Psychonauts is a 2005 platform game created by Double Fine Productions and released by Majesco Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, Xbox, and PlayStation 2. The game tells the story of Razputin, a boy with psychic powers who leaves a circus to join a summer camp for people with similar abilities. At the camp, he discovers a dangerous plan that only he can stop. The game involves exploring the unique and creative minds of characters Raz meets while training as a Psychonaut. These explorations help him overcome their fears or past memories, which allows him to progress in the game. Raz learns several psychic abilities that he uses to fight enemies and solve puzzles.
The idea for Psychonauts came from a concept that Double Fine founder Tim Schafer had earlier while working on Full Throttle. Microsoft’s Ed Fries originally supported the game as a key title for the original Xbox, but challenges during development made it hard for Double Fine to meet goals and respond to feedback. After Fries left in 2004, Microsoft stopped publishing the game, leaving its future uncertain. A few months later, Double Fine found a new publisher, Majesco, which helped them finish the game after four and a half years of work.
Psychonauts was praised by many, but Majesco lost a lot of money after its release and left the video game industry. The game won several awards and gained a large fanbase. It is now considered one of the greatest video games ever made. In 2011, Double Fine bought the rights to the game, allowing them to release it again through digital platforms and update it for newer systems like Mac OS X and Linux. Double Fine reported that sales of the game after its republishing were much higher than its original release, with nearly 1.7 million copies sold by December 2015. A sequel, Psychonauts 2, was announced in December 2015 and released on August 25, 2021.
Gameplay
Psychonauts is a video game that combines platforming and adventure gameplay. Players control a character named Raz in a 3D, third-person view as they help Raz solve a mystery at the Psychonauts training camp. At the start, Raz can run and jump, but as the game continues, he gains special psychic abilities like moving objects with his mind, floating, becoming invisible, and creating fire. These powers help Raz explore the camp and defeat enemies. Players can earn these abilities by completing story missions, earning PSI ranks, or collecting hidden arrowheads found around the camp. Abilities can be improved, such as making fire attacks stronger or increasing the time invisibility lasts, by earning more PSI ranks. Players can assign three powers to their controller or keyboard for quick use, but all powers are always available through a selection screen.
The game features two types of environments: the real world, which includes the camp and its surroundings, and "mental worlds" inside the minds of other characters. Each mental world has unique art and level designs, and players must complete specific tasks to help characters overcome psychological challenges, which advances the story. In these worlds, enemies called censors attack Raz. Collectibles are also found, such as "figments" that help increase Raz's PSI rank, "emotional baggage" that can be sorted by finding tags and bringing them to a specific area, and "memory vaults" that provide extra information about a character's past. Most mental worlds end with a boss battle that resolves a character's emotional issues and moves the story forward. Players can revisit completed mental worlds to find any missed collectibles. Raz is given two useful items early in the game: one that lets him leave a mental world at any time, and another that gives hints about solving puzzles or defeating enemies.
Raz can lose health by fighting psychically powered creatures at night or by censors in mental worlds. Because of a family curse, Raz is also hurt by water. If Raz's health runs out, he is sent back to the most recent checkpoint. However, this can only happen a limited number of times in a mental world, shown by the number of remaining astral projections. If all projections are used up, Raz is forced out of the character's mind and must re-enter to try again. Health and extra projections can be found throughout the game or bought at the camp store.
Plot
The story takes place at the fictional Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, a secret U.S. government training center disguised as a children’s summer camp. Long ago, a meteor made of Psitanium, a fictional mineral that can give psychic powers or increase existing powers, struck the area, creating a large crater. The Psitanium changed the local wildlife, giving them limited psychic abilities, such as bears with telekinetic claws, cougars that can create fire, and rats that release confusion gas. Native Americans called Psitanium "whispering rock" and used it to make arrowheads.
When settlers arrived, the meteor’s psychoactive effects caused them to lose their minds. An asylum called Thorny Towers Home of the Disturbed was built to care for the affected people, but within fifteen years, the asylum had more residents than the town itself. The founder, Houston Thorny, died by jumping from the asylum’s tower. The government moved the remaining people and flooded the crater to stop further settlement, forming what is now Lake Oblongata. The asylum still stands but is now in ruins.
The government used the Psitanium deposit to create a training camp for Psychonauts, a group of agents with psychic abilities who help stop villains. The camp appears as a summer camp for children but trains them to become Psychonauts. Only those recruited by the Psychonauts can attend.
