Developer Double Fine announced a sequel to the much-loved 10-year old adventure-platformer Psychonauts at The Game Awards tonight. Set a little after the events of the first game, which was set in a summer camp that provided training for mind-invading acrobats, it will follow Raz’s continuing adventures through the minds of other people as a professional Psychonaut.
It’s going to be crowd-funded through Fig, a platform that lets pledgers actually become investors rather than just contributors, and Double Fine is looking for $US3.3 ($4) million from fans (a nod to how much Broken Age raised). The rest of the development budget will be contributed by Double Fine itself, and outside investors.
We spoke to Tim Schafer before the announcement to get some further facts. Here are the big ones:
- It is still in early pre-production.
- Psychonauts 2 will explore more of Raz’s backstory, including his family’s curse to always die in water, as well as more adventures through different minds.
- There’ll be some new psychic powers mixed in with the old ones.
- A lot of the old team is getting back together: Erik Wolpaw will help write it, Peter Chan will be doing more concept art, Peter McConnell is doing the music.
- Voice actors Richard Horvitz (Raz) and Nikki Rapp (Lily) will also be returning.
Have a look at the game’s crowdfunding page on Fig for more.
This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK, bringing you original reporting, game culture and humour with a U from the British isles.
Comments
40 responses to “Psychonauts 2 Announced, Will Be Crowd-Funded”
*flails arms*
DOFFF!
*Is knocked off the ledge by DC’s arms.*
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*CRASH!*
Psychonauts 2! – YAY!
Crowd Funding – Boo!
How quickly do people forget what happened with Double Fine’s previous crowd funded games.
What, that they got made? I haven’t forgotten.
Seriously, i wouldn’t even bother replying to a comment like that from a person with a handle like “shithead”
To be fair, Double Fine’s track record regarding crowd funding isn’t particularly inspiring
Yeah, that’s pretty much my feeling on it. I mean, they really struggled to get Broken Age made. I’m really surprised to see double fine back on the kickstarter wagon again.
And the farce that was SpaceBase DF9 was very upsetting as someone who paid good money and actually provided feedback on the early access (for a change)
That was early access not crowd funding – but I guess its kind like a different version of crowd funding, except you play the game straight away.
Never fucking forget that piece of shit. I’m still mad.
(I had actually forgotten, so now I’m mad again)
It’s interesting that they’re not actually going with Kickstarter this time. It’s a Fig project. I’m guessing that they got a _really_ good deal from Fig. Which is good, since it means more money will go to the game.
I thought Double Fine was part of the crew that put Fig together in the first place?
You are correct
Cool, thanks for the info. I hadn’t heard that before.
that said does he/she have a point? from what I remember last reading about the game it was released half finished then abandoned?
They released half a game to make extra money to finish the second half.
Just google “Spacebase DF-9”
Right I had forgotten about DF-9. Was the one I didn’t back. But both broken age and Massive chalice were crowdfunded and delivered.
You mentioned “games”, not “game”. Besides, Spacebase DF-9 was a Steam Early Access game. Not quite crowd funded, though it is kind of related, I suppose. Also, the game was released, and is playable, just lacking polish. Comes with source code. The community have already released patches for it.
But still, point taken. I shall be wary of Double Fine using Steam Early Access, because that system does not guarantee a minimum amount of funding, which can cause the developers to cut short dev time due to a lack of expected sales and the resultant shortfall in expected budget.
I shall also be wary of runaway sentences.
They stopped developing Spacebase because it wasn’t making enough money.
WHY WASN’T IT MAKING ENOUGH MONEY, DOUBLEFINE?
COULD IT BE BECAUSE… IT WAS UNFINISHED?
I really, I just – DoubleFine should not have money. Tim Schafer should not have money. Stop giving them money!
Nice solution. Let’s stop giving them money, because they didn’t get enough money from this Steam Early Access game.
Or, perhaps they just realised that there wasn’t enough interest in the game, and decided not to financially stunt their studio. Y’know, like, acting responsible for their employees and keeping the studio above water for the next game.
Remember that time they asked for $400,000 and received 8.25x that amount, then with that $3.3million released half a game and had to rely on early access to fund the rest of the game?
Remember how this is not a thing respectable companies do, because respectable companies know how to budget?
And can you really blame the game for not being a smash hit out of Early Access? How many people are interested in unfinished games vs games that are finished? With the amount of Early Access titles, there’s only going to be a few Arks or Day Zs or Rusts. 99% of the time it’s games nobody’s heard of selling a couple of copies a week if they’re lucky.
And don’t get me started on that stupid party they had followed by LAYOFFS…
You’re right that Double Fine didn’t really understand the dynamics of early access and continuous funding. Plus, they didn’t communicate with their user base properly. If they had, the players may have been able to drum up more support. Double Fine certainly made mistakes on this project.
You could argue that if they had kept up development, and not rushed the release, the game may have succeeded. But, then again, it may not have. They couldn’t take that chance. As it was, they funded development for a month after early access money ran out. They couldn’t afford any more.
Perhaps they should have farmed the game out to Indian developers. That would have reduced costs.
@deek
I can agree with that.
Don’t mind me too much. Spacebase is a particularly sour spot for me. I really enjoyed Theme Hospital, and a similar game set in space would have just been the bee’s knees for me, so it really gets to me that they would cut it down before it even had a chance.
I still think they’re being a bit disingenuous with this Kickstarter thing. There are a lot of little things that concern me, and I wouldn’t want people to get hurt AGAIN by that man and his company.
That investor tier is basically a scam, too.
What was the problem with them? DFA had a blow out in dev time but that was all part of the adventure. They have delivered what they promised, if a little later than ideal
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*Deep Breath*
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What that man said. Nice profile pic, btw. 😉
3.3 million dollars is far too much for a Psychonauts sequel
I have already thrown my wallet at the internet with great force
You broke your monitor didn’t you.
…I’m in the low 700s of backer number
Brutal Legend 2 plz.
Please god yes!
This I want – but I doubt it will get made. Not sure it did that well unfortunately – I think what let it down the was the RTS style battles in the game – or whatever they were.
I’d love a Brutal Legend 2 as well. What an awesome world it was! You could tell that the environment was designed with plenty of passion from the team.
The games mix of RTS and FPS/Brawler was really interesting, but needed more work. It just felt incomplete, which is a shame, because I think it could be a really fun way to mix the genres. As it was, it ended up being groundbreakingly half-hearted.
Ah shit. I scrolled too far down the front page.
Guess the good news is more Peter McConnell?
James from Funhaus will be happy!
Never finished the first one. Was good, though.
Given Tims track record with crowed funding (Space Base DF9), I am not very happy with this….
It’s happening! It’s actually happening!