Psychonauts

Psychonauts is a platform game that incorporates various adventure elements. The player controls the main character Raz in a third-person, three-dimensional view, helping Raz to uncover a mystery at the Psychonauts training camp. Raz begins with basic movement abilities such as running and jumping, but as the game progresses, Razputin gains additional psychic powers such as telekinesis, levitation, invisibility, and pyrokinesis. These abilities allow the player to explore more of the camp as well as fight off enemies.

These powers can be awarded either by completing certain story missions, gaining PSI ranks during the game, or purchasing them with hidden arrowheads scattered around the camp. Powers can be improved — such as more damaging pyrokinesis or longer periods of invisibility — through gaining additional PSI ranks. The player can assign three of these powers to their controller or keyboard for quick use, but all earned powers are available at any time through a selection screen.

The story is set in the fictional Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, a remote US government training facility under the guise of a children's summer camp. Centuries ago, the area was hit by a meteor made of Psitanium (a fictional mineral that can grant psychic powers or strengthen existing powers), creating a huge crater. The Psitanium affected the local wildlife, giving them limited psychic powers, such as bears with the ability to attack with telekinetic claws, cougars with pyrokinesis, and rats with confusion gas. The Native Americans of the area called Psitanium "whispering rock", which they used to build arrowheads.

When settlers began inhabiting the region, the psychoactive properties of the meteor slowly drove them insane. An asylum named Thorny Towers Home of the Disturbed was built to house the afflicted, but within fifteen years, the asylum had more residents than the town did and the founder Houston Thorny committed suicide by throwing himself from the asylum's tower. The government relocated the remaining inhabitants and flooded the crater to prevent further settlement, creating what is now Lake Oblongata. The asylum still stands, but has fallen into disrepair.

Psychonauts was the debut title for Double Fine Productions, a development studio that Tim Schafer founded after leaving LucasArts, following their decision to exit the point-and-click adventure game market. Schafer's initial studio hires included several others that worked alongside him on Grim Fandango (1998). Super Mario 64 (1996) had introduced him to direct player character movement in a 3D space, along with Final Fantasy VII (1997) and The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (1998), which also prominently featured storytelling and puzzle-solving, like Schafer's previous works. He said, "I think that was the moment where I was like, 'I don't think I want to make a point-and-click adventure anymore.

I think I want to make a console game. I want to make a character-driven console game that is just really immediate and has more action, but, you know, still has a lot of narrative.'"

Psychonauts received positive reception, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. Schafer and Wolpaw's comedic writing was highly praised, as well as the uniqueness and quirks that the individual characters were given. Alex Navarro of GameSpot commented favorably on the "bizarre" cast of characters, their conversations that the player can overhear while exploring the camp, and how these conversations will change as the story progresses, eliminating repetition that is typical of such non-player characters in platform games. Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer found that he was incentivized to go back and explore or experiment in the game's level to find more of the comedic dialog that others had observed. The game was also noted for its innovations, such as the use of a second-person perspective during a boss battle.

The game's art and level design (in particular, the designs of the various mental worlds that Raz visits) were well-received. Jason Hill of the Sydney Morning Herald stated that each of the dream worlds "is a memorable journey through the bizarre inner psyche" of the associated character. Two particular levels have been considered iconic of the game's humor and style: the aforementioned Milkman Conspiracy, and Lungfishopolis, where Raz enters the mind of a lungfish monster that lives near camp; in the lungfish's mind Raz is portrayed as a giant monster akin to Godzilla that is attacking the tiny lungfish citizens of Lungfishopolis, effectively creating an absurd role reversal of the typical giant monster formula.

A sequel to Psychonauts has been of great interest to Schafer, as well as to fans of the game and the gaming press. Schafer had pitched the idea to publishers but most felt the game too strange to take up. During the Kickstarter campaign for Double Fine's Broken Age in February 2012, Schafer commented on the development costs of a sequel over social media, leading to a potential interest in backing by Markus Persson, at the time the owner of Mojang. Though Persson ultimately did not fund this, interactions between him and Double Fine revealed the possibility of several interested investors to help.

In mid-2015, Schafer along with other industry leaders launched Fig, a crowd-sourced platform for video games that included the option for accredited investors to invest in the offered campaigns. Later, at the 2015 Game Awards in December, Schafer announced their plans to work on Psychonauts 2, using Fig to raise the $3.3 million needed to complete the game, with an anticipated release in 2018. The campaign succeeded on January 6, 2016. The sequel was released on August 25, 2021 and sees the return of Richard Horvitz and Nikki Rapp as the voices of Raz and Lili respectively, along with Wolpaw for writing, Chan and Campbell for art, and McConnell for music.