Psychonauts Message Board

In the second part of our interview with Double Fine‘s Tim Schafer (the first part is here), we get to talking about the nature of the adventure game, and reflect on some of Schafer’s defining classics from the 90s, Day Of The Tentacle, Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, to consider what lessons they offer for today, the reasons for avoiding 3D altogether, and I almost trick him into making a sequel to Day Of The Tentacle.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.(more…)

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.

Clearly at the moment this is a tweeted offer, not a signed contract, but it’s a massively exciting one. Tim, say yes!

Tim Schafer wants to make a sequel to Psychonauts. That’s not news. Schafer has talked about this many times in the past, and mentioning interest during a Digital Spy interview isn't crazy.

The news was Markus “Notch” Persson, better known as the creator of Minecraft, offered to pony up the cash to help make Psychonauts 2 on Twitter. Persson claims he’s serious about it.

“Let's make Psychonauts 2 happen,” he said.

“I’m serious,” he said in a follow-up.

This all happened hours ago, long before Schafer had even woke up in San Francisco. He awoke to texts asking him to check Twitter.

“Man, so many tweets,” he said. “I assume this is all people asking for codes to Happy Action Theater and Rise of the Martian Bear?”

And then came this one:

“Oh wait,” he said. “Hm. This is interesting.”

This wouldn’t be the first time Double Fine Productions has accepted money from a Twitter backer, with Costume Quest for the PC and Psychonauts for the Mac having been funded by fan and XE.com founder Steven Dengler.

Dengler actually chimed in today, too.

“Let's move this discussion offline,” said Dengler.

So far, Double Fine has not issued an official response, but all eyes will remain on Twitter.

Erik Wolpaw has written or co-written ten games including Psychonauts, the Left 4 Deads, Team Fortress 2, Alien vs. Child Predator, Portal, and Portal 2. He has been recognized by the North Carolina Sex Offender Registry as someone who made a game about an alien who killed registered sex offenders from North Carolina, and he is currently employed at Valve.

You know how at Passover Seder you leave an empty seat for Elijah? This is just like that, except replace Passover with this list and the prophet Elijah with the dark knight Batman. In other words, this position is reserved for my huge backlog. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that’d have a decent shot of making this list if I’d actually managed to play it in 2011. Stuff like Arkham City, Dead Space 2, Uncharted 3, Trenched, The Gunstringer, and Rayman: Origins. This is also where I’m putting games I played for 30 great minutes and then my DS broke, although only Ghost Trick falls into that category.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Number nine through number two are basically interchangeable. I’m listing them more or less as they occurred to me. So if you’re angry that "Gavel" is three spots ahead of "Upholstery Hammer", just pretend you pled your swear-filled case in the forum and I was like, yup, that makes a lot of sense, I’m reordering the list and I should probably go *crag* myself. So that I don’t ruin the surprise, I took that example from a list I made for a magazine about hammering things. Also, number one is number one. So if you’re mad about that, I can’t help you.

I love Serious Sam games, and this is a spectacular return to form for Croteam after the pretty lackluster Serious Sam II. I never get why people call Serious Sam "mindless". Other than once a year when I nominate myself for a million dollar MacArthur Genius Grant, I don’t consider myself a genius. So maybe I’m an idiot, but I’m thinking all the time when I play Serious Sam. About weapon selection, ammo supplies, enemy wave management. And I’m doing all of that thinking under serious time pressure as huge packs of monsters sprint towards me. You know what? Screw it. Serious Sam 3 is the thinking man’s first-person shooter.

It’s the best game of all time and it got re-released on the PSN store this year and so it qualifies for this list. Don’t like that? Maybe you should take it up with the International Criminal Court. Also, if it’s the best game ever, why isn’t it #1 on the list? Maybe you could ask the warden of International Criminal Jail, where you’re probably spending the rest of your life after lodging your earlier frivolous complaint that made the International Criminal Court so mad.

Other than last year’s amazing list of the Top 10 Hottest Female Sonic Characters, it’s been a long dry stretch for this franchise. But, man, Generations is the perfect blend of nostalgia and sensible updates. A great, great gamey game.

It’s on everybody’s list because holy crap it’s good. Supergiant crafted a game that feels totally complete, as if no corners were cut. It’s a really spectacular example of designing around the constraints of a small team. Great writing, acting, and a stirring soundtrack as well.

Technically, ZHP came out in late 2010, but bear with me here. For the first four months of this year, I spent a ton of time travelling all over the place promoting Portal 2. It was a tiring, lonely, and generally all around anxiety-producing experience. These two PSP games saw me through a lot of long plane flights, train rides, and hotel stays. NIS America is famous for publishing high-personality grind fests like the amazing Disgaea series, and these are both great examples of that tradition. For some reason, I can only play these types of games on portable systems, which is why the new Disgaea didn’t rank. Anyway, these two are inextricably linked in my head to the craziness surrounding the release of Portal 2, and so, bam, there you go. They’re on the list.

