Psychonauts 2!

29% funded already. I suppose I should put my money where my mouth is after all these years of asking for a P2, but damn if Broken Age wasn’t the opposite of compelling to me. Argh.

As a 2018 game, this could come out at the tail end of the XB1/PS4 generation. Who am I kidding, they might as well annouce that it’s been delayed already.

I will probably buy this when it comes out, if it’s good, because I am a crazy maverick who plays by his own rules.

I guess I’d be happy if the first half of Psychonauts 2 is as good as the first half of Broken Age, and on past performance I won’t finish the game anyway.

They talk about this, there are four funding sources, the FIG campaign to get the game with its $3.3M goal, the FIG Investor campaign, Double Fine funds, and money from an unnamed publisher.

Majesco!

I’m thinking Notch. Didn’t he try to fund Psychonauts 2 on his own a while back?

Apparently Double Fine had such a large group of people who spend a lot of time posting comments about how much they hate them, holy cow. Did you know Tim Schafer once called Bobby Kotick a dick? Just thought I’d join in with the 10,000 other people repeating it in every Psychnauts 2 news story comment feed. WTF?

The man aint wrong.

I know some people have a bone to pick with Double Fine. I get it. I was a backer for Broken Age too. I saw what happened to Spacebase DF-9.

But Massive Chalice, Brutal Legend, Psychonauts, all these override any negative. For the flaws of Broken Age, it did get made, and the documentary vids were part of why I backed. I got my value from that. Psychnauts is amazing in many ways. I would love to see more of that universe.

So while I do share some of the reservations about Tim Schafer as a project manager, as a designer and writer I hold him in esteem like few others in the industry. Backing is certainly a risk, but there is no chance I would skip doing so. This is a game I want to exist, and a game I would play no matter what if released.

Broken Age was my favorite Kickstarter I’ve contributed to. The documentary alone was worth the $30 I paid, but I really loved the game too.

Look through the site and watch the video and they’re clear that their proposed budget for Psychonauts 2 is around $13 million. Fig backers/investors are just a fraction of the total they have lined up.

Ok.

I’ve not played the first Psychonauts, although I’ve got it on steam.

I backed Double Fine Advenutre at the basic level way back. I’ve yet to play Broken Age Act 2 due to, well, actually playing all these video games I pay money for takes effort.

Anyone who backed DFA and consider it a failed kickstarter clearly did not pay attention to the project video announcing how the 2PP documentary could possibly chronicle a spectacular failure. I got way more entertainment from the 20 episode DFA-documentary than from games that cost me a lot more than $15.

I’m in for Psyconauts 2 at $69.

Just got a backer update email, and apparently in addition to Psychonauts 2 (!!!) the folks at Double Fine are also working on a side Psychonauts project called Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin, to be released next year as a PS4 VR game. I think it sounds interesting but as someone who does not own a PS4, I’m slightly bummed that I will be missing out on this experience. Hopefully I can live vicariously through a Let’s Play of this someday, if VR Let’s Plays are a thing that can happen.

Ah Meat Circus. That was also the point I (rage)quit the game. I thought they sort of fixed it in the digital re-release.

Yes, but a) I had a physical copy, and b) apparently the bit they fixed isn’t the bit I was having the most trouble with.

There were definitely some tricky parts on that level (the hardest being some ring of fire that you had to ascend/descend through I believe), but I was eventually able to beat it. For the most part I loved Psychonauts, but I have no interest in funding game development at this point, so I’ll just hope that it does get made, and made competently. I wonder if it will take place in the same time frame or if Raz and the gang will be older.

So, what’s the difference between Fig and Kickstarter? If you go for a reward tier, are you an investor, or are those separate?

No. Fig and Kickstarter are essentially the same thing for ordinary contributors. But on Fig, you have the opportunity to invest a minimum of $500 to potentially get a return on that investment.

Based on these comments seems like DoubleFine make better documentaries than games. Maybe they should move into the film business?

-Todd

They aren’t the ones making the documentaries. That’s Two Player Productions. But also I would heartily disagree with that sentiment. DoubleFine still make some of my favorite videogames, full stop, and get way more creative with them than a lot of studios.

It just means that the people who couldn’t beat the Meat Circus have taken over the conversation ages ago, and those who manned up and beat it half a dozen times have decided that it isn’t worth it to keep arguing.

And the game isn’t just the Meat Circus. There’s a reason people want Psychonauts 2. The Milkman and Goggalor are two of the finest levels ever created in a video game.

Meat Circus is just one entry in a tradition of unnecessarily hard or frustrating final levels in otherwise wonderful games (Doom 2, Half-life, Vampire: TM - Bloodlines, God of War, Bioshock, Alpha Protocol).