Psychonauts - Spaff
Unpack your emotional baggage and prepare to battle your mental demons, the very first trailer for Psychonauts 2 premiered at The Game Awards this week!



You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RClJ_DAotaA&feature=youtu.be

If you know anyone who has yet to play the original, now is the perfect opportunity - we've discounted Psychonauts 1 by 90% for the weekend! Enjoy! :)




Costume Quest

As you might recall, last year brought the news that Costume Quest, developer Double Fine's delightful trick-or-treaty Halloween RPG, was to be turned into an animated TV series. That's still a thing that's happening - and if you need further proof, it now has an opening title sequence!

Costume Quest's TV adaptation is the work of Frederator Studios (also responsible for Adventure Time and Netflix's Castlevania), and is scheduled to air on Amazon Video next year.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn't sound like the show will doggedly adhere to the (very slight) stories told in Double Fine's original Costume Quest or its 2014 sequel, but the fundamentals are more or less the same. According to Cartoon Hangover, the TV series "stars four kids facing off against the dark forces lurking in the shadows of their sleepy town of Auburn Hollow."

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Psychonauts - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Jordan Oloman)

Memory is a funny old thing. Our brains are like faulty cameras, letting us unconsciously suppress moments of our lives and swap them out for brighter, more palatable realities. When we re reminded of these small time capsules, the serene environments we were in and the people we were with, we often feel an endorphin rush and a lurid longing for something that isn t there anymore. Plenty of games toy with the fascinating concept of memory, but it s often very black and white. An amnesiac character to serve a twist, for example, usually employed in the final act to give a narrative some shocking gusto. The trope gets a bit stale once you ve seen enough of it.

Double Fine s 2005 debut Psychonauts doesn t settle for that. The platforming adventure follows protagonist Razputin Aquato as he ventures into the troubled minds of his peers. He explores the unique landscapes of their grey matter and remedies their mental health issues in order to unravel a complex conspiracy. It s wonderfully strange but ultimately thoughtful, as per Tim Schafer s usual MO. Hidden it its eight levels are unique collectables called Memory Vaults, sentient safes that run in circles to avoid you. Once subdued, they give up a stereoscope Viewmaster reel with a beautiful hand-drawn story from the memories of the person whose mind you re exploring. (more…)

Psychonauts

Twitch has revealed the line-up of games that Twitch Prime members will receive as part of their subscription in May, including Psychonauts and Gone Home.

Neither of those headliners likely need much introduction but, as a refresher, Psychonauts is Double Fine's inimitable brain-probing 3D action platformer - a classic that still hasn't lost its power to amuse and delight, some 13 years after it first released.

Gone Home, meanwhile, is developer Fullbright's fiercely atmospheric, but unquestionably divisive, exploration of family life and family strife - as told in walking simulator form. That one didn't resonate with Eurogamer editor Oli Welsh back in 2013 as much as it did for others.

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Psychonauts - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

Sure, you’ve jacked into someone’s mind to wander through their memories, but have you jacked into someone’s mind while jacked into cyberspace? You can now do just that in Psychonauts In The Rhombus Of Ruin. Double Fine’s VR spin-off from peachy physic platformer Psychonauts arrived on PC last night, supporting Rift and Vive cybergoggles, following its debut on PlayStation VR in February 2017. It’s set right after Psychonauts, bridging the gap to the upcoming full sequel Psychonauts 2, and looks a little something like this: (more…)

Psychonauts


Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin, the PlayStation VR-exclusive new chapter of Double Fine's adventure game series, is now available for other virtual reality devices.

Launched for PSVR in February 2017, Rhombus of Ruin is now available for PC to play on Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

A sort-of sequel to the original Psychonauts, Rhombus of Ruin can also be played as a standalone story. It's a decent return for the series, though, before the launch of the full Psychonauts 2 for PC and consoles - expected sometime next year.

