you try to get 100% collectables in games? Someone must, because games still have them. But I certainly don't, and I don't think I've spoken about the subject with anyone who does. So, seeing as Psychonauts 2 has now released a patch with new features to help players collect every little doodad and tick off achievements, I want to ask: do you do this? Will you? Please tell me about it!
]]>“It’s all in your head.” It’s a response that encapsulates all the condescension and ignorance surrounding mental health issues. And yet, in a way, it’s true. Subjective experience is an objective reality – that just so happens to be located and locked away in your head.
These individual realities can only be conveyed through language and other subjective means of communication, and more and more games are grasping this fact, turning inward to explore and map the inland empires of the mind. They have all the tools of the medium at their disposal to turn the invisible workings of the mind into landscapes of audio-visual and mechanical metaphors that can be explored and interacted with. At their best, they convey the dynamic and complex mechanisms of the psyche in a way that only this medium can.
]]>After countless Xbox Game Pass plugs, a lot of Dooming, and the arrival and subsequent disappearance of Greta Surname, The PC Gaming Weekspot is coming to an end. But, before we go, there's time to highlight some of our favourite games of 2021.
]]>Double Fine's Psychonauts 2 is a game about infiltrating people’s minds to uncover the strange thoughts bouncing around their psyche. But in a game full of unusual sights and sounds, its weirdest moment comes in the form of a hidden mpreg video. Easter egg spoilers ahead!
]]>Gamescom 2021 is underway, and this evening brought the Xbox showcase stream. You can watch the stream archive in full, but if all you care about is new trailers, then we've gathered them together here.
]]>Double Fine did it: they made a sequel to Psychonauts that's great. And different, too. It's a follow-up with modern day sensibilities that plays much better than the original. Given that it was one of our most anticipated games of the year, it's fair to say we're quite pleased.
]]>If only my own mind could be filtered through the creative processes at Double Fine Productions and emerge as a level in Psychonauts 2. In their hands, it would become a fabulous riot of colour and whimsy, with even the darkest corners seen as works of strange beauty. Diminutive psychic spy Raz Aquato would probably pinball around a giant rockpool that somehow represents my relationship with my grandparents.
The actual levels in Psychonauts 2 are more fantastical than anything I could conjure up here. There were many times playing it when I had to stop my 3D platforming and just look around in awe, taking in the still tableau of a little town made of hair, threatened by a huge tower of waves of blue locks wrapped with curlers. Or the juicy green landscape of a Yellow Submarine-esque 60s musical wonderland, every plant sprouting a crop of giant eyes. Or the paper trees that sometimes appeared among the towering archives of a giant book repository, where sketches of a knight and a dragon argued over pizza toppings.
]]>Last week I wrote that best-game-of-last-year Hades was coming to Xbox Game Pass in August, alongside some other fine games such as Curse Of The Dead Gods and Katamari Damacy.
This was apparently insufficient, since Microsoft have just laid out more games coming to their game subscription service in the Month Of Aug, including Humankind, 12 Minutes and Psychonauts 2.
]]>Microsoft have confirmed the release date for Double Fine's upcoming brain-hopping adventure, Psychonauts 2 - and it's coming much sooner than I was expecting. August 25th, in fact. That's like, two months away! And to celebrate, why not have a gander at its rad new gameplay trailer?
]]>I had looked away from the Xbox Games Showcase for a mere couple of minutes when the new Psychonauts 2 trailer dropped, so you may understand my surprise when I started hearing Jack Black's voice blaring through my headphones. That's right, Double Fine's sequel to the bizarre brain-exploring platformer will feature songs performed by the School Of Rock teacher himself.
Here's that trailer with the, admittedly, pretty cool song he's done for it:
]]>We've been drowned by E3 2019 this past week, but maybe you only waded into the river of game reveals and new trailers up to your ankles. If you didn't get your hair wet, there might be some gems among the flotsam and jetsam that you missed. That's what this post is for: we've rounded up our picks for the best games of E3, based on our own impressions of either seeing the games behind closed doors at the show, or of watching the videos from the comfort of our homes.
