Psychonauts 2. You know the game as one of 2021’s very best titles, and a game that was nominated for a bunch of Game Of The Year awards that very year, let alone winning many others across multiple different outlets. So considering that, it might come to you as a surprise that for a period of time during the game’s development that Tim Schafer, the genius Game Designer behind the original game, as well as Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Broken Age and more, was worried that the game was going to underwhelm players. So how did Tim come to think this way, and what changed things?
In a recent interview with NME, Schafer reflected on the development of Psychonauts 2 sharing that “Psychonauts 2 was such a long haul. So many things went wrong, just like the first game – we lost our publisher at one point. It was such a roller coaster, and at certain points, it really didn’t feel like it was going to be good.” Of course, there are factors that created such concern for Schafer. Psychonauts 2 explores themes of mental health quite heavily, whilst is still a comedy in some areas too, so it creates a tightrope to walk to be funny, to explore those themes, but also not offend anyone. “It was really important – because it’s a comedy – that people knew we weren’t making fun of people, but were looking humorously and lovingly at the human psyche,” Schafer said.
Of course, throughout the game’s development Double Fine was also acquired by Microsoft, and this variable proved to be exactly what Double Fine, a studio renowned for its independence years prior to acquisition was about. Microsoft was able to provide resources, which reportedly allowed Double Fine to create the game of the scope that they’d envisioned without cuts due to financial cost, while also remained actively hands-off on the project, allowing the creatives, and their vision to remain at the core of the project. Today, according to Schafer, Double Fine is only “limited only by our creativity” and that, “treating the team well, and making great games – really creative games – is what we stand for.”
At the end of the day though, those Microsoft dollars were important with Schafer saying “If we went out of business, the whole four years of working on Psychonauts would have been for nothing – that version of Psychonauts vanishing into the ether was really painful to think about,” with the thought of the team being left stranded feeling like a “kick in the teeth.” Thankfully, everything worked out pretty well for all parties. Meanwhile, Psychonauts 3 isn’t on the cards currently.