The main character is Razputin "Raz" Aquato, the son of a circus family. He leaves the circus to become a Psychonaut despite his father’s wishes. His family is cursed to die in water, and a watery hand called the Hand of Galochio tries to drown him near deep water.
At the camp, Raz meets four Psychonauts who run it: Sasha Nein, a calm and strategic agent; Milla Vodello, a playful agent; Agent Morceau Oleander, a strict coach; and Ford Cruller, an elderly leader with a past mental breakdown. Ford’s mind only functions properly when near Psitanium, but he appears in different roles around the camp.
Raz also meets other gifted children, including Lili Zanotto, the daughter of the Psychonauts’ leader, and Dogen Boole, a boy who can talk to animals and wears a tin foil hat to control his powers. He also meets patients from the asylum, such as Dr. Loboto, a former dentist, and Boyd Cooper, who believes in government conspiracies about a man called "the Milkman."
Raz sneaks into the camp but is caught. The Psychonauts let him stay until his parents arrive but do not allow him to participate in activities. He joins a class called "Basic Braining" and impresses Sasha, who invites him to test his abilities. During the test, Raz sees a vision of Dr. Loboto removing Dogen’s brain. Later, he finds Dogen missing a brain, but the Psychonauts refuse to believe him.
After training with Milla, Raz learns Dr. Loboto is working with Morceau to steal campers’ brains to power psychic tanks. Lili is kidnapped, and Raz infiltrates the abandoned Thorny Towers asylum to rescue her. Ford gives Raz a piece of bacon to contact him and asks him to retrieve stolen brains.
Raz frees a mutated lungfish named Linda from Morceau’s control, and she helps him cross the lake. At the asylum, Raz helps patients overcome their problems, who then help him reach Loboto’s lab. He rescues Lili and restores Sasha and Milla’s minds, allowing them to confront Morceau. The patients burn down the asylum, letting Morceau transfer his brain to a tank. Raz defeats Morceau, but the tank releases sneezing powder, causing Morceau to sneeze his brain out.
Raz uses telekinesis to place his brain in the tank, merging it with Morceau’s. Inside, Raz learns Morceau’s fear of his father, who ran a butcher shop. Raz’s father appears, but he is an imposter. Raz’s real father, Augustus, arrives and uses his psychic powers to heal his son. At the camp’s closing ceremony, Ford gives Raz a uniform, welcoming him into the Psychonauts. Raz prepares to leave with his father but learns that Lili’s father, the Psychonauts’ leader, has been captured. Raz and the Psychonauts fly off on a new mission.
Development
Psychonauts was the first game made by Double Fine Productions, a company started by Tim Schafer after he left LucasArts. Schafer left LucasArts because they decided to stop making point-and-click adventure games. When he started Double Fine, he hired some people who had worked with him on Grim Fandango (1998). Earlier games like Super Mario 64 (1996), Final Fantasy VII (1997), and The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (1998) taught Schafer how to control a character in 3D space and included storytelling and puzzles, similar to his own work. Schafer 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.'"
The idea for Psychonauts began during the development of Full Throttle, when Schafer imagined a scene where the main character, Ben, experiences a psychedelic trip caused by peyote. This scene was removed from the game because it was not family-friendly, but Schafer remained interested in exploring the subconscious mind. Later, while working at LucasArts, Schafer proposed a game about a spy who uses martial arts and meditation to solve puzzles by going on vision quests in their mind. A coworker misunderstood the idea, thinking the player would enter others' minds, and Schafer found this concept more interesting.
Other influences include the movie Dreamscape (1984), where the main character enters others' dreams, and the book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), which inspired the idea of visiting dream-like places inside a character's mind. The films The New Legend of Shaolin (1994) and My Father Is a Hero (1995) showed a child who is unusually determined, similar to the character Raz in Psychonauts. The movie The Fly II (1989) inspired the idea of a summer camp where children with psychic abilities are studied. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) influenced the visual style of the level "Black Velvetopia." The artist Joe Sorren inspired character designs with his unique proportions and colors. The game Skies of Arcadia (2000) influenced how hidden items are discovered in Psychonauts. The games The Suffering (2004) and the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Paul Klee inspired the idea of figments in the game.
While working at LucasArts, Schafer chose the name "Raz" for the main character because he liked the nickname of a LucasArts animator, Razmig "Raz" Mavlian. When Mavlian joined Double Fine, confusion arose between the character and the animator. The game's associate producer, Camilla Fossen, suggested the name "Rasputin." To resolve this, Double Fine's lawyer suggested the name "Razputin," which was used in the game.
