There are great games and cult classics that are far from being a commercial success. Psychonauts, the first Double Fine game, is one of them. And despite the fact that its development was as chaotic as it was risky, at the controls it still retains all the good things and what made it exceptional. Consolidating as a timeless 3D platform, as brave as it is surreal. As absurd, as brilliant.
The great adventure of Razputín Aquato, Raz for friends, was not revolutionary as playable as Super Mario 64, but each small section of the game radiates its own sensations with an author’s name . From the hooligan humor of Tim Schafer (to which we owe some of the best dialogue from Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island) to the recognizable art of Scott Campbell and Peter Chan. Because talking about Psychonauts is looking at the roots of Double Fine as a studio. To your values and your creative identity.
And although Psychonauts will come to different desktop and desktop systems, including PS2, for very specific reasons, it is also talking about the origins of the Xbox video game division. Which makes the addition of Double Fine to the megaproject of Xbox Game Studios is, in many ways, something very special.
Because, as we will see, Tim Schafer and the original members of Double Fine left LucasArts drunk with illusion and motivated by spectacular creative energy. What’s more, Psychonauts was born in the same notebook in which the possible names of the study were written and shuffled. And Microsoft’s support during the assembly of the San Francisco study played a major role in the process. After all, with their first console looming (the original Xbox) it was a great opportunity for everyone.
Now, there is a nuance that makes Psychonauts exceptional: As Schafer will comment on the occasion of the 15th anniversary, it was not developed with the primary motivation to profit. What really drove everyone involved in the project was to give their best . A 3D platform game in which the absurd is the norm, where each of its levels competes to be even more surreal than the previous one.
Psychonauts, a summer camp full of exceptional minds
Whispering Rock is not the typical summer camp in which children learn to live together while making contact with nature: there future psychonauts , secret agents with all kinds of mental abilities, exercise. And although being half crazy is not a requirement, the truth is that it is difficult to find someone average normal among the campers and the teachers.
Razputín , our protagonist, is fascinated with everything he is discovering in Whispering Rock, and that is the most exceptional case of all: little Raz ran away from his circus family to be able to attend the course and, although he is the Further behind among his peers, he needs to awaken his mental powers before raising even more suspicion.
However, the plan is unexpectedly twisted to the little psychonaut-in-training and acrobat on the run. Raz expected to run into anything, but the truth is that this camp is being much more unusual than usual: a huge threat takes shape and his companions have begun to disappear.
The only way to solve this gibberish? Delve into the minds of others , uncover their fears, and unleash your consciousness while being exposed to all kinds of enemies, dangers, and emotions.
By the time Psychonauts was released, 3D platformers had reached some maturity. Super Mario 64 marked the way forward and, little by little, jewels like Banjoo-Kazooie, Rayman 2 or Spyro the Dragon were cementing the different possibilities of solving twisted levels in which jumps had to be calculated with extra precision.
That said, Psychonauts was exceptional on many levels. Not only because of its own theme, but also because of its enormous creative ambition and a very unique way of twisting the possibilities and constantly surprising the player across the different minds in which we must immerse ourselves. And, in the process, increasingly raising the scale and magnitude of the game.
Schafer and Double Fine had no fear or limits when it came to being experimental and asking not-so-frequent questions when shaping and playability of each mind based on the personality and traumas of the majority of protagonists. So in addition to the traditional levels of platforms we will see completely unexpected surprises and situations.
In this regard, instead of collecting the typical coins or game orbs, Raz collects products of imagination – in the form of Scott Campbell’s own illustrations very well distributed throughout each setting – that give more color, presence and personality to each section of level. And, in the process, they accentuate a spectacular under- lauded work of art that conveys the game from cinematics to set designs.
What color is the sky in the world of your mind?
Tim Schafer got a good paycheck after the release of Full Throttle , and that, when you’re not even 30 years old and you don’t have too many responsibilities, makes you very daring. If we add to this the runrun of a great idea discarded from his graphic adventures and his natural restlessness, it is easy to understand his leap from brave: in 2000 Schafer would leave LucasArts to have total creative freedom and absolute control of his works.
That the original idea was not fulfilled was something that Schafer understood perfectly: at one point in Full Throttle, the player experiments with peyote, a hallucinogenic substance, through the protagonist and, from there, explores his own mind. LucasArts might be daring, but that was too much for a company that, in addition to adventure games, released Star Wars games and educational software.
For months, Schafer was shaping that premise of exploring the protagonist’s mind by writing down all kinds of new ideas, concepts and playable mechanics. In the same notebook he collected his genius, memories of youth that he wanted to implement in his next game and all kinds of doodles. Including, a list of names for who will be your new LucasArts studio and staff you wanted to sign up for.
