Psychonauts is a platform video game created by Tim Schafer and starring the voice of Richard Horvitz as Raz. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, Xbox and PlayStation 2. It was released on Steam on October 11, 2006, as an Xbox Original through Xbox Live Marketplace, and on the GameTap subscription service. On November 5, 2009, Psychonauts became available through the online distribution service GOG.com through their partnership with Majesco. In September 2011, an OS X port was released, with a Linux port released through the Humble Indie Bundle V on May 2012. The PlayStation 2 version was re-released on PlayStation Network on August 28, 2012.
Psychonauts is based on the character Raz, a young boy gifted with psychic abilities who runs away from the circus to try to sneak into a summer camp for those with similar powers in order to become a "Psychonaut", a spy with psychic abilities. He finds that there is a sinister plot occurring at the camp that only he can stop. The game is centered on the strange and imaginative minds of various characters that Raz enters as a Psychonaut-in-training/"Psycadet" in order to help them overcome their fears or memories of their past, so as to gain their help and progress in the game. Raz gains use of several psychic abilities during the game that are used for both attacking foes and solving puzzles.
The game received critical acclaim and several accolades, but suffered from poor sales, and the publisher Majesco suffered financial difficulties relating to Psychonauts and other titles in its catalogue. The game has since gained a cult following.
Gameplay
Psychonauts combines traditional console platformer elements with the kind of strong storytelling, humor and dialogue found in adventure games. The camp itself is fully explorable by the player to find hidden arrowheads that can be used to purchase items at the camp store and psi cards that help to improve Raz's Psi Ranking, to talk to other campers and camp advisers, and to make way to the various "levels" within the game. There are also areas in the "real world" of the camp, including a nearby insane asylum, that the player will explore during the course of the game. Throughout these areas are characters whose minds Raz can enter, either through their own actions, or by use of a small door that Raz uses on the character's forehead. Each of these character levels 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; for example, within the mind of the lungfish that terrorizes the camp lake, Raz is seen as a giant monster attacking a city filled with lungfish beings (in a level designed to parody most elements of the kaijū genre), while within the mind of Boyd, the insane security guard at the asylum, Raz finds a town, twisted and askew, with cameras and eyes hidden everywhere, which tune in with Boyd's paranoia. Within the mind levels, the player can collect various "figments of imagination" which can also lead to increasing Raz's Psi Ranking, locate tags to match with various "emotional baggage" within the level to advance ranks and unlock concept art and destroy "mental vaults" to unlock a slideshow that helps to explain the background of that character and his or her mental problem. The player must also avoid taking damage from censors that attempt to remove Raz from the character's mind. Each mind level typically ends with a boss fight that represents the main cause of the character's mental problems.
Raz gains new psychic powers through the game either through instruction by the camp counselors or by increasing his Psi Ranking. These powers include telekinesis, levitation, invisibility, pyrokinesis, clairvoyance, Psi Shield, Psi Blast, and confusion. Additional Rankings increase the range, duration or potency of these abilities. These powers are directly involved in the puzzle-solving aspects of the game, as well as being used to defeat foes within the game, and allow the player to tailor the solutions to his or her own playing strengths. The player also gains items that can be used for solving puzzles, to escape from a mind level if they become stuck, or to get advice for solving some of the puzzles. Raz can also communicate with an older member of the Psychonauts for hints. However, due to a curse placed upon his family, he is unable to touch water and will die if he comes into contact with it too much.
Plot
Setting
The story is set in fictional Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, a remote US government training facility under the guise of a children's summer camp. The area was hit centuries ago by a meteor made of psitanium (a fictional element 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 and cougars with pyrokinesis. 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 was built to house the afflicted, but within fifteen years, the asylum had more residents than the town did. 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.
The government took advantage of the psitanium deposit to set up a training camp for Psychonauts, a group of agents gifted with psychic abilities used to help defeat evil-doers. The training ground is disguised as a summer camp for young children, but in reality helps the children to hone their abilities and to train them to be Psychonauts themselves. Due to this, only those recruited by the Psychonauts are allowed into the camp.
Characters
The protagonist and playable character of the game is Razputin "Raz" Aquato, the son of a family of circus performers, who runs away from the circus to become a Psychonaut, despite his father's wishes. His family is cursed to die in water, and a large hand attempts to submerge Raz whenever he approaches any significantly deep water. When at camp, Raz meets four of the Psychonauts that run the camp: the cool and calculating Sasha Nein (voice actor Stephen Stanton), the fun-loving Milla Vodello, the regimental Agent/Coach Morceau Oleander, and the aged, Mark Twainesque Ford Cruller, said by Raz to have been the greatest leader the Psychonauts ever had, until a past psychic duel shattered Ford's psyche and left him with numerous quirky personalities and no memory of his real self (which explains why he is seen throughout the camp as a cook, ranger, admiral, etc.). Only when he is near the large concentration of Psitanium does his psyche come together enough to form his real personality. During his time at camp, Raz meets several of the other gifted children including Lili Zanotto, the daughter of the Grand Head of the Psychonauts, with whom he falls in love; and Dogen Boole, a boy who goes around with a tin foil hat to prevent his abilities from causing anyone's head to explode. Raz also meets ex-residents of the insane asylum including ex-dentist Dr. Loboto, as well as Fred Bonaparte, an asylum inmate with dissociative identity disorder, also known as a split personality, and Linda, the gigantic lung fish that transports him from the camp's shore to the asylum.