Most of the game's dialogue and script were written by Schafer and Erik Wolpaw, who was a writer for the website Old Man Murray. Schafer created a social media-style exercise to help define characters, inspired by the website Friendster, which he used to meet his future wife. This helped him understand the characters better before writing the game's dialogue. To make character dialogue more natural, Schafer used random spoken lines with pauses and coughs, stitched together by the game. The camp and woods setting was chosen because it is a place children enjoy exploring.
The game's mental worlds were created based on Schafer's ideas, developed through concept art and gameplay concepts, and then built by the team. A famous level, "The Milkman Conspiracy," takes place in the mind of Boyd, a patient obsessed with conspiracy theories. Schafer was curious about the thoughts of people who believe in conspiracy theories, inspired by watching the movie Capricorn One as a child. The idea for Boyd came from a line someone said at a Double Fine dinner: "I am the milkman, my milk is delicious." Schafer designed Boyd's backstory around being fired from many jobs, inspired by a homeless person who helped clean the office. The 1950s suburban setting was chosen to match the spy theme of the era. Artist Scott Campbell designed the level, including the G-men based on Spy vs. Spy characters.
Peter Chan suggested making the suburban setting vertical to create a maze-like effect, which inspired the level's changing gravity. Gameplay developer Erik Robson designed the level's unique feature where Raz must give specific items to G-men, using the inventory system. Schafer originally wanted Wolpaw to write the G-men's lines, but Wolpaw was too busy, so Schafer wrote them himself.
The art team included background artist Peter Chan and cartoonist Scott Campbell. Voice actor Richard Steven Horvitz, known for his role as Zim in Invader Zim, voiced Raz. The team initially tried hiring children for voices, like in Peanuts cartoons, but struggled with their acting skills. Schafer chose Horvitz based on his audition tapes and ability to provide varied vocal tones. Raz was originally imagined as an ostrich with mental issues, but Schafer changed the idea because he believes games should offer "wish fulfillment," and few people imagine being an insane ostrich.
Double Fine created several internal tools and processes to help develop the game.
Release
The final release date for the game on Xbox and Windows was April 19, 2005. The PlayStation 2 version came later, on June 21, 2005. In 2006, the game was made available again through Valve's Steam platform on October 11. At first, the game could not be played on the Xbox 360. However, Tim Schafer led a campaign by fans through email, which helped get the game added to the Xbox 360's list of older games that work on newer systems on December 12, 2006. On December 4, 2007, Microsoft included Psychonauts as one of the first games available for direct download on the Xbox 360 through their Xbox Originals program.
In June 2011, the original publishing agreement with Majesco ended, and Double Fine regained full rights to the game. After Majesco's rights expired, the game was temporarily taken off the Xbox Live Marketplace in August 2011 because Microsoft does not allow games without current publishing rights on its service. Schafer worked with Microsoft to publish the game under the Microsoft Studios name, and it returned to the Marketplace in February 2012.
In September 2011, Double Fine released an updated version for Microsoft Windows and a version for Mac OS X and Linux through Steam. This new version added features like achievements and cloud saving. The Mac OS X version was created with help from Dracogen, a company started by Steven Dengler. At the same time, an iOS app called Psychonauts Vault Viewer! was released, showing game memories with commentary from Tim Schafer and Scott Campbell. The game was added to the PlayStation Network as a "PS2 Classic" for PlayStation 3 in August 2012.
As part of a deal with Nordic Games, which took over rights to Costume Quest and Stacking after THQ's bankruptcy, Double Fine became the publisher for those games. Nordic Games handled the production and sale of physical copies for all three games on Windows and Mac OS X. In June 2012, Double Fine included Psychonauts in a Humble Bundle. In 2016, Double Fine also released Psychonauts as a classic title for the PlayStation 4's emulation software.
Reception
Psychonauts received positive reviews from Metacritic, a website that collects and summarizes game reviews. The writing by Tim Schafer and Joe Wolpaw was praised for its humor, and the characters were noted for their unique traits. Alex Navarro of GameSpot highlighted the game's unusual characters, the conversations players can hear while exploring the camp, and how these conversations change as the story progresses, avoiding repetition often seen in similar games. Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer said the game encouraged players to revisit levels to discover more jokes and dialogue. The game was also recognized for its creative use of a second-person perspective during a boss battle.
