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Psychonauts is a platform game developed by Double Fine Productions and released on April 19, 2005 for the Microsoft Xbox, the Sony PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Windows. It was the first game from Double Fine Productions, a company founded in July 2000 by Tim Schafer, well known for his previous work on graphical adventure games at LucasArts.
Plot
In Psychonauts, the player controls Raz (short for Razputin), a mysterious new arrival at a cadet training camp for Psychonauts – elite special agents who are deployed to gather information by using psychic powers to enter people's minds. After arriving, Raz discovers that someone is abducting cadets from the camp with the purpose of stealing their brains. He must discover who is behind this sinister plot and stand against this evil.
Gameplay
Psychonauts combines traditional console platformer elements with the kind of strong storytelling, humour and dialogue found in adventure games. The game features ten levels, each of which let the player enter a different person's mind. Each of these levels therefore has its own unique visual design and set of challenges, related to the demons, nightmares and secret memories of the mind that Raz is exploring. Three other levels are set within the real world, making a total of thirteen levels. As the player progresses through the game, Raz acquires new psychic powers, including telekinesis, invisibility, pyrokinesis, clairvoyance, and confusion. These are directly involved in the puzzle-solving aspects of the game, which tailor to the player's own playing strengths. The game's refreshing, seemingly kid-friendly style evolves into levels that seem more suited to teens. One level has you going into the mind of an insane conspiracy theorist and another has you in an insane asylum.
Development history
Tim Schafer's team was partly comprised of several people he worked with on Grim Fandango at LucasArts. Amongst the art design crew was background artist Peter Chan and cartoonist Scott Campbell. Voice actor Richard Steven Horvitz, best known for his portrayal of Zim in the animated television series Invader Zim, provides the voice of Raz, the game's protagonist.
Originally, Psychonauts was to be published by Microsoft for release exclusively on their Xbox console, but in March 2004, Microsoft pulled out of this deal. It emerged in August 2004 that Double Fine had negotiated a new publishing deal with Majesco to release the game on Windows as well as the Xbox. Tim Schafer was quoted as saying "Together we are going to make what could conservatively be called the greatest game of all time ever, and I think that's awesome." In October 2004, it was revealed that Psychonauts would be released on yet another platform, the PlayStation 2, ported by Budcat Creations. The final US release date for the game on Xbox and Windows was April 19, 2005, with the PlayStation 2 port following on June 21, 2005.
Despite the game's critical success, game's sales have been somewhat lackluster. The disappointing figures for both Psychonauts and Advent Rising contributed to the variety of financial troubles plaguing Majesco; in July 2005, the publisher revised its fiscal year projections from a net profit of $18 million to a net loss of $18 million. In light of this announcement, Majesco's stock price tumbled drastically and its CEO, Carl Yankowski, announced his immediate resignation.
Characters
A Psychonauts screenshot featuring Raz.
Raz is one of many children attending this "psychic camp for the paranormally gifted." Below is a list of his fellow bunkmates.
- Bobby Zilch: Bobby is the Camp Bully who happens to be particularly mean to Raz. He is convinced that the entire camp is "below" him, and he has a little sicophant named Benny.
- Clem: Clem is an eerily enthusiastic cadet who is close friends with Crystal. Both seem very happy on the outside, and see all other campmates as football players (explained by clairvoyance). However, when Raz turns his back, the two begin mixing poisons, pointing toward a cult-like suicide.
- Crystal: Crystal is an eerily enthusiastic cadet who is close friends with Clem. Both seem very happy on the outside, and see all other campmates as football players (explained by clairvoyance). However, when Raz turns his back, the two begin mixing poisons, pointing toward a cult-like suicide.
- Dogen Boole: Dogen is a short friend of Raz who has incredible psychic powers. In fact, his powers are so advanced he must wear a protective hat, enabling him to only telepathically communicate with squirrels, who happen to be giving Dogen sadistic ideas.
- Maloof: Maloof is a short child who has always been the prey of bullies Bobby and Benny. Roughly halfway through the game, Maloof befriends russian cadet Mikhail, who defends Maloof from then on out, giving the bullies his famous "Half-Deadly Nelson".
- Mikhail: A russian immigrant with a funny hat, Mikhail is very worried about a "Giant... Hairless... Bear" lurking through the woods. This happens to come up in conversation every time Mikhail is included in a scene.
- Milka: Milka is a cadet who is extremely gifted in the art of invisibility. She happens to have a relationship with Elton.
- Nils: A boy with the appearance of a child's doll, Nils is convinced he is the perfect ladies man, and always finds a way to relate a situation to women.
Trivia
- While the PlayStation 2 port contains the same content as the Xbox and Windows versions, it suffers from minor bugs not reported in either of the others, such as a tendency to freeze, to glitch during animations, and for music to get caught in a loop. The glitch becomes infinitely more annoying when powers sometimes freeze, or have strange adverse effects (for example: Levitation cannot be halted and acts just like walking).
- Examining the stumps used as part of a system for travelling around the campsite gives a reference to a joke used in The Secret of Monkey Island, a game Tim Schafer also worked on.
- Erik Wolpaw, one of the original Old Man Murray team, worked as a writer on Psychonauts contributing story and dialog.
- The term "psychonaut" can refer to a user of psychoactive drugs.
External links
Reviews
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