]]>If Disney Pixar did a remake of Inception, it would probably look like Psychonauts 2. At least, that’s how I’m going to explain it to those who have not played the original. Yes, I know Psychonauts explored the mind invasion angle years before Leonardo and the girl from The Last Of Us got lost in the brain of a trust fund baby. But that's still the predominant feeling I got from my short demo at E3. In this section of the game the aforementioned ‘nauts scramble around inside the emotional turmoil of long-time enemy and respected dentist, Doctor Loboto. It’s a bizarre and colourful world, and it’s run-o-jumping looks to be fine and dandy, even if it also seems at times a little unambitious.
]]>Double Fine Productions, the studio behind cheery games including Psychonauts and Brutal Legend, have been bought up by Microsoft. They say they'll continue to make those Double Fine games in that Double Fine way, which I suppose is what everyone says after their business is acquired.
]]>Psychonauts 2 is looking exactly how a Psychonauts 2 should. Double Fine have kept the hype-engine on their Lucasartsian platform adventure sequel gently idling since their crowdfunding drive in 2016. Last night at the game awards they gave it a quick rev. Somehow, this is the first real trailer for the game - familiar, but with some exciting new sights, sounds and people to meet. Oh, and terrible puns being called out by its own characters, because it wouldn't be a Tim Schafer game otherwise. Open your mind's eye below.
]]>Sure, you've jacked into someone's mind to wander through their memories, but have you jacked into someone's mind while jacked into cyberspace? You can now do just that in Psychonauts In The Rhombus Of Ruin. Double Fine's VR spin-off from peachy physic platformer Psychonauts arrived on PC last night, supporting Rift and Vive cybergoggles, following its debut on PlayStation VR in February 2017. It's set right after Psychonauts, bridging the gap to the upcoming full sequel Psychonauts 2, and looks a little something like this:
]]>Psychonauts 2 [official site] has hit a big development milestone: first playable. This means that Double Fine have put together a fully playable area where the platforming, dialogue, art and exploration are all implemented, even if they're not in a finished state. And, importantly, it already looks quite fun.
]]>About a year ago, I bought myself a HTC Vive. Since then, it's gathered a fair bit of dust. I swear, it's not that I'm a VR skeptic, so much as someone without a whole lot of space to play with who prefers being able to go to the toilet at night without tripping over what I'm going to call 'a Maplin' of expensive cabling. Of late though, I've been feeling the urge to go back in, largely I must say inspired by stuff I can't actually play, like the intro to I Expect You To Die (Vive version is coming, I can't be arsed with Revive) and watching the new Psychonauts and Arkham VR experiences from the PSVR.
So, I did. And I had some fun playing around with some new stuff.
My RPG based dreams though feel further away than ever.
]]>You like rocks? I'll show you nice rocks. You like trees? I'll show you nice trees. You like squirrels? I'll show you nice squirrels. All these and more are in a new Psychonauts [official site] dev video showing an art test of a quarry environment. It's not a finished level, just Double Fine feeling out the game's style, but some pretty stuff is in there.
Over in the world of #business, Double Fine have announced that Psychonauts 2 will be published by Starbreeze, the Brothers and Payday mob. But first, look at these rocks.
]]>Many backers who funded Psychonauts 2 on the crowdfunding site Fig are now considered 'investors', says a US regulatory body, paving the way for them to get a return in real money if the game sells well. Fig is a video games-focused fundraising site partly founded by a bunch of veteran developers including Brian Fargo and Tim Schafer. It lets you throw some quids into a project as a punter – just like Kickstarter – but also lets people invest in it. As well as welcoming serious accredited investors, it hoped to let any old mug invest by giving $1,000 or more at an 'investor' level - but the US Securities and Exchange Commission needed to have the final say on letting anyone have a crack. Now they have, and they've approved the whole thing. What does this mean? Can you invest in the next big project? More importantly: should you?
]]>Psychonauts 2 was launched into crowdfunding on December 4th then hit its target on January 6th, and the campaign has now come to an end. The crowdfunding was run through FIG, a service Double Fine head Tim Schafer advises on, and received $3,829,024 against an initial goal of $3.3 million.