Story
Raz, having fled from the circus, tries to sneak into Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, but is caught by the Psychonauts agents. Though they contact his parents so that they may recover Raz, they allow Raz to stay at camp, though they do not allow him to participate in the camp activities. However, they recognize that Raz has strong psychic abilities. After Coach Oleander allows Raz to participate in "Basic Braining," Sasha, impressed by his performance, invites Raz to test how strong his abilities are. While exploring his own mind, Raz comes across a vision of Dr. Loboto attempting to pull Dogen's brain from his head, claiming that it is a "bad tooth". Raz is unable to overcome a mental barrier to see more. When Raz returns to the real world, he finds that Dogen's brain has gone missing; the Agents pass it off as part of Dogen's personality. With Milla's training, Raz is able to overcome the mental barrier in his mind to learn that Dr. Loboto is working with Coach Oleander to extract the brains of the children and put them in psychic death tanks. Raz learns that Sasha and Milla have gone away from camp on "official business" (really a trap set by Oleander,) Coach Oleander is nowhere to be found, and learns that Lili has been chosen as the next victim, taken to the insane asylum for the process. Raz consults with Ford, who is unable to leave the camp but gives Raz a piece of bacon which he can use to contact Ford at any time.
Raz, after freeing the mutated lungfish, Linda, from Oleander's control, crosses the lake, and encounters the few remaining residents of the insane asylum. After Raz helps to resolve their mental issues, the residents help Raz to reach Dr. Loboto's laboratory at the top of the asylum. He finds that Oleander and Doctor Loboto have taken Lili, Sasha, and Milla prisoner. Raz is able to free them, where they turn to fight Oleander (Dr. Loboto having fallen from the top of the asylum.) As they fight, the insane asylum is burned down, and while the others are rendered unconscious, Oleander transfers his mind to one of the death tanks and attacks Raz. Raz defeats the tank, but upon his success, super sneezing powder is ejected from the tank (a last resort of Oleander's.) The powder causes Raz to sneeze his brain out. Raz, without much choice, moves his brain into the tank, where his psyche merges with Oleander's.
Raz finds himself in a mental world ("The Meat Circus") that combines his own fears of his father and the circus with Oleander's childhood fears of his father, a butcher. Raz escorts "Little Oly," the child version of Oleander, safely through the world, and is able to defeat the gruesome visions of his and Oly's fathers. Raz's real father then shows up in Raz's mind, telling him that he is also a powerful psychic. After seeing Raz's mental image of him he tells Raz that he did not discourage Raz from being a psychic because he disapproved, but to protect him, and then easily defeats his mental duplicate. However, because Raz and Oly's minds are still melded together, the two visions combine into a powerful amalgam of their fathers that can only be defeated by Raz and his real father's combined powers. Raz and Oleander's brains then separate and are restored to their bodies. As the rest of the children's brains are restored, Raz is congratulated for his outstanding work, and is allowed to become a Psychonaut by both the agents and his father. As he is leaving camp, news arrives that the Grand Head of the Psychonautsâ€"Lili's father, Truman Zanottoâ€"has been kidnapped. Raz and his fellow Psychonauts (along with Lili) fly off to rescue him, leaving the game on a cliffhanger.
Development
The back-story for Psychonauts was originally conceived during the development of Full Throttle, where Tim Schafer envisioned a sequence where the protagonist Ben Throttle goes under a peyote-induced psychedelic experience. While this was eventually ejected from the original game (for not being family friendly enough), Schafer kept the idea and eventually developed it into Psychonauts. While still working at LucasArts, Tim Schafer decided to use the name "Raz" for a main character because he liked the nickname of the LucasArts animator, Razmig "Raz" Mavlian. When Mavlian joined Double Fine, there was increased confusion between the character and the animator. The game's associate producer, Camilla Fossen, suggested the name "Rasputin". Then Double Fine's lawyer suggested "Razputin" instead, so Double Fine could file a trademark.
Schafer's team was partly made up of several people he worked with on Grim Fandango at LucasArts. The art design crew included background artist Peter Chan and cartoonist Scott Campbell. Voice actor Richard Steven Horvitz, best known for his portrayal of Zim in the cult favorite animated series Invader Zim, provides the voice of Raz, the game's protagonist. Raz was originally conceived as an ostrich suffering from mental imbalance and multiple personalities. Tim Schafer killed the idea because he strongly believes in games being "wish fulfillments," guessing that not many people fantasize about being an insane ostrich.
Originally, Psychonauts was to be published by Microsoft for release exclusively on their Xbox console; Schafer attributes this to Microsoft's Ed Fries, who at the time of Psychonauts '​s initial development in 2001, was looking to develop a portfolio of games for the new console system. Schafer believes that Fries was a proponent of "pushing games as art", which helped to solidify Double Fine's concept of Psychonauts as an appropriate title for the console after the team's collected experience of developing for personal computers. After Fries' departure from Microsoft in 2004, the company soon pulled the publishing deal for Psychonauts. By August 2004, 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 U.S. release date for the game on Xbox and Windows was April 19, 2005, with the PlayStation 2 port following on June 21, 2005. Psychonauts was re-released via Valve Corporation's Steam content delivery system on October 11, 2006.
The budget for Psychonauts was approximately $13 million, according to Schafer.
In June 2011, the original publishing deal with Majesco expired, and full publication rights for the game reverted to Double Fine. In September 2011, Double Fine released an updated version for Microsoft Windows and a port to Mac OS X through Steam. The new version provided support for Steam features including achievements and cloud saving. The Mac OS X port was developed in partnership with Dracogen Strategic Investments. In conjunction with this release, an iOS application, Psychonauts Vault Viewer, was released at the same time, featuring the memory vaults from the game with commentary by Tim Schafer and Scott Campbell.
Although initially unplayable on the Xbox 360, Tim Schafer spearheaded a successful e-mail campaign by fans which led to Psychonauts being added to the Xbox 360 backwards compatible list on December 12, 2006, and on December 4, 2007, Microsoft made Psychonauts one of the initial launch titles made available for direct download on the Xbox 360 through their Xbox Originals program.
As part of a deal with Nordic Games, who gained the rights to Costume Quest and Stacking after THQ's bankruptcy, Double Fine will take over publishing rights for both games, while Nordic will help to publish and distribute retail copies of Psychonauts and these two games for Windows and Mac OS X systems in early 2014.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack was composed by Peter McConnell, famous for his other works associated with LucasArts, such as Grim Fandango. A soundtrack featuring all the music was released in 2005.
There was another soundtrack featuring music from the cutscenes as well as a remix of the main theme and credits.
Reception
Psychonauts received critical acclaim. Aggregating review websites GameRankings and Metacritic gave the Xbox version 90.21% and 88/100, the PC version 88.14% and 87/100 and the PlayStation 2 version 86.76% and 86/100.
GameSpot gave the game an 8.4/10, stating that "The whole look of the game feels like the unholy love child of Tim Burton and a Pixar animation team, and it's just wonderful stuff... anyone looking for a fun and whimsical adventure with a brilliant presentation and a fantastic story will find just that in Psychonauts."
GameSpy gave the game 4.5 out of 5 stars, stating that "It's one of the best platformers the system has seen, mostly thanks to its amazing visuals and downright hilarious dialogue."
IGN gave the game an 8.7/10, stating that "The first half of this game is easily one of the most enjoyable I've had in the past year", though also said "as is the case with many humorous games, the laughs begin to fade in the home stretch and in the end Psychonauts started to wear on me."
The Sydney Morning Herald gave the game 4.5 out of 5, stating that "A wildly imaginative, frequently hilarious and hugely entertaining platforming romp through the subconscious."
GamingOnLinux reviewer Hamish Paul Wilson gave the game 8/10, praising the game's creativity and presentation but also criticizing some gameplay elements and the over presence of bugs, concluding that "Psychonauts has to be viewed as a flawed masterpiece".
In 2010, the game was included as one of the titles in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die.
Awards
- E3 2005 Game Critics Awards: Best Original Game
- GameSpot Best and Worst of 2005: Best Voice Acting, Best Graphics (Artistic), Funniest Game, Best Game No One Played, Best Platformer. Nominated for Best Story and Best Original Music. Razputin was nominated for Best New Character.
- IGN 2005 Awards: Best Platformer, Best Game No One Played
- Razputin was placed #2 on the Game Informer "Top 10 Heroes of 2005" list, as well as #22 on the "Top 30 Characters Who Defined a Decade" list in the December 2010 issue.