If this was a “Heroes of Game Writing” list, Driver: SF would be number one. It’s a game writer’s nightmare scenario: We need you to revive a basically dead franchise and also we need you to explain why the main character can suddenly fly and also he can possess people and also it still needs to be a serious police procedural and also you can’t get out of the car. The writers not only managed to deal with these constraints, they thrived under them. Driver’s writing is clever and funny while still taking its absurd core premise seriously enough to carry you through a ten hour story. Plus, the game is really fun. I expected nothing from Driver and was blown away.

Another tie! Only this time it’s because these two polished, excellent, accessible, funny rogue-likes have kind of fused in my memory. That means it’s possible one of them is carrying the other, but I’m pretty sure they were both great. Look, some of my fondest life memories are much, much hazier than the vague, pleasant impression of gathering loot and dying a lot that these games left me with.

If Valve ever cans me, I’m going to show up at Volition begging for a job, because Saints Row seems like it’d be a huge amount of fun to work on. Instead of coming up with a brand new description, I’m gonna repurpose something I wrote about GTA in 2005:

“When I was a kid, I was fascinated by a really detailed fake ad in National Lampoon for a ghetto train set. I was too young to realize that it was a joke, so every Christmas I'd beg my parents to buy it for me. Eventually, my parents went broke and we moved to a real ghetto. Time passed, and a bunch of stuff happened, like I got a job selling hot dogs and a chronic illness. Just when my life seemed to be winding down to its painful, embarrassing conclusion, Rockstar actually released the detailed ghetto train set of my childhood dreams. It was a Christmas miracle. The end.”

Anyway, that all applies quadruple to Saints Row: The Third. Volition made the smart choice to embrace the violent absurdity inherent to the open world, clockwork-city crime genre. And they didn’t just embrace it, they penetrated it with a giant purple dildo etc etc. For me, the biggest sin a game can commit is to be bland, and whatever else you might say about Saints Row, it’s not bland.

Number one. By a mile. I loved Demon’s Souls, and I love Dark Souls even more. It has a great, original sense of place, a spectacularly tense risk/reward structure, and the best melee combat of all time. No other game makes me feel like I’m actually smashing things with a 50-pound hammer. It also has a very scary giant bird and a uniquely weird vibe. It feels like anything could happen at any moment, and I love that feeling. One of my favorite games, period.

Special Achievement: Conduit 2

I didn’t actually play Conduit 2, but I did watch the incredible ending on youtube. If they follow through with the promise they make in that scene, Conduit 3 is my most anticipated game of the decade.

Psychonauts unexpectedly updated itself on Steam today, adding achievements and cloud saves. For our Macintosh brethren, there’s super-exciting news in that the game is now available on OSX, so you too can neglect to buy it. To ensure that your portable iDevices won’t be jealous when they see the mindscapes you’re traversing, Doublefine have also released a Memory Vault Viewer app, which has all the memory slides with new commentary by Tim Schafer and Scott Campbell. Along with the other Steamy updates, there’s also a difficulty tweak to one area of the game. Guess which one? I’ll tell you, but only if you click for more.

(more…)

Hey, remember Psychonauts? Double Fine does, as the company announced a slew of Psychonauts-related news today. Don't get too excited, though, as none of them involve a sequel or an HD update.

Instead, since getting its hands on the enritety of the Psychonauts IP, Double Fine has partnered with another studio to produce a Mac version of its quirky action platformer. The existing Steam version has also been tweaked to include cloud saves and Steam achievements.

The studio also claims to have crafted a "slightly modified" version of the not-so-beloved Meat Circus stage that closes out the game.

“We are really excited,” said the elusive double agent known as Tim Schafer in the press release, “to finally be answering fans’ requests for a more difficult Meat Circus.”

Lovely.

There's also a way to bring your love of Psychonauts on-the-go with the Psychonauts Vault Viewer, an iOS app featuring all of the game's Memory Vaults with some brand-new audio commentary.

Double Fine has always had the right to produce sequels to Psychonauts, but whenever you purchased a copy of the original game on Xbox Live or Steam, the money went to Majesco, who published the game. That's changed, according to a tweet from Double Fine programmer Anna Kipnis.

"Double Fine is now the sole publisher of Psychonauts!! If you buy it now (on Steam, for instance), the proceeds go to us!" said Kipnis.

Maybe Double Fine can start a Kickstarter to get that Psychonauts sequel off the ground!

I wouldn't mind a Beyond Good & Evil HD style update to the game, either.

Basically, just Psychonauts anything.

Yeah.