The game’s art and level design, especially the imaginative mental worlds Raz visits, were widely appreciated. Jason Hill of the Sydney Morning Herald described these worlds as memorable journeys into the strange inner thoughts of characters. Two levels, "Milkman Conspiracy" and "Lungfishopolis," were highlighted for their humor and style. In "Lungfishopolis," players enter the mind of a lungfish monster and are shown as a giant creature attacking tiny lungfish citizens, creating an unexpected twist on typical monster themes.
Some reviewers criticized the game’s structure. They noted that the early hours of the game focused heavily on tutorials, which were less engaging than later levels. The final level, "Meat Circus," was also criticized for being unexpectedly difficult, with a time limit and complex obstacles. In 2011, the game’s publisher, Double Fine, adjusted the difficulty of this level to address these concerns. Some reviewers also said the humor became less fresh in the game’s later sections.
GamingOnLinux reviewer Hamish Paul Wilson gave the game an 8/10, praising its creativity and presentation but pointing out many uncorrected bugs. He called the game a "flawed masterpiece." In 2010, the game was listed in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die.
Psychonauts received several awards, including:
– E3 2005 Game Critics Awards: Best Original Game
– British Academy Video Games Awards 2006: Best Screenplay
Computer Games Magazine awarded Psychonauts for "Best Art Direction" and "Best Writing" in 2005 and named it the tenth-best computer game of the year. The magazine described it as "a wonderfully weird journey high on atmosphere, art direction, and creativity." Psychonauts also won PC Gamer US’s 2005 "Best Game You Didn’t Play" award. It was nominated for "Game of the Year 2005," which went to Battlefield 2. Psychonauts was also nominated for "Outstanding Achievement in Game Design" at the 9th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards and won the Best Writing award at the 6th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards.
Psychonauts did not meet Majesco’s sales goals. Although the game initially contributed to a strong sales quarter, Majesco later revised its financial projections from a profit of $18 million to a loss of $18 million. The company’s CEO, Carl Yankowski, resigned, and by year’s end, the game had sold fewer than 100,000 copies in North America. Majesco later announced plans to leave the "big budget console game marketplace." By March 2012, the retail version of Psychonauts had sold 400,000 copies.
After Double Fine acquired the rights, the game became available on more digital platforms, leading to a significant increase in sales. In December 2015, Schafer stated that Psychonauts sold nearly 1.7 million copies, with over 1.2 million sold after Double Fine’s acquisition. Sales included:
– 736,119 copies via Humble Bundle (including Steam keys)
– 430,141 copies via Steam
– 32,000 copies via GOG.com
– 23,368 copies via the Humble Store
Schafer noted that the game sold more copies in the first few hours of a Humble Bundle release than it had during its initial retail launch. He also said that Double Fine earned more money from Psychonauts in 2012 than ever before through digital platforms.
Legacy
A follow-up game to Psychonauts has been a topic of interest for Tim Schafer and fans of the game, as well as the gaming press. Schafer shared the idea with publishers, but many believed the game was too unusual to support. During the Kickstarter campaign for Broken Age in February 2012, Schafer discussed the high costs of making a sequel on social media, which sparked interest from Markus Persson, then owner of Mojang. Although Persson did not provide funding, conversations between him and Double Fine showed that other investors might be willing to help.
In mid-2015, Schafer and other industry leaders started Fig, a website where people can invest in video game projects, including options for qualified investors. At the 2015 Game Awards in December, Schafer announced plans to develop Psychonauts 2 using Fig to raise $3.3 million. The game was expected to release in 2018. The campaign reached its goal on January 6, 2016. Psychonauts 2 was released on August 25, 2021, and includes the return of Richard Horvitz and Nikki Rapp as the voices of Raz and Lili, with Tim Wolpaw writing, and artists James Chan and Alex Campbell, and composer Neil McConnell contributing.
Double Fine also created a VR game called Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin, available for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR. Released in 2017, it acts as a standalone story that connects the original Psychonauts game and its sequel, featuring Raz and other characters rescuing Truman Zanotto. Psychonauts 2 was released on August 25, 2021.
The character Raz has appeared in other Double Fine games. In Brütal Legend, Raz is shown as a large mountain sculpture similar to Mount Rushmore. In Costume Quest 2, Raz appears on a cardboard cutout. Raz was also a playable character in a downloadable content package for Bit.Trip Presents… Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien. A brief appearance of Raz is found in Alice: Madness Returns at the Red Queen’s castle as a skeleton resembling the main character. A hidden symbol of Raz can be found in A Hat in Time using a hat ability in a specific area of Chapter 3, Act 4.