]]>An odd feeling - this thing we prayed for for years, and which seemed such an impossibility, is now happening. And not just happening: it felt like a foregone conclusion from the second it was announced. With $3.35 million pledged by crowdfunders and investors, it looks like Psychonauts 2, Double Fine's sequel to their acclaimed 2005 adventure-platformer, will become a reality at last.
]]>Remember back in 2012 when Notch was like, "I could fund a Psychonauts 2!" and Double Fine were all, "Cool! $18m please!" and Notch was all, "Shiiiit, I was thinking more 25p, and - wow, look, an octopus on a tricycle!"? Well, that's all history now.
Double Fine are looking to make Psychonauts 2. They're after $3.3m from backers, alongside their own investment, plus external funding from a mysterious, possibly legal party. More Psychonauts! There's a trailer too, of sorts.
]]>How we had hoped to see Pat Garratt enjoying a hearty feast of broiled denim and shallow-fried zipper, but it was not to be. The editor of VG247 last year swore to eat his own trousers in the event Minecraft man Markus 'Notch' Persson made good on his talk of funding a sequel to Double Fine's Psychonauts. Alas, Persson has recently confessed that such a thing is not currently possible/desirable, as Double Fine's estimated $18 million budget for the game was beyond even his mighty means (or, at least, what he considered to be a lucrative investment of his mighty means).
]]>Industry legend Tim "Industry Legend" Schafer has been at the front of gaming news for the last couple of weeks. After the twitterstorm that followed Notch's somewhat speculative offer to fund Psychonauts 2 came the record-breaking Kickstarter project, that saw Schafer's company, Double Fine, raise over $2 million in a fortnight. I spoke to him over the weekend to find out how the process has been, what the intentions are for a new 2D adventure, to reflect on the classic adventures of the 90s, and to see if there were any other dream projects he has left. In the first part of this two-part interview we discuss the reactions to the Kickstarter, the role dads play in playing adventures, and where things are with Psychonauts 2. Tomorrow we'll go into the lessons learned from Schafer's previous adventures, memories of Day Of The Tentacle, Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, and how that will affect design today.
]]>Calling for the internet to stop hyping his offer to fund the imaginary sequel, Notch said: "“The budget for doing a Psychonauts 2 is three times higher than my initial impression." He went to insist that while emails had been exchanged and meeting at GDC was happening, "I have no idea if this is actually going to happen.” He also explained that he would be looking at the project purely as a monetary adventure: "I wouldn’t want to have any creative input in the game. It would be purely a high risk investment in a project I believe in."
]]>With all the recent brouhaha over Tim Schafer, from his raising $1.75m in four days, to the suggestion that Notch might fund a Psychonauts sequel, it was unavoidable that I'd replay Psychonauts. The astonishing game is in my all-time top 10, and makes me want to hug the planet and have them see. When I'm done with the play through I'll not be able to stop myself writing about it, but at this convenient midpoint I thought I'd pause to share the joy with you in the form of 38 screenshots. I implore you to buy Psychonauts. If you've never played it, it's so much more than you could be expecting. It's on Steam for £6 and Good Old Games for $10. Just look.
]]>We don't usually allow RPS headlines to run onto a second line, but this is a very special case indeed. During idle Twitter discussions about the whys and wherefores of a possible Mojang-funded Psychonauts sequel, I heard that the first game had cost $15 million to develop and that Tim Schafer was estimating a $20m cost for a sequel.
Clearly, these eyewatering figures cast some doubt on Mojang being able to successfully (or at least wholly) fund the game. So much so that VG247 editor, friend of RPS and entertainingly relentless cynic Pat Garratt has pledged to me - and now to the public - that he will eat his own trousers, on camera, in the event that a Mojang-funded Psychonauts 2 comes to pass.
]]>We mentioned earlier that Tim Schafer would love to make a Pyschonauts 2, but can't get the funding. Well, Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson spotted our story and suggested to Schafer that they should work together to make it happen. Multimillionaire Persson clearly has the funds to do this, and everyone in the world with their brain in the right place wants to see a sequel to one of the most joyful games of all time, so this is a thing that might actually happen.
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