Schafer goes over in his notebook the possible names of what will be Double Fine
The original premise of what will become Psychonauts took another step when someone asked him about ” that game in which the protagonist could enter other minds .” Schafer hadn’t imagined it that way, but it fascinated him . Thus, one of the first concepts when exploring that mechanics involved the story of a guy capable of reading minds in a madhouse.
The next push will come in 2001: after the turn of the millennium, while Schafer was painting the Double Fine desks and with a SEGA out of the console war, Microsoft took the step by presenting its own Video Game system.
What’s more: Ed Fries of the newly introduced Xbox was more than interested in wrapping games in development and signing industry names. Thus, Psychonauts was presented as a console exclusive and Double Fine found an editorial and financial boost to shape its vision. Although this one would have a few years left to be fully polished.
Beyond the artistic vision of Scott Campbell and Peter Chan, Schafer was interested in exploring innovative concepts through play . To create huge scenarios that reflected all kinds of minds, including bipolar disorders that completely transformed environments. It was not simply a matter of making a platforming title with thematic levels, but of getting the player through Raz to enter the minds of the colorful characters of the adventure.
I mean, as we discussed at the beginning, the Double Fine team was more interested in unleashing themselves creatively . They weren’t looking to offer a generic best seller, but rather the game that represented their vision of what the studio’s games had to be. What’s more, Schafer asked his employees what color was the sky of the world that they imagined in their mind.
Double Fine’s debut feature was conceived in an environment as ambitious as it was creative. And that, in assembling the mountains of ideas around the game, led to all sorts of production issues, gameplay bugs, and dramatic release delays. To the point where Psychonauts will be released in April 2005 on Xbox. To give a broader context, in November of that same year the Xbox 360 will be launched.
Mind you, by then Psychonauts was no longer an Xbox exclusive. Double Fine released the game on PC and, thanks to Budcat Creations, a very mainstream PS2 adaptation was created in the early 2000s, already with Majesco Entertainment Company in distribution on virtually all systems.
Unfortunately, not even Majesco herself could react to Psychonauts’ commercial hit. However, over the years, the number of copies sold -according to Schafer- and the constant reissues managed to give a well-deserved second life to a classic to which its own recognition came too late. Because Psychonauts resisted until the end to be considered a game of the lot, but the recognition came much later.
The return of Raz, this time by popular clamor
During almost two decades Double Fine has grown an image strongly associated with two concepts. On the one hand, Schafer’s study has devoted itself to offering the player classic experiences with their own identity and an experimental point . With something that would make them exceptional. However, its most notable developments have rarely been straightforward.
An example of this we have in Brütal Legend, an also resounding commercial failure, very well wrapped up in the artistic and creative, which had to face countless production and distribution problems, including an uncomfortable change of publishers.
And it is not that Schafer closed himself to other alternatives. In fact, the second concept that was associated for years with Schafer and Double Fine was precisely that of collective financing. Which was translated into campaigns that promoted key projects, such as Broken Age and even its own crowdfunding platform: FIG. It is precisely there where Psychonauts is reborn through a sequel.
Both Schafer and Double Fine veterans have a very special fondness for Raz and Psychonauts . It was their first game of their own and, although there was content that remained in the inkwell, they could do it as they wanted.
And they were not only very proud of their debut, but they were very clear about how to give it a sequel. But, of course, Schafer no longer has the freedom and momentum with which he founded Double Fine in his 20s. His long career in his own studio has given him many lessons. Luckily for everyone, the response on FIG and the Psychonauts 2 campaign was a success.
Five days after closing the financing campaign and with more than 20,000 backers, Psychonauts 2 achieved the 3.3 million dollars necessary to take shape. One of the most ambitious funding ever made by the San Francisco studio. And since then, five years and numerous delays have passed.
Of course, the panorama of Double Fine is very different : the launch of Psychonauts 2 is practically palpable and the studio itself has been very well clothed since 2019, joining the megaproject of Xbox Game Studios. Coincidence or not, Microsoft and Double Fine line up nearly two decades later to help shape this wacky new adventure.
Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Super Mario , argues that a game that is late can be a good game, while a game that arrives earlier than it should will always be bad. A proof of this is Psychonauts , whose arrival in Game Pass gives an additional value to the Microsoft video game service. And we do not expect less from a Psychonauts 2 that, thanks to Game Pass itself, will no longer be conditioned by sales, but by Double Fine’s ability to be faithful to what makes them different.
