One of the big announcements at the Game Awards 2015 last week was from Tim Schafer, who announced that there will be a Psychonauts 2. Fans of the original game were probably not that surprised, and like some of Schafer's games in the past, he is asking for crowdfunding to get his sequel going. This is what is presently known about Psychonauts 2 Release Date, Crowdfunding Project Goals, and News.
According to IGN, Psychonauts 2 was able to gather over $1 million in crowdfunding by Fig in less than 24 hours after its announcement, and it has about $1.9 million at this writing. At this rate, it is about more than halfway raised its $3.3 million dollar goal. Schafer's company Double Fine plans to add "a big chunk" of its own money, as well as additional financial support from a "major player" partner to announced at a later date. There is no word on this player, or why there is a lot of secrecy.
Games Radar + reports that Schafer picked the $3.3 million number because of a Kickstarter campaign for Broken Age, another Double Fine game. It is projected that Psychonauts 2 is actually going to be a game that could cost $10 to $13.5 million to make. Most AAA games have a budget of this. The Fig crowdfunding website allows investments that pay real dividends. Double Fine has also had success with another crowdfunded game with Massive Chalice, a turn-based strategy game.
The original Psychonauts is a platform game with a very strange storyline. The player becomes Raz, a young boy with psychic abilities who runs away from the circus (instead of to the circus) in order to infiltrate a summer camp for those who have similar powers. This camp full of spies with psychic abilities, or Psychonauts, has something sinister going on that only Raz can stop. The game is literally cerebral as it is about exploring strange and imaginative minds of various unusual characters that Raz meets in the game, and there are many foes and puzzles to solve.
The Psychonauts game received only mild success when it was first released in 2005, and then on Steam in 2006. The game has attained cult status, and it wasn't too long before whispers of a sequel were happening.
The designer of the game, Tim Schafer, is quite a name in the video game industry. Before finding Double Fine Productions in 2000, he worked for LucasArts on games like the Monkey Island series, as well as Grim Fandango and Full Throttle. Schafer is well-known for this creativity, writing, and fantastical humor, and he had a modest hit with Brutal Legend, a game starring comedy star Jack Black in the world inspired by Heavy Metal album covers.
As far as a release date for Psychonauts 2 is concerned, even the game's official website does not give out that information.
