Over a decade after the first game, and five years after the crowdfunding campaign, Double Fine has released Psychonauts 2 on PC (Windows, Mac, Linux), PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Psychonauts 2 is a platformer-adventure starring Raz, now an officially trained Psychonaut, a group of skilled people who dive into the minds of others in order to solve mysteries and help people. It’s a bit like combining the film Inception with a Saturday Morning Cartoon.
The first game released back in 2005 and was the debut game for then-new indie studio Double Fine. It was the very definition of a cult classic: a commercial failure, but one that resonated with many players, and grew in popularity over the years thanks to its witty writing and unique mindscape level designs.
After being rejected from publishers to fund a sequel, Double Fine turned to crowdfunding in 2015, building on the success of their infamous multi-million dollar 2012 Broken Age Kickstarter that kicked off the entire video game Kickstarter craze for several years. This time Double Fine used Fig, a crowdfunding platform designed specifically for video games, and successfully raised over $3.8 million in funding, about a third of the predicted cost.
The sequel had an original release date of 2018, but was delayed several times. In 2019 Double Fine would be purchased by Microsoft as another Xbox Game Studio, allowing them to add in features that had to be cut due to limited funding.
Psychonauts 2 is available now, and enjoying an impressive 88 average on OpenCritic. It’s rated T for Teen.