- EuroGamer: Overall Game of the Year 2005
- PSM: Buy or Die award in issue #100, #5 on Top 10 Games of 2005 list, Best Characters
- Electronic Gaming Monthly 2005 Awards: Best Game No One Played
- PC PowerPlay: First full 10/10 score after the magazine's switch from the 100-point scoring system to its current 10-point scoring system
- PC Gamer magazine 2005 Awards: Best Game You Didn't Play, Editor's Choice Award
- GameShadow Innovation in Games Awards nominee (Best Game, Innovative Visual Effects, Best Narrative)
- G4's X-Play deemed Psychonauts the funniest game ever in their "Funniest @#%& Ever" episode and was voted #6 in the top ten games on the Xbox in the "Best of the Xbox" episode. Psychonauts later came 79th in G4s "greatest games of all time"
- British Academy Video Games Awards 2006: Best Screenplay
- Games magazine: 2006 Electronic Game of the Year
- 6th annual Game Developers Choice Awards: Best Writing, with Tim Schafer and Erik Wolpaw accepting
Sales
Despite Psychonauts earning high critical praise and a number of awards, it was a commercial failure upon its initial release. Although the game was first cited as the primary contributing factor to a strong quarter immediately following its launch, a month later Majesco revised their fiscal year projections from a net profit of $18 million to a net loss of $18 million, and at the same time its CEO, Carl Yankowski, announced his immediate resignation. By the end of the year, the title had shipped fewer than 100,000 copies, and Majesco announced its plans to withdraw from the "big budget console game marketplace". However, this figure predated the game's European release, its release on Steam, and its inclusion on the Xbox 360's backward-compatible list.
According to Schafer, as of March 6, 2012 the retail version Psychonauts had sold 400,000 copies. The game is still available via digital distribution services such as Steam and GOG.com. On December 4, 2007, the game was among the first games to be added to the "Xbox Originals" line of the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Marketplace, and remains as one of only a small number of titles released for that line.
In August 2011, Psychonauts was removed from Xbox Live Marketplace as Majesco no longer held the publishing rights to the game. As Microsoft does not allow unpublished content on the Marketplace it was removed. Tim Schafer stated, in an online post, "We are working with Microsoft right now to get it re-propped to the system but there is a lot of red tape to melt with our minds." It returned to the Xbox Live Marketplace on February 24, 2012, with Microsoft Studios as the publisher.
On May 31, 2012, Psychonauts was announced as a part of Humble Indie Bundle V. Schafer, commenting in a Reddit "Ask me Anything" panel with other developers of games in the Bundle, stated that sales of Psychonauts exceeded past sales of the game within the "first few hours" of the Bundle going live. Schafer further said in a late 2012 statement that, considering avenues such as Steam, "We made more on Psychonauts this year than we ever have before", later clarifying that this was due to being in control of the game's publishing compared to its initial release.
Legacy
Although Tim Schafer has repeatedly expressed interest in working on the Psychonauts franchise again in the future, as of August 2013, no sequel is in development. The development of the sequel would require a publisher that was interested in the game. Schafer believes that widespread, inexpensive distribution of Psychonauts through both legitimate means such as digital distribution and illegitimate means of software piracy indicates that there would be a large market for the game's sequel. In 2010, UGO ranked Psychonauts third on its list of games that need sequels. After Double Fine's release of several smaller, self-published games such as Costume Quest and Iron Brigade, developed by separate teams within the company, Schafer also felt more comfortable about a sequel, as they were now in a place to develop multiple projects at the same time.
On February 7, 2012, Markus Persson, the owner of Mojang, made a public offer to fund a sequel to Schafer through Twitter. Later that day, a company representative for Double Fine stated that Persson and Schafer were discussing the possibility, without further affirmation. Persson noted that the anticipated costs that Double Fine would need would be an estimated $18 million, far exceeding what was initially expected to fund and cautioned fans to avoid hyping the funding possibility. Persson and Schafer met at the Game Developers Conference in March 2012; however, no definitive plans were made for funding a sequel. In February 2013, Persson officially stated that he is no longer directly trying to fund the sequel, commenting that he doesn't "have the time at the moment to even try to get educated enough to make an 18 million dollar deal", though would be open to the idea at a later time after he left game development; Persson did note other potential investors have stepped forward to help any such effort.
Appearances in other games
Raz appears as a downloadable character in Bit.Trip Presents Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien.
In Tim Schafer's Brütal Legend, a Raz head is selectable for a massive Mount Rushmore-like mountain sculpture.
The skeletal remains of Raz are featured as an Easter Egg in Alice: Madness Returns.
A figment from Psychonauts appears as an easter egg in The Void by Ice-pick Lodge.
An outline of Raz can be found on the ground in the Queen Venessa level of A Hat in Time while wearing the fox mask.
In Double Fine's Costume Quest 2 an inanimate plywood depiction of Raz appears with other plywood children in a recreation of a neighborhood on Halloween.
References
External links
- Official Psychonauts website
- Psychonauts at MobyGames
