Prerelease:Psychonauts
This page details pre-release information and/or media for Psychonauts.
Psychonauts was Double Fine's debut title, and went through a long and turbulent production before its release in 2005.
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Contents
Development Timeline
- 1993-1994: Tim Schafer, then lead designer on the LucasArts game Full Throttle, wants to add an interactive sequence where the game's main character takes peyote in an attempt to uncover a buried memory. This concept is rejected by LucasArts, as they wish for the game to be family friendly.
- 2000: As LucasArts begins to move away from adventure games, Schafer in turn moves away from LucasArts. He starts his own company and names it Double Fine. He is still interested in the concept of a character exploring their mind.
Early concepts started out with the idea of the player being a "mind-reading guy" stuck in an asylum that must escape by entering other inmates' minds and with the psychic powers potentially resulting from electroshock therapy. Eventually Tim settled on the notion of the setting being a summer camp with the logic being that a summer camp is a good place. "If the whole place is bad, who cares if you win?" At this point several parts of the story and concept outline were solidified in one go. - 2001: Development on Psychonauts begins in 2001. The dot-com bubble means that the Double Fine headquarters must be located in a warehouse.
Early on, the main player character is named D'Artagnan (Dart for short) and wears a very long hat. He is abandoned, primarily because he stood out as not fitting in with the other characters in the world.
Psychonauts is to be released by Microsoft for the then-new Xbox in 2003. - 2003: The dot-com bubble bursts and Double Fine is able to acquire a better and safer office space. This move delays production.
Playtesting conducted by Microsoft suggests that the game's weakest elements are its humor and the summer camp setting.
The original release date for Psychonauts comes and goes. The game is still in development, with some of Microsoft's milestones being unclear or near impossible to meet. - 2004: Microsoft decides that it will no longer publish Psychonauts in January. Schafer and the game's executive producer Caroline Esmurdoc keep development going using internal funds, all while trying to find another publisher. Will Wright, who has just sold his company Maxis, loans money to Double Fine, helping to keep the production afloat.
In August, Double Fine strikes a deal with Majesco to publish the game, leading to a Windows version of the game. Schafer and Esmurdoc plan to hire more staff to help finish the game in time for its first quarter 2005 release, but are unable to. This leads to what Esmurdoc calls "the most insane crunch I have ever witnessed"[1].
Two months later, Majesco announces a Playstation 2 version of the game, which will be developed with help from Budcat Creations. - 2005: In March, Psychonauts finally goes gold and is released on the 19th of April. It is very well-received by critics, but sells rather poorly due to the new Xbox 360 and the lack of support for platforming titles in the gaming industry at the time. According to Majesco's sales numbers, Psychonauts only sold about 100,000 units, but by Schafer's estimate, the game sold 400,000 retail copies.
- 2006: In October, Psychonauts is released on Steam. As of 2015, the game had sold about 1.2 million digital copies.
2002 - E3
Various tidbits of information can be found in materials from or reporting on the game's appearance at E3 2002.
Trailer
The trailer for the game shown at E3 2002. The majority of this trailer takes place in an early version of the "Brain Tumbler Experiment" level. This early version of the level seemingly took place inside Lili's mind and featured a boss fight with Linda which was cut from the final game.[2]. A number of changes can be seen.
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- Early effects for the player's PSI effects can be seen throughout the trailer. The most notable of which is this early telekinesis effect which is drastically different from the final version's approach.
- An early version of invisibility can also be seen at 0:43 which has a completely different design where Raz seemingly swirls a circle around in front of him before hopping through to become invisible. In the final game, he simply becomes invisible on the spot without any startup time for the ability
- At 0:50, an ability not present at all in the final game, some kind of large AoE pyrokinesis blast, is also briefly shown. In this ability, a bubble with the early firestarting badge appears above Raz's head (shown at 0:52) before he grabs it and slams it down.
- Interspersed throughout the trailer are brief clips of the cut lungfish fight from the level though the short nature of each clip makes it difficult to determine what's going on.
- At 0:44, some early Censors can be seen, sporting an old design where they appear as strange striped creatures with glowing red eyes rather than the bureaucrats in suits of the final game.
- At 0:49, an early collectible is visible. While the 2013 Steam build files identifies these as challenge markers, these appear to be somewhat functionally different to the final game's challenge markers as a UI showing how many the player has collected can be seen, rather than any kind of UI showing the player's rank.
- At the end of the trailer, an early version of the game's logo is shown.
"Landmine" power
According to some sources, the thought bubble used in the final game as the player's inventory menu and levitation ball/balloon was originally used as part of another cut ability, apparently taking the form of landmines that Raz would "slam on the ground". Various other references can be found throughout the files of the 2013 Steam build that seem to refer to this ability including references to a "snaptrap" power and a power with the placeholder name of "Get off my lawn". These likely both refer to the "landmines" but details are fairly spotty. Given the defensive nature of the ability it's easy to see why it may have been cut for not contributing much to combat.[3]. Based on other footage of early abilities, it seems that in general Raz's thought bubble had a lot more usage throughout before the effects and animations for the abilities started being reworked.
Nightmares
Reportedly, the demo of the game shown at E3 2002 had Raz entering Lili's mind. According to what was reported, Tim Schafer stated that her father was a butcher, with the level having themes of meat.[4] In actuality, the level shown was an early version of the "Nightmare in the Brain Tumbler"/"Brain Tumbler" experiment and early voice lines left in the Li-Po 553 build as well as early script files in the February 2013 Steam build confirm further details about the nature of this level. The statement regarding Lili's father being a butcher explaining the nature of the level is odd and no other evidence exists to corroborate it, so it's possible this was a fabricated story for the purposes of avoiding spoilers during the demo. Unfortunately, it's unclear where the line is between content fabricated for E3 and content that was actually planned for the game.
2015 - The Color of the Sky in Your World
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The Color of the Sky in Your World was a 3-part retrospective documentary series created by 2 Player Productions and released in 2015. It documents the formation of Double Fine as well as the development history of Psychonauts 1 through interviews with members of the team as well as contemporary "home video" footage. As you might expect it's a good source of information on the game's development and even includes a few moments showing footage of earlier builds of the game (though unfortunately, typically only briefly and incidentally.)
2021 - Double Fine Let's Play
Double Fine streamed an official let's play of the game in 2021. During the session various different developers dropped in and out and a lot of different tidbits regarding the game's development were revealed.
Merged levels
Originally, Oleander would've had a level in his mind resembling a fortress and alongside that existed a circus level and a "meat level". Double Fine were ordered to cut one level, and so made the decision to scrap Oleander's fortress and merge the meat and circus levels into one.[5]