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Psychonauts

Tim Schafer will receive this year's prestigious BAFTA Fellowship prize, following in the footsteps of John Carmack, Gabe Newell and Shigeru Miyamoto.

The Monkey Island writer/programmer and Double Fine founder will pick up his gong at 2018's British Academy Games Awards, held this year on Thursday, 12th April.

"I am surprised, humbled, and honored to be receiving the BAFTA Fellowship this year," Schafer said. "BAFTA's long-standing support of video games and championing of creativity and strong storytelling in that medium have had an extremely positive impact and I'm very grateful to be recognised."

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Psychonauts

The Humble Store is holding a huge Double Fine sale today. The sale runs through 10 a.m. Pacific (1 p.m. Eastern) tomorrow, Thursday, January 25, and includes games that the studio both developed and published. You can find all the games in question by searching for Double Fine in the store, or by following this link. Here are some of the best games and discounts available:  

Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info. 

Psychonauts

It was a year ago, almost to the day, that Double Fine showed off some Psychonauts 2 "prototype gameplay" in a recreated version of the original game's summer camp. The elements on display "looked nice but weren’t designed to be part of the full game," the studio explained in a Fig update. "They were simple spaces that didn’t incorporate any of the tricky platforming and open exploration we want to be be central to Psychonauts 2." The new video released today, however, is much closer to what the final game will deliver. 

"The 'First Playable' is an area of the game that we’ve built to test our new pipelines and workflows across all departments—art, animation, tech, design, cinematics, etc," Double Fine wrote. "We’ve tested all of this a lot during pre-production, but this is our first big attempt to create a fully arted up, fully playable chunk of gameplay with all the systems, art, gameplay, and tech working in the same place." 

The segment is basically a "vertical slice," although the studio isn't using that term because it implies "a level of polish and completeness" that isn't currently there. But it's a fully playable area with "player movement, combat, quests, experience, UI all working together with scratch dialogue and audio, some rough visual effects, textures, lighting, even a cut-scene," which enables the studio to test and iterate on the systems—and show off what it's doing. 

There is, around the midpoint of the video, an unexpectedly up-close look at a goat butthole, and it's not entirely just a cheap joke: The Fig update also digs into "how a goat gets made," from simple sketches to more detailed drawings, a 3D model, texturing, and animation, which actually involved a real visit to a goat farm so the subtleties and nuances of goat movement could be properly captured.   

"It takes nine goats to the say the F-word," Double Fine boss Tim Schafer explained helpfully. "I've done a lot of goat porn. Graffiti. Goat porn graffiti." 

Double Fine is also "pretty close" to sharing details on backer rewards, which it expects will be shipped out in three batches: "One batch of stuff that doesn’t take too long to make (shirts for example), another batch of stuff for the more complex or custom things (like action figures) and a final batch for stuff that requires the game to be complete." Backer surveys should start arriving "really soon," it added. 

Psychonauts 2 is still far from a proper release date, but the last time we looked it had an "estimated delivery" window of summer 2018. More information about what's cooking is up at psychonauts.com

Psychonauts

The Humble Store is giving away another old-time classic as part of its End of Summer Sale: Psychonauts, the Double Fine adventure-platformer about a kid with a cool hat who goes off to summer camp.   

I have mixed feelings about Psychonauts. I loved the writing, the voice acting, and the bizarre, beautiful game world that was filled with things to discover. But the platforming could be repetitive, and often outright infuriating. I never did finish it—I ran out of patience midway through the godawful Meat Circus, and decided I was close enough to the end to call it a day. 

I've never gone back, in part because I don't want to spoil the magic of the memories, but "free" is awfully tempting, and according to the Wiki the level has been made considerably easier in the Steam release. Which is what you'll get with this Humble freebie: Go here, add it to your cart, and after you check out you'll be emailed a Steam code.   

Since we're here, a few other Humble Store deals of note:

The Humble Store End of Summer Sale runs until 10 am PT on September 21, while Psychonauts will be free until the same time on September 16. 

Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